Hi,

I have setup two servers, we offer network 100% uptime gurantee, but when it comes to maintenance, backup, unexpected error etc, we want to make sure the site is always up.

Server 1 : DualP3 1ghz, 512MB RAM, 7 Accounts - Running PLESK
Server 2 : AMD XP1700, 1GIG RAM, 1 Account - Running PLESK

Basically at the moment my site is running on server 1 along with some friends sites .....

What i want to do is make Server 2 my main site server, but also have an identical account on the Server 1.

So if server 2 goes down for maintenance, backup etc... Server 1 takes over ....

Is this possible with Nameservers i.e.

Server 1 = pri.server1.com & sec.server2.com
Server 2 = pri.server2.com & sec.server1.com

Is this possible, so if server 2 goes down, server 1 carrys on serving the sites......

Is there any other method.... I know theres load balancing, but i dont need that....

Kind Regards
Shazad

Here is what I would recommend:

Server 1 :
domainname.com
ns1.domainname.com
All accounts on server

Server 2 :
domainname.com
ns2.domainname.com
All accounts on server mirrored

what do u mean mirrored, and how would i do that ?

I have never done this before....

NOTE : I only want to run my main business site on the Server 2, along with support and billing subdomains.....

Kind Regards,
Shazad

if the two servers are on the same network, then when the network goes down you lost your redundancy.

Also, how if one site relies on mysql (for example VB), how would you make the two servers have the exact copy of mysql on each server?

cheers,
:beer:

We Offer 100% uptime SLA (both network and connectivity), and have multiple redundant connections fully utilising BGP4 Protocol, with a fully meshed GIG network.....

The way the backup server will work is that the support and billing, will be get a message saying it is offline temporarily and then we can be contacted, via email or ICQ etc... (Possibility)

The server will only go down for maintenance, upgrades, and therefore we could easily copy the mySQL files over before doing the upgrades etc.....

Kind Regards
Shazad

Mirroring basically syncs the data of the two servers. For databases you could use replication servers to do this.
Load balancing is a good option for what you want to do... I do not understand why you do not want it.... You have two identical servers it must be used... :)

Have a great day :-)

Regards
amarr

The servers are not idential, however if i had load balancing it would not solve the problem with mySQL ...

Any more info on nameservers ?

g'night

Take-care
Shazad

For the MySQL db's you could write a cron job that would back up the db's from server 1 and sync them to server 2 at defined time intervals. The nameserver setup as posted in my above post will give you the redundancy if server 1 is down, by mirroring the data as I mentioned above and explained by bobcares you would have an identical copy of server1 located on server2. This in itself would also provide simple load balancing (per say) because if server1 would get overloaded with requests the dropped ones would go to server2. It's not the best method for the long haul but would work during short periods of scheduled maintenance downtime.

hmmmmmmm.....could be

anyone with some indept info on how to set this up completely, using nameservers and 2 servers.

Kind Regards
Shazad

I know there are ways to do this. However, it is much easier using one server with 2 or more harddrives. You need a VERY good Network to have the server(s) on though.

posts with more info would be greatfully appreciated,

Thanks to all so far for the posts

Keep them comming

Shazad

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28780

Hi cabalstudios , google is a good example of what you want. If you tried #dig google.com you'd see

google.com. 5M IN A 216.239.35.100
google.com. 2D IN NS ns1.google.com.


Guess they run a cron script in ns1.google.com every mins to check if 216.239.35.100 goes down, then automatically change google.com's A record from 216.239.35.100 to a backup machine. This cause google.com to goes down less than 5 minutes (5M as above). You can easily write this script using perl/php/bash etc . You can also change 5M to 15 seconds but that will disturb the internet society .