Very soon I'm looking to offer a selection of webhosting packages specifically targeted at local businesses.

In simple terms, I want to be able to prmise these business customers that, should the original server they are hosted on fails, I can guarrantee to have a clone of their site running on another machine - probably on another datacenter - within the hour.

I need to find out more about this, though - I *think* what I'm supposed to be looking for is "managed DNS services".

I would appreciate a friendly pointer to somewhere to find out more information, though. I need to know what is requierd of myself, and what precisely I can guarantee to my own propsective customers.

Many thanks,

Brian

You may need a lot more than just managed dns depending on all the promises that you are planning to make. I am not sure if the "domain name" forum is the place to post this - i guess a moderator will shift the post if they find this to be irrelevant here.

If you want to ensure that your DNS changes reflect immediately instead of taking the standard 24-48 hrs then you just need to make sure that you / your hosting company sets a low TTL for your domain name - to something like 10 minutes. If your hosting co is doing this, they might charge you a small fee for it.

If you want to promise an exact clone to be up within the hr - you need to take a lot of variables into consideration:
) Regular Offline Backup's
) Does the site have only static pages
) Does the site have a database which is updated very regularly

If you dont understand all the aspects then it is best that you get in touch with some good hosting company who can handle this for you. They would have servers in 2 seperate geographic locations and would setup a soln such that if one of the servers is down, the other one should take over. Depending on the complexity of your application - this soln is obviously going to cost you a decent bit of money.

www.everydns.net is a fre DNS service. You may find it helpful to provide redundancy to your server.

Originally posted by I, Brian
Very soon I'm looking to offer a selection of webhosting packages specifically targeted at local businesses.

In simple terms, I want to be able to prmise these business customers that, should the original server they are hosted on fails, I can guarrantee to have a clone of their site running on another machine - probably on another datacenter - within the hour.
no problem, server in USA and UK mirrored possible, in case of trouble the A records will be changed only. Thing of 2 min.
Details by email, visit our site before.

Originally posted by pdave
You may need a lot more than just managed dns depending on all the promises that you are planning to make. I am not sure if the "domain name" forum is the place to post this - i guess a moderator will shift the post if they find this to be irrelevant here.

If you want to ensure that your DNS changes reflect immediately instead of taking the standard 24-48 hrs then you just need to make sure that you / your hosting company sets a low TTL for your domain name - to something like 10 minutes. If your hosting co is doing this, they might charge you a small fee for it.

If you want to promise an exact clone to be up within the hr - you need to take a lot of variables into consideration:
) Regular Offline Backup's
) Does the site have only static pages
) Does the site have a database which is updated very regularly

If you dont understand all the aspects then it is best that you get in touch with some good hosting company who can handle this for you. They would have servers in 2 seperate geographic locations and would setup a soln such that if one of the servers is down, the other one should take over. Depending on the complexity of your application - this soln is obviously going to cost you a decent bit of money.

Thanks for that, pdave - I've already got a handle on the issue of backups.

I'm not sure whether virtual hosts/resellers would be able to offer this sort of solution, without actually owning their own servers, though?



THE SHORT of it is that I want to be able to promise my future clients, that I can have their sites functioning fine on a different server within an hour of moving them.

I figure that means I need to purchase some kind of DNS service for my own nameservers. However, I do not know what I'm looking for. I'm sure that something is available, though.

Any pointers much appreciated.

I figure that means I need to purchase some kind of DNS service for my own nameservers. However, I do not know what I'm looking for. I'm sure that something is available, though.

Any pointers much appreciated.

You can run your own nameservers easily and install a monitoring service that will detect when systems are down and change your DNS. Nagios (I believe is free) is something that you can download and take care of this for you.

Or you can just outsource it. DNS Failover and system monitoring is so cheap now that it really comes down to what you feel comfortable with. And there are many choices out there.

Whichever you decide though there is no reason to spend a lot of money or time on it.:stickout:

-Steve

Hi Tiggee, and thanks for the reply.

I actually just run shared hosting reseller accounts. Does that affect much?

I simply would like the facility to be able to move my nameservers to a different server - and also have the DNS propagate successfully (and globally) - within 20 minutes of pointing my nameservers to a different server/IP.

I simply would like the facility to be able to move my nameservers to a different server - and also have the DNS propagate successfully (and globally) - within 20 minutes of pointing my nameservers to a different server/IP.

Just set your TTL on your records to 20 minutes (1200 seconds). Then when you make a change you know that everyone will be switched over in 20 minutes.

That's really that's all there is to it. That's even how "dynamic DNS" works. If the TTL isn't a long period of time you can switch people over right away. Real nice!

Regards,
-Steve

Hi Tiggee - and sincere thanks again for your help.

I'm not sure what you mean by TTL, though. Is this something I should be able to do through a registrar such as Enom, etc? Or is it something done on the server itself?

Apologies if the question seems basic and reptitive - it's simply something I really need to look at.

I'm not sure what you mean by TTL, though. Is this something I should be able to do through a registrar such as Enom, etc? Or is it something done on the server itself?


Not a problem.
The TTL (Time to Live) is the amount of time that the record will stay cached in other systems. This is something that you can set when you add a record in a authoritative nameserver.
I am not sure if all DNS providers allow this though, many don't and they set the TTL to 86400 (1 day) which is too long for something that you want to do.
I would contact Enom and ask if you can set the TTL to a lower value. (This is if you are using Enom's DNS services.)

If you are running your own nameservers then you should be able to set your TTL very easily.

Regards,
-Steve

Thank you very much for that reply, Tiggee - I'll contact Enom now. :)

eNom doesn't allow you to set your own TTL with their DNS services.

That's a bummer.
Enom really should allow that. What is their default TTL that they use then?

checking remotely it say 1h1s which is 3601 , maybe its 3600 :)

the problem with changing the ip to your nameserver is that you are subject to delays at your register... I believe the real answer is to setup seperate nameservers differnet systems and sync your info very often. When your master goes down your slave takes over. Sounds easy - twice the hardware and bandwidth, implementation is not for the week of heart. Simplistic response, much left out - monitoring, cron, iptables, security. do a search for rsync or you may find info in the bind howto's

Hm...now that is a shame. So it seems that, overall, I have no chance of being able to offer the chance of moving clients quickly, in the event of failure? Now that is a darn shame. Unless someone thinks they can provide such a service to myself?

Originally posted by I, Brian
Hm...now that is a shame. So it seems that, overall, I have no chance of being able to offer the chance of moving clients quickly, in the event of failure? Now that is a darn shame. Unless someone thinks they can provide such a service to myself?

There are many low cost solutions out there that can do this for you.

It's not impossible, but you may have to use your own nameservers or you may have to outsource it.

Regards,
-Steve

ZoneEdit.com. Great company to use with dns services. Used them before.