Redundant / High available BIRD

[1 Игорь]

Common scheme, that used by ISP is
>
>   ISP 1 --- BIRD 1 --- Switch
>               |    \ /
>               |     X
>               |    / \
>   ISP 2 --- BIRD 2 --- Switch
>
> This actually requires two running BIRDs but leaves me with the question
> how to deal with the IP address on the internal side. So in theory I would
> have two virtual standard gateways for connected internal equipment?!

If you have two uplinks, I guess, you have large network, which uses IGP, and all things go simple:
you just need to redisltibute 0/0 route and/or more speceific routes (it is bad idea to redistribute fullview to IGP) from Border Routers via IGP. Between Border Routers you
need to set up iBGP session. So if you have failure in some point - all will be ok.
If one border fails - IGP stops to receive routes from it and all traffic will go through another working Border.
If one of ISP link fails, Border with failed link will send traffic to another Border with working.

If you have two uplinks with BGP and dont have IGP, for some reasons, and customers connects directly to BR it will be good idea to run
VRRP between BR in local network. Which allows you to create active/backup GW.
On one BR you will have virtual IP which you could assign as default GW, and if it fails,
this Virtual IP will transparently moved to another Border.

> Maybe I'm also totally on the wrong road. The basic plan is two different
> ISP connections, two Linux systems running BIRD and Corosync with Pacemaker
> to achive high availability - and later some peering partners. I would like
> to see a fast automated failover in case a link or a hardware breaks down.

Corosync and Peacemaker is wrong road. It's for end-point applications like web-servers.
For networks, if you want HA, you just need more nodes and proper settings