On 2012-12-04, Joel Wirāmu Pauling <j...@aenertia.net> wrote: > Kia ora/hello, > > I am currently redesigning one of our border edge Firewalls and want > to split the existing SPARC64 v215 into several DL140's in an HA - > Active/Load-balanced configuration. > > The Sparc64 hasn't been without issues - and is currently running 4.9 > release + some patches and is due for a re-install in any-case. > > My question is whether or not it is considered a 'good idea' to mix > and match Archs. Effectively The question is if it is worth retaining > the v215 alongside the two dl140's as part of the border FW solution. > > > question to determine if : > > a) Anyone is doing this? (mixing amd64/i386/sparc64) > b) Gotcha's
Can be done, but it's a less common scenario than all-same-arch so generally is tested less. And it's slightly more likely to hit problems than i386/amd64 (different arch / data sizes, but at least the same endianness). This isn't *meant* to get broken but bugs can happen. (Also note that if you were using sasyncd, that is *not* meant to work cross-arch). > c) If this is generally considered a 'good idea'? Personally I'd be tempted to setup the two primary machines and then maybe keep the v215 available as a cold spare.. Also as you mention active/load-balanced you may want to consider/test whether you need 'defer', see pfsync(4). (symptoms of needing it but not having it set are problems with TCP connections e.g. poor performance or connections dropping after establishment - however setting it when not necessary adds latency to connection setup).
