International Journal of Scientific Research and Engineering Development

Running a file server without any backup plan is fine — until it isn't. The minute the hardware dies or the power cuts, every person who depends on that server for their work is stuck. For most small organizations, that single point of failure just gets ignored because fixing it usually means buying expensive commercial products they can't afford. This project set out to change that. The proposed system pairs two OpenMediaVault (OMV) servers into a working high-availability cluster using only open-source tools. One server acts as the primary — holding a shared Virtual IP and serving files to clients over SMB. The other runs quietly as a standby, keeping an up-to-date copy of everything through continuous rsync-based replication triggered by inotifywait. Keepalived manages the failover side of things using the Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP). When the primary goes down, the standby detects the missed heartbeats, claims the Virtual IP within seconds, and picks up right where the other server left off. Clients reconnect without changing a single setting. Testing confirmed failover completes in three to ten seconds across all failure scenarios, data consistency held up in every clean failure case, and the whole thing runs on commodity hardware at zero software cost. It turns out enterprise-grade storage availability doesn't have to cost a fortune.

R.Ramakrishnan, S.Nithishwar,"Design and Performance Evaluation of an Open-Source High-Availability NAS Cluster Using VRRP-Based IP Failover and Rsync Replication" International Journal of Scientific Research and Engineering Development, V9(3): Page(1692-1699) May-June 2026. ISSN: 2581-7175. www.ijsred.com. Published by Scientific and Academic Research Publishing.