Is there any financially viable (i.e free) way of setting a website so that if the server it is hosted on it down then it would forward to another url?

so:


if mysite is hosted at server A. server A goes down then i would like all users who try to view mysite be redirected somehow to server B?

Is this possible in anyway?

I have a feeling somthing could be sorted with DNS servers - what do you think?

This is really a FAQ. If I'm not mistaken, I have answered about 3-4 question about this... :) It is about time someone should create a WHT FAQ. :)

There is a WHT FAQ, its the search function ;)

-Brendan

Originally posted by The Laughing Cow

Is this possible in anyway?

I have a feeling somthing could be sorted with DNS servers - what do you think?

DNS cannot do this, because DNS does not check for session state. Some people have suggested the following -- note this only works if one ISP goes completely offline:

1. Open two hosting accounts, ISP A and ISP B.

2. Change your DNS information so ISP A is nameserver 1 and ISP B is name server 2.

3. In the zone file for ISP A, set the A record for www.example.com to point to your server at ISP A.

4. In the zone file for ISP B, set the A record for www.example.com to point to your server at ISP B.

5. Set the MX record for both zone files so that ISP A is primary, and ISP B is backup.

6. Have both ISPs set the TTL for your zone file to 15 minutes.

7. During normal operation, people who query the nameserver at ISP A will go to ISP A, and people who query the nameserver at ISP B will go to ISP B. If ISP A is comepletely off-line then people will only be able to query ISP B, and will go to ISP B, after their cache expires.


This is nowhere near a fool-proof system, and there are a lot of potential problems (do search and you will see some of the technical arguments against it), but it may work.

Zoneedit offers a failover service. They are free for the first 5 domains.

Richard