I have 4 system in my house. The primary I label serverhost. On the serverhost the /etc/hostnames file is the same as the hostnames file on the other machines. The hostnames file is formatted accordingly:

##/etc/hostnames
192.168.1.100 serverhost.bgevolution.com serverhost
192.168.1.101 server.bgevolution.com server
192.168.0.102 tv.bgevolution.com tv
192.168.0.103 server2.bgevolution.com server2

Server 2 is new. I can further cleanup the schema by changing the static address of tv to 103 and server2 to 102. But for now its ok. Now I can reference hosts, with the respective ip address, simply by hostname. This is convenient for setting permissions. Permissions can be a pain in the neck, and if you are referencing a host by ip, localhost, and or the hostname you will have to create permissions for each. For example your mysql server will need permissions for each hostname that you want to connect to it with. Connecting to the server from the serverhost I need permissions for username@serverhost.bgevolution.com. But if I am connecting to mysql through phpmyadmin I need permissions for username@server.bgevolution.com.

I have replicated the mysql server on server to server2, which I connect to with the phpmyadmin installation on server. On server2 I must give permissions to username@server.bgevolution.com to be able to connect from the server. Ultimately with no experience dealing with permissions it is a pain, but after getting everything running you will realize that it makes sense, and it does increase security.

I want the slave server to also behave as the master, and ultimately I want to experiment with setting up a round robin mysql server, meaning as http requests come in to the website, I want it to randomly access database information from either server or server2. This should prove fun.