Hi all,

I was just wondering -

Say I get a RAQ3, and however long down the line I outgrow the disk space and the bandwith, but I need to add more accounts.

If it possible to pay for a 2nd RAQ, on the same Host, and make it so that both hosts can use the same DNS, ie the DNS hosted by the forst server can also be setup on the second server, but the additional space and bandwith from the new server could be used, almost as if it was an extension on the first server.

I hope you understand what I mean anyway!

Also, on the RAQ can you limit clients by GB\month as well as speed kbps?

thanks, Matt

Actually it's possible, and it's done through one of two methods :

1. Load balancing - where communication between two servers occur to balance the load of traffic of each server and divert traffic to the less-trafficked server to retain speed. Many big sites like Altavista, Amazon, Yahoo!, etc. employ this method, and Windows 2000 Server handles this concept very well.

2. Round-robin DNS - where the DNS is specially configured on the host's side to rotate traffic to different servers.

I believe GordonH from HostRoute has such a paid round-robin service, so you might want to check with him if it's compatible with your RaQs.

I might be wrong in reading the original post, but I don't think this is for a single site (hence no need for load balancing nor round robin).

If what you are asking, is if you can add a second server and just run DNS from the first one that points to accounts on the second one, then the anser is yes. You just point to the IP address of the second server, or the IP address of the site (use one of the IP addresses assigned to the second server).

I'll stop here in case I'm way off base and misread the question.

Also if you just run out of disk space a better solution for you might be to buy one of these box's like a cobalt, but they contain just a hard drive w/ a small processor that you can just plug in and it will add 30 gigs to your network or whatever, it would be cheaper than buying another raq

I've never opened up my lilttle RaQ (come to think of it, never even seen it as it was shipped directly, hmmm), but I'm assuming you could slide in another small HD inside as well? In theory anywhooo (maybe a laptop HD if space is tight in there, which I'd imagine it would be since it is 1U).

My other 1U could take dual HDs though...

Hi Guys,

Thanks a lot for the replies!

You were thinking the right lines, I meant it as different sites rather than one site.

The reason I was looking at 2 servers is because not only do you get the additional disk space, but you also have double the bandwith too, as opposed to an extra drive which wont buy you the additional bandwith..

So Basically - do you set up DNS servers on the 2nd server pointing at that servers IP or use the 1st servers DNS but with the 2nd server's IP's?

I presume I could then also use a second server as backup DNS?

Thanks! Matt

Originally posted by MattKD
So Basically - do you set up DNS servers on the 2nd server pointing at that servers IP or use the 1st servers DNS but with the 2nd server's IP's?

I presume I could then also use a second server as backup DNS?

Well, you really don't do anything different than you would already do with one machine. I'm not sure how you are running DNS, but really that doesn't much matter either.

Just as you would set up a DNS entry for a domain on the first server (pointing to the IP address of the first server), you would instead set up the DNS (in the same way as beofre), but pointing to the second server's IP address.

The only thing that I can think of that is confusing you, and might be a problem, is that the RaQs have a 250 site limit set, but I'm not sure that applies to DNS entries (get feeling that it only applies to virtual sites set up on the server, but not sure really).

Alternatively, you could set up DNS on the second server much like you did on the first one (from scratch so to speak).

And yep, you could use them both as primary and secondary. Couldn't hurt althogh when sites are hosted on the same server as DNS for that site, the advantages of redundancy are not really applicable.