Heartbeat is an open source program that provides cluster infrastructure capabilities—cluster membership and messaging—to client servers, which is a critical…

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Step-by-step guide to building a two-node active/passive high-availability cluster on Ubuntu using Heartbeat and a DigitalOcean Reserved IP. Covers installing and configuring Heartbeat on both nodes, generating auth keys, creating a floatip init service that calls the DigitalOcean API to reassign the Reserved IP on failover, and testing automatic failover. Also addresses split-brain risks, fencing considerations, and when to upgrade to Corosync/Pacemaker for more complex setups.

How To Create a High-Availability Setup with Heartbeat and Reserved IPs on Ubuntu