Active-Active Disaster Recovery Setup for DirectAdmin

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BestBoard

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Hello,

Since most of the threads in this forum discussing failover and disaster recovery (DR) solutions are several years old, I kindly ask not to be referred to a Google search (I already did it).

I am looking to implement an active-active disaster recovery solution for DirectAdmin. The goal is to ensure that all data is replicated across nodes, and in the event of a failure on Node A, all traffic will seamlessly be routed to Node B.

Here is the setup I am considering:
  • 2 DirectAdmin servers
  • 3 SQL servers (Galera Cluster/Group Replication)
  • 2 ProxySQL instances to manage read/write traffic distribution across the SQL cluster
  • 1 SQL load balancer using round-robin to distribute traffic between both ProxySQL instances. DirectAdmin will be connected to this load balancer.
  • S3-compatible solution (e.g., GCP, AWS, etc.) to store all user data, ensuring accessibility from both nodes.
I have a few questions regarding this setup:
  1. Does DirectAdmin support external DNS servers, such as PowerDNS, for syncing DNS records and facilitating easier switching in case of a failure?
  2. How can I synchronize users, emails, and FTP accounts effectively? Using rsync for /etc/passwd, /etc/group, and similar directories feels more like a workaround rather than a reliable solution.
  3. Is there anything else I should consider in this setup?
I would greatly appreciate any advice or insights you can share.

Thank you!
 
IMHO, you might have a look at some cloud solutions (e.g. Proxmox)

Basically, you prepare 3 servers (at minimum) to form a cloud.
Then, you create a VM (KVM guest) as usual, setup DA and use it as usual.
It will automatically replicate the data to the other storage members inside the cloud.
As the other 2 servers contain the VM data, in case the running VM is down, it will automatically start the VM instance from the remaining.

It may be easier to setup.
(However, not sure how to do the cloud platform maintenance/update/upgrade/etc)
 
@Active8 Do you have any reference? I was looking in DirectAdmin docs but couldn't find anything related to PowerDNS.

@ccto Thank you for your advice. However I'm not looking into private cloud solution, but to use public cloud providers like AWS/GCP.
 
@BestBoard was explained here :

Active8

Post in thread 'External PowerDNS Server Configuration'

@Richard G I had used this guide and this one in the past to setup PowerDNS on an cheap VPS

After install is finished( including PowerAdmin GUI) :

1. Alter the NS template for the 3th nameserver like mentioned here:

General DNS | Directadmin Docs

DirectAdmin Knowledge Base
docs.directadmin.com

2. I made this change in config pdns: (/etc/pdns/pdns.conf)
slave=yes
master=no
disable-axfr=yes
slave-cycle-interval=60

3. Added : Config vhost : (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf)

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName ns3.myservername.nl
DocumentRoot...
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