baddealings.com
11-12-2001, 10:19 PM
hello, I have a couple questions about dns settings. Let's say that I have a website that I need to be up 100% of the time. So I have 2 accounts at 2 different hosting providers (1 primary and 1 backup). So I was wondering how I should setup my DNS? What are some advantages of setting the dns up in the following way?
ns1.firsthost.com then
ns2.firsthost.com
ns3.secondhost.com
ns4.secondhost.com
Or should I go
ns1.firsthost.com
ns3.secondhost.com
ns2.firsthost.com
ns4.secondhost.com
Thanks
Steven
allan
11-12-2001, 10:36 PM
There is no advantage to doing it either way. When a caching name server requests domain information from a root name server it is going to get all records. If one name server times out, the caching name server will try the next one, and so on.
The records are also served in a round robin fashion, so the first name server that is served will rotate. For subsequent requests the caching name server will query the name server with the fastest response time (there's more, but you get the idea :)).
baddealings.com
11-12-2001, 10:39 PM
uuallan-
Thank you very much for your reply. I thought that it would happen in the manner in which you explained. But if I have databases on my website, then I would surely have some problems right, because there is no way to mirror databases from one host to anothers right?
allan
11-12-2001, 10:50 PM
Actually you can replicate data between websites, but there are all sorts of problems with doing it. Depending on what type of database you have your best bet is to check out the database company's homepage for hints on replicating data.
The bigger problem you are going to have, is that DNS is not server aware. If one of your sites goes down, the DNS server is not going to know it, and will still try to direct traffic there. So, the extra account probably will not do you any good from that standpoint.
Depending on the size of your site, you should look to see if your hosting provider has an Load Balancing, or even Global Server Load Balancing options. They will allow you to direct traffic between sites, while actually health checking content and can provide you with better uptime.
