Elastic IPs

Set up IP failover; then either of your nodes can claim the IP with a simple arping.

See the HA guides for an example. You don't have to follow the full guide, just the IP failover part.

@exiges:

I also understand by default Linode servers use DHCP which isn't ideal since DNS entries need to point to a given IP address..

Your IPs are static. DHCP is just used by default since it's convenient. You can switch to a static configuration if you want to; your IPs (and DNS resolvers) will only change if you move the node to a different data center.

Wow, thanks for the fast response !

Time to do some reading.

8)

DHCP is nice if you only need one IP, since you don't have to change any IP settings if you move IPs between linodes, or move to a different datacenter (which necessitates a change in IP). It makes stuff "just work".

If all you want to do is switch the IPs (and don't mind rebooting), then the Linode manager lets you swap IPs very simply. But if you want to do it on-the-fly (live), then yeah, you'd need the failover stuff.