[KLUG Members] alternate redundancy v. cost

[Dirk H Bartley]

All businesses seem to be obsessed with redundancy.  Most admins usually
choose to purchase the "expensive" servers with redundant power supplies
and redundant raid5 scsi data storage.  For a reasonable server like
this one can expect to spend 3.5-10 G$'s depending on the specifics of
number of processors, amount of memory and drive space.  Has anyone
considered using two less expensive hosts to get the same effect.  

I know there are methods/projects to get network filesystems to
synchronize but have not tried them.  Two inexpensive machines with some
of the newer sata drives and workstation quality memory and mobo's may
produce some decent reliability results.  All services performed by
these servers could be configured to be manually switched over to the
other at a moments notice.

I guess I am just asking for opinions.  I would tend to lean against it
but the idea sounds intriguing to me.  Money is always a factor
unfortunately.  The cost of the commodity stuff is just so low relative
to the scsi and server mem stuff.

Dirk