DigitalOcean Floating IP + Snapshot for quick restoring

[rchase]

I am setting up a hosted pbx business where I will have several small business clients connecting to my FusionPBX

Ideally, I would have 2 HA servers with failover if one goes down, but I haven't found any support or documentation for this unfortunately, all I hear is I have to pay for the class, which I would consider once I have a system that is producing income for me, but not right away this early in the "testing out an idea" phase.

The best solution I have come up with so far is I have a DigitalOcean droplet running FusionPBX with snapshots enabled. I also have a "Floating IP"

Quick DR solution:

cloudpbx.mysite.com points to the Floating IP which then forwards to the droplet IP.

If anything breaks on the server, I can quickly restore the last snapshot to a new droplet and forward the floating IP to the new droplet

This should literally be about 5 minutes of downtime (untested, but I will test this weekend).

It would not require any DNS propagation thanks to the floating IP so no problems there.


Anyone see a flaw in the plan, or care to help me with HA please let me know !

 

[simcard]

Nice work; I like seeing the different ways people have a go at HA. Getting stuck into fusionpbx myself at the moment and keen to see the different ways it can be deployed.

I did see a youtube clip where the fail over time was significantly less that 5 minutes, more around ~5 seconds which, if you were considering a production service may offer a better level of service to your potential customer base.

Clip:

I haven't got to the stage of dissecting it to work out how they achieved it yet, so I can't help you on that one but thought it might be valuable nonetheless.

 

[DigitalDaz]

That's one I made a couple of years ago

Keep your eye on the forums, there will be a script to install a cluster this week that will make it a breeze.

 

[Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz]

Dear RChase,
It is very sad you don't find what you want. But HA is not a subject for newbies. Indeed, it is not a subject for VoIP, is more a System/Network Management topic (you must fully understand the TCP/IP stack and architectures of your involved elements). Taking the advanced class is one way to get the work done, another is getting professional services from myself.

I have deployed HA systems that when the server is not pingable, the floating IP moves in the following 2-3 seconds. Literally, your ping test doesn't realize about the switching and your sound only gets a small silence.

So, if you want to learn, I will give you the rod, but the fish: Google about heartbeat + pacemaker. Please note that the floating IP technique is only that, floating IP. You will need to deal with sharing the session, filesystem synchronization, and database sharing. Again, as I said, not a subject for a newbie.

 

[inform11]

OK
If there is a problem with the host, then floating-ip is the solution to the problem.
And if the problem is in freeswch? CPU = 100% or memory load = 100%
Demon Freeswich does not answer ..
Floating-ip does not help.
what to do?

 

[Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz]

HA is a Layer 3 solution, but a good sysadmin will know how to deal with that. Just use your imagination.
If that is your case, contact me privatelly

 

[Tricom114]

Hey, I'm having trouble getting my Droplet to work with the floating IP. Can anyone share some info on how to get it to work?

 

[DigitalDaz]

DO floating IPs break as much as they work, they also use a NATted floating IP which makes it very messy, I would stay well away from DO floating IPs and use DNS-SRV instead.

A couple of us tested DO floating and you end up with both machines thinking they have the floating IP, then you have to ticket DO, this happens quite often.

 

[Tricom114]

Oh, I see. Well, thank you for the heads up. You really saved me a log of time and trouble from the sound of it. Besides, I wanted to set up a backup install in a different datacenter and floating IPs would have not worked out since they can only work in the same data center.

 

[Tricom114]

You know I've been trying to get DNS-SRV to work all night and still no luck. Is there any documentation on how to set this up with FusionPBX? I can get it do work with X-Lite, but none of my Polycom or Yealink phones.

 

[DigitalDaz]

Unless you have a provider who supplies NAPTR I suggest you register a cheap domain with OVH, you get full access to NAPTR as well as SRV, it makes life much easier, I will post a tutorial for setting up NAPTR and DNS SRV within the next couple of days.

 

[Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz]

Unless you have a provider who supplies NAPTR I suggest you register a cheap domain with OVH, you get full access to NAPTR as well as SRV, it makes life much easier, I will post a tutorial for setting up NAPTR and DNS SRV within the next couple of days.

You may be interested on this reading
http://inside-out.xyz/technology/dn...p-to-reach-the-high-availability-in-voip.html

 

[Tricom114]

I figured out how SRV works today, but I am now facing a new problem. So the way I have it set up is customer1.mypbx.com, customer2.mypbx.com, customer3.mypbx.com ext.

I have my SRV set as the following:
_sip._tcp.customer1 SRV 1H 10 100 5060 main.mypbx.com
_sip._tcp.customer1 SRV 1H 20 100 5060 backup.mypbx.com
_sip._udp.customer1 SRV 1H 10 100 5060 main.mypbx.com
_sip._udp.customer1 SRV 1H 20 100 5060 backup.mypbx.com

_sip._tcp.customer2 SRV 1H 10 100 5060 main.mypbx.com
_sip._tcp.customer2 SRV 1H 20 100 5060 backup.mypbx.com
_sip._udp.customer2 SRV 1H 10 100 5060 main.mypbx.com
_sip._udp.customer2 SRV 1H 20 100 5060 backup.mypbx.com

I provision my phones using Line SIP Transport = DNS SRV and everything works great. I can test it by shutting down my main server and the phones register to the backup without missing a beat... until I add the A records.

customer1 CNAME 1H main.mypbx.com
customer2 CNAME 1H main.mypbx.com
customer3 CNAME 1H main.mypbx.com

Now I know what some will say. "Why have A records?" Well, so they can get to their portal. There must be a way around this, right?

 

[Tricom114]

Okay I solved the problem.
SIP port must be set to 0 and not 5060

 

[Aryn Nakaoka]

Isn't Nat the biggest problem with the DO Floating IPs? How many phones are you servicing?

 

[kshah]

I figured out how SRV works today, but I am now facing a new problem. So the way I have it set up is customer1.mypbx.com, customer2.mypbx.com, customer3.mypbx.com ext.

I have my SRV set as the following:
_sip._tcp.customer1 SRV 1H 10 100 5060 main.mypbx.com
_sip._tcp.customer1 SRV 1H 20 100 5060 backup.mypbx.com
_sip._udp.customer1 SRV 1H 10 100 5060 main.mypbx.com
_sip._udp.customer1 SRV 1H 20 100 5060 backup.mypbx.com

_sip._tcp.customer2 SRV 1H 10 100 5060 main.mypbx.com
_sip._tcp.customer2 SRV 1H 20 100 5060 backup.mypbx.com
_sip._udp.customer2 SRV 1H 10 100 5060 main.mypbx.com
_sip._udp.customer2 SRV 1H 20 100 5060 backup.mypbx.com

I provision my phones using Line SIP Transport = DNS SRV and everything works great. I can test it by shutting down my main server and the phones register to the backup without missing a beat... until I add the A records.

customer1 CNAME 1H main.mypbx.com
customer2 CNAME 1H main.mypbx.com
customer3 CNAME 1H main.mypbx.com

Now I know what some will say. "Why have A records?" Well, so they can get to their portal. There must be a way around this, right?

Hi , Can you please provide the documentaion on this? and can you please explain how do you do this, " I provision my phones using Line SIP Transport = DNS SRV" ? Thank you in advance.