[mythtv-users] spare backend for emergenciens

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 19:29, Kevin Johnson <dabears_rule at yahoo.com> wrote:
....
> What would be the simplest way to do this?

Certainly not the simplest to set up, but by far
the simplest to use would be to use the various
clustering technologies to have a hot-spare
that (perhaps) has a replicated database,
floating IP address, and startup the backup
service when necessary.  I use those technologies
in $dayjob$ and once set up they can provide
quite good high availability and/or failover
with no manual interactions.  However, to be
honest, since I am in the "Its only TV" group,
other than the learning and doing it for fun, it is
probably overkill.

If a power cycle will recover the server (and
it probably will in 80% of the failures), another
simple alternative might be to have the server
on a remotely controlled power strip, and have
one of your front ends power cycle the server
if it loses communication (after, say, 5
minutes of lost communications).  I seem to
recall some vendors that had a power strip
with a built-in watchdog timer (if the attached
system did not send some signal every so
often, it power cycled the host).

Gary