Hi guys, I apologize that I am new to linux on an enterprise level but hopefully, eventually I will be one of the guys answering the questions instead of asking.
My problem is I have a client who's set up doesn't seem right. The set up is two gateway servers gws1 and gws2, 3 app servers web, mail, dns. And two file servers f1 and f2. There are a lot of tickets on this system but I want to solve one problem at a time and fully understand what I am doing.
The first gws1 has three ip's associated with it. If it (or should I say when it goes down) gws2 fails to pick up the work. errors out with the IP is already assigned.
Is there a simple configuration I can do to correct this?
Thanks in advance for any help.

A little bit more information about how the failsafe is supposed to work is necessary.

I am going to guess that when gws1 goes down then gws2 somehow detects it and tries to configure its NIC with the IP of gws1. The router probably prevents this from succeeding because the NIC on gws2 has a different hardware address than the NIC on gws1.

If this is the case then you may be able to configure the NIC on gws2 to use the same hardware address as the NIC on gws1. This may be done dynamically if the NIC isn't used while gws1 is running. It could be done statically if the NIC on gws2 is "down" while gws1 is running.

Otherwise please provide more information about the theory of operation for the failsafe. Also, when gws1 is not running do you mean that it is powered off/crashes or just that the software stops working? If it crashes then the router should allow a new hardware address to use the IP address. If the hardware is still running but a daemon process is broken then the router will still see gws1 as being available. That would cause problems for any failsafe based on software configuration switching.

As for the total workload I agree with your approach. I worked for many years as a contract system administrator and I walked into many situations where I faced many problems on my first day. I learned to take the same approach that you are using; fix one problem at a time. Ultimately that is the quickest way to get through the entire list of problems.