Keepalived

Since I found it difficult to gather the necessary information to do this, I am documenting what worked for me here.

While this worked for me, and I will attempt to make these instructions as general as possible, I encourage anybody who has any issues to make appropriate modifications and additions!

Using keepalived inside OpenVZ guests

rough draft, i will return to format nicely later

Terminology

To reduce my typing, and hopefully make the document more clear and explicit, I will be using the following terms and abbreviations. I will try to pick what seems consistent to what is used in OpenVZ itself:

• Virtual Environment [VE]: A 'guest' operating system installed and running under OpenVZ's control
• Host Node [HN]: The physical server and OS hosting the OpenVZ Virtual Environments as 'guests'

Host Node Setup

Prerequisites

First, make sure you have OpenVZ installed and configured according to the instructions proscribed for your platform (eg. debian, redhat, gentoo, etc...) You will need to set up at two new VEs (Virtual Environments/Nodes) in order to make best use of keepalived.

You will need an ethernet interface that can host more than one address in the same physical network. For example, on your own LAN. Doing this on an interface connected directly to, say, a home-cable-modem will probably not work properly.

Install Required Software

* debian-based
  * ipvsadm