For various reasons beyond our control, a critical service running on a particular machine must communicate to another machine via a preset and fixed IP address.
Both machines run Windows Server 2008 Standard and both are joined to the same Active Directory domain. The target machine also hosts various other services.
At issue is how to handle a scenario where the target machine fails. The plan is to have a clone of the target machine in cold stand-by. When the target machine fails, the cloned machine will be manually powered up with the expectation that operation resumes as normal.
Both the "target" machine and it's inactive clone will be configured to have the same IP address & hostname.
Is this feasible? Can Active Directory manage this scenario without special configuration?
Many Thanks.