--- title: How To Create a High-Availability Setup with Heartbeat... description: 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... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-create-a-high-availability-setup-with-heartbeat-and-reserved-ips-on-ubuntu-0jlnvb1bq twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How To Create a High-Availability Setup with Heartbeat and Reserved IPs on Ubuntu | daily.dev og:description: 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... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-create-a-high-availability-setup-with-heartbeat-and-reserved-ips-on-ubuntu-0jlnvb1bq og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/0jlNvb1bq.png og:image:alt: How To Create a High-Availability Setup with Heartbeat and Reserved IPs on Ubuntu og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How To Create a High-Availability Setup with Heartbeat and Reserved IPs on Ubuntu **[DigitalOcean Community](https://daily.dev/sources/do_community)** · 19 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary 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. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [My DNS server kept breaking until I added high availability and single sign-on](https://daily.dev/posts/my-dns-server-kept-breaking-until-i-added-high-availability-and-single-sign-on-g8uurbg88) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Hands-On: Setting Up My First Production-Ready Ubuntu Server](https://daily.dev/posts/hands-on-setting-up-my-first-production-ready-ubuntu-server-bbfuvve1z) · Medium · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [When Kubernetes Meets Real Data Center Networking: Building a Routable, Resilient On-Prem Cluster with BGP and ECMP](https://daily.dev/posts/when-kubernetes-meets-real-data-center-networking-building-a-routable-resilient-on-prem-cluster-wi-6epvdu3rc) · Container Journal · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#devops](https://daily.dev/tags/devops), [#digitalocean](https://daily.dev/tags/digitalocean), [#kubernetes](https://daily.dev/tags/kubernetes), [#ubuntu](https://daily.dev/tags/ubuntu) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-create-a-high-availability-setup-with-heartbeat-and-reserved-ips-on-ubuntu-0jlnvb1bq) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How To Create a High-Availability Setup with Heartbeat and Reserved IPs on Ubuntu","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-create-a-high-availability-setup-with-heartbeat-and-reserved-ips-on-ubuntu-0jlnvb1bq","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-create-a-high-availability-setup-with-heartbeat-and-reserved-ips-on-ubuntu-0jlnvb1bq"},"datePublished":"2026-02-18T22:10:00.398Z","dateModified":"2026-10-15T02:21:28.944Z","description":"Step-by-step guide to building a two-node active/passive high-availability cluster on Ubuntu using Heartbeat and a DigitalOcean Reserved IP. 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