clustering and netbooting

[Marc Tardif <intmktg@CAM.ORG>]

I am currently running 3 freebsd boxes sharing tasks for the same domain, 
the first box is the only machine connected to the net while the others
are on the lan only:
192.168.0.1 web.server.com web
192.168.0.2 sql.server.com sql
192.168.0.3 mail.server.com mail

What I want: is to netboot 'sql' and 'mail' off of 'web', but each box
would have their own hdd for mounting /usr/local and perhaps /tmp locally.
This will prevent me from having to repeat maintenance tasks across 3
machines (buildworld and install world for example) while still using a
local hdd for i/o (using /usr/local for example).

Problem is: how can I circumvent reliability issues such as one buildworld
incapacitating all 3 machines? Also, even though I will be mounting
/usr/local on each netbooting machine, how much compromise in performance
or potential problems can I expect considering most of my filesystem will
be nfs mounted?

Note: I have already sent a message to the freebsd mailing list, but I was
advised against netbooting on mission critical systems. Yet, I would be
curious to find out what this mailing list has to say about it. Perhaps
there is a way to netboot and avoid the problems I mentioned above...

Looking forward to any suggestions,
Marc


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