XServe IP Failover not quite Universal yet

It may not be the most-used feature of Apple's XServe, but IP Failover -- the ability of a standby server to take over the IP address and service responsibilities of a failed primary box -- is vital in enhanced-availability setups and one of the "marquee" qualifications for the use of Apple's iron in BigCorp server rooms. With OS X Server's support for FireWire networking, you can use a single 6-pin FW cable between the two servers as the private 'heartbeat' network that lets the understudy know when the leading lady has slipped on the stairs, so to speak.

Unfortunately, as Ars Technica and MacFixit have explicated (based on a recent Knowledge Base article), there's a problem or two: not only is mixing G5 and Intel XServes in a failover configuration currently verboten, the failover tools don't work on any of Apple's Intel-based hardware. Drat! We can only hope that this is fixed before Leopard Server comes along.

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Source: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305066

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Enterprise Xserve

It may not be the most-used feature of Apple's XServe, but IP Failover -- the ability of a standby server to take over the IP address and...

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g4dget

That's not the only thing. There's also a problem with the kernel on the Intel machines that stops them interfacing fully and correctly with active directory. I just bought two (along with around 12TB of storage) and have had to use an old G5 PowerMac to handle the file serving until an update comes out. It seems that Apple are aware, but keeping it very quiet, as per usual.

February 16 2007 at 10:33 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply