[Dnsmasq-discuss] A (possibly bad) idea: failover in dnsmasq

[Jan-Piet Mens]

> For dnsmasq, I can see that active-passive is easy to do. Take your
> diagram above, and delete dnsmasq B. dnsmasq A keeps the tryant instance
> A up-to-date with the lease database and that gets replicated to tyrant
> B. If dnsmasq A fails, then dnsmasq B is started, intialises its lease
> database from the tyrant B and is there for clients as they fail to talk
> to dnsmasq A and start to broadcast. More important dnsmasq B can
> provide a DNS service with all the clients in it  straight away.

Understood. 

> This active-passive scheme shouldn't need any dnsmasq changes, and
> arranging to monitor server instances and start a new one when an
> existing one goes down is a solved problem: it's exactly what heartbeat
> does.
> 
> Building a heartbeat harness to run dnsmasq active-passive and
> replicated tyrant (or another database) sure looks like a useful thing
> to try, IMHO.

I'll give that a bit of thought. (/dev/rob0's suggestion of using SQLite
is suddenly more appealing in this light, as it involves fewer moving
parts...)

        -JP