Shutdown a system by MAC?

Ok here is the problem we have 2 v440 with same IP address running solars 9. one remains on the other remains off. They are both configured exactly the same for redundant purposes for the software we use. This was the best/worst idea. Great because down time is only a mere minutes. The bad is the site tends to turn on both of them at the same time causing problems for the clients. We now have a way to check the port they are plugged into from the switch and send us an email if the secondary comes online. Now is there a way to shutdown the secondary via MAC address instead of IP since they both share the same IP?

Can you establish network load-balancing between the two ?
I suspect that they are production servers ?

Cheers,
Cameron

The V440 has dual ethernets, could you not have a secondary address for the same machines where the IPs were actually different?

Dear
i am not able to telnet my sun server from windows xp machine. even i had make entry in /etc/fusers & /etc/default/login file but error is showing "x21 error connection closed by remote user"
my windows machine ip is 10.205.121.177& sun server ip is 10.205.119.246
so plz help me. Is there any changes require

Regards
prakash

Well the thing is the way we did this fault tolerance was because to bring up a server that is the same setup is faster than changing the way our software ont he clients talks to the secondary server. to change over 30 clients at one site takes login logout and change the master node. then accept some gui answers then reboot. that down time is unacceptable considering it is for the miltiary. Well this way we have like i said creates a problem when they bring it up. Could i possibly add another ip that would not effect our clients connection to the server but we could access?

Yes, especially if you use the 2nd ethernet port.

Another thought, why not use DHCP/RARP for the boxes, they start up by asking for their ethernet addresses based on the MAC address, so you can tell the boxes what they should be. You have the DHCP/RARPD server manage the IP addresses they get, then the server that should be idle gets a different IP address.

See I can not make any really noticable changes to the system since they are under a doctrine drafted by the both countries. So any changes needed require a long process that could take a year or more... ok if the server that is idle get a different IP and the primary crashes how do we get the secondary to have the same IP as the primary?

(1) change the DHCP server dhcpd.conf or whereever, so if this server reboots it gets the correct address

(2) "ifconfig if-name inet new-address" on the server to change it immediately