heartbeat on centos without load balance

I am setting up a SIP VoIP proxy server on 2 CentOS 5.3 Servers.

I've seen many setups for HA Servers but also has Load Balance. For a SIP server I don't think I can use load balance.

Is this scenario possible?
Have 2 servers running, one sitting idle waiting for the other to fail, yet at the same time copying all new information from the Main server. If the Main fails, the backup should be able to take on the IP Address of the Main and all of the incoming traffic.
I understand a call would be interrupted but the service should still be up and running on the backup server correct???

In Load Balance mode, does it send and get information in parts from each server or is it all sent to each? If so then load balanced might work by having two servers being sent the call information at the same time. But I find this highly unlikely.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
DJ

 

ahh wait a minute here.
In my searches I see that the Loadbalancers are needed in order to determine which servers are down and which are running. My bad..

http://www.howtoforge.com/haproxy_loadbalancer_debian_etch
in the above howto; does application also mirror the two servers or is that a different application that would also need to be added?

 

Yes. You can do that with rsync, MySQL replication, shared storage, etc.

 

Great! Just trying to wrap my head around this whole process here.

The 2 LB's can be virtual? So what I would need to do is create a virtual server on each system or install on current, just give the LB the different Private IP?

ie.
Server1 = 66.77.88.90
Server2 = 66.77.88.91
LB = 66.77.88.92 (can these two LB IP's be virtual or local to each other?*)
LB = 66.77.88.93
Virtual IP = 66.77.88.94

*Note:
With the 2 LB's.. can I plug a reverse network cable into two network cards on the servers and give them a IP of 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.3 with default GW of 192.168.0.1?

 

How do you mean that - virtual or local?

 

My apologies;
with the 2 LB's.. can I plug a reverse network cable into two network cards on the servers and give them a private IP of 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.3 with default GW of 192.168.0.1?

I wasn't sure that was the proper way to go as I want heartbeat to check if server1 is running; if not start the process on server2.
I started trying my hand at this method to see how that would work for me. So far I can't seem to get the virtual address to point to the servers. I must of missed something along the way.

http://www.howtoforge.com/high_availability_heartbeat_centos