Failover setup

[Ashley M. Kirchner]

    Hi Folks,

    I'm looking for suggestions on how to create a failover setup at the 
office.  At the moment I have a single FC6 machine that acts as our 
firewall.  It uses iptables to allow inside (private network) traffic to 
get out (to the internet) and vice versa.  The problem is, if this 
system were to go down in the middle of the night, I won't know about it 
till the morning and there are workers that come in early in the morning 
and can't get any work done because they have no connection.

    So, if I setup a second machine to be a failover system, how do I 
actually get that accomplished?  Network needs to be re-routed somehow 
when the primary goes down.

    The current layout is, seen from the outside:

    INTERNET ---> CSU/DSU ---> FC6 Firewall ---> HP ProCurve Switch

    The ProCurve switch serves our local network (with private [static] 
IPs)  The firewall is multihomed with one public ethernet and a private one.

-- 
W | It's not a bug - it's an undocumented feature.
  +--------------------------------------------------------------------
  Ashley M. Kirchner <mailto:ashley at pcraft.com>   .   303.442.6410 x130
  IT Director / SysAdmin / Websmith             .     800.441.3873 x130
  Photo Craft Imaging                       .     3550 Arapahoe Ave. #6
  http://www.pcraft.com ..... .  .    .       Boulder, CO 80303, U.S.A.