Hello. We have two reseller accounts on different servers. Our site hosted on one of them. Can we host our site on both of these reseller accounts? We want it because if one of the servers maybe down when our site must works on the other server. How can we do it if it's possible?

You could look for a DNS failover service I guess.

However, why not have an emergency support/announcements site on a totally different network, and make sure your customers are aware of it? That'll work even better IMO.

Yes, it's possible. Essentially you can just set up two accounts using the same domain name and change DNS records (your own or an outside service) to control which server is live. But there can be issues with synchronization of content, internal mail, dns failover, ISPs caching old dns records etc. - Dan's suggestion is certainly a much simpler option.

What exactly are you trying to achieve and how much time / effort / money are you willing to put into it?

I personally would do what ldcdc said. It would be alot better if you had one account dedicated just to the buisness!

DNS Roundrobin.

Read up on it.

roundrobin is easiest and cheapest way i know.

can any one tell me how to implement roundrobin ??

Round robin will not prevent the site from going down. Half of the traffic will go to one server and the other half to the other server. So, half of the customers will still be unable to visit the site should one server go down. Also, the problem of synchronizing the data on the servers remains.

Round robin will not prevent the site from going down. Half of the traffic will go to one server and the other half to the other server. So, half of the customers will still be unable to visit the site should one server go down. Also, the problem of synchronizing the data on the servers remains.

It's the easiest and cheapest.

If I didn't read wrongly, I remember some DNS services offer selective roundrobin, where it removes dead servers from the list of round robins.

Round robin will not prevent the site from going down. Half of the traffic will go to one server and the other half to the other server. So, half of the customers will still be unable to visit the site should one server go down. Also, the problem of synchronizing the data on the servers remains.


Well, If you set a low TTL, all of the traffic will go to the server online once the TTL time expires.

But most important thing to remember is to host DNS records on external server, neither of the two hosting files.

Yeah DB synch is the hardest thing to do, and it will need some more constraints if you want to synch DB as well. But its not at all a very difficult task.

can any one tell me how to implement roundrobin ??
Edit your dns records / zone files to add an extra A record for each additional server you want to serve the site. You may also need to change your MX records if they're pointing to the domain name (depends on how you want to handle mail). Make one server a master, the others slaves and use rsync in a cron job to regularly copy content from master to slaves. When you're updating content, make changes only on the master - so always connect to your control panel / ftp using the server IP address or hostname not your own domain name. (Oh, and don't let visitors post comments, place orders or do anything else that would involve a database write...)

It's the easiest and cheapest.
True. But in many cases having traffic split between 2 geographically-separated servers isn't ideal, notably where the webserver needs to write to a database.
If I didn't read wrongly, I remember some DNS services offer selective roundrobin, where it removes dead servers from the list of round robins.
I believe you're referring to dns failover.

Well, If you set a low TTL, all of the traffic will go to the server online once the TTL time expires.
I believe you're referring to dns failover - for round robin the TTL is irrelevant since the records don't change.

But most important thing to remember is to host DNS records on external server, neither of the two hosting files.
It's easier to use external dns servers but also possible to use the hosting servers themselves.

Yeah DB synch is the hardest thing to do, and it will need some more constraints if you want to synch DB as well. But its not at all a very difficult task.
Have you done it yourself? It's one of those things that's simple in theory but often less so in practice - it all depends on the nature of the site. For a static site maintained by a single person it can be relatively easy but if your site features visitor interaction and you want to sync the databases both ways...

possible, but you need to sync your content/db every hour or like that...+ DNS Roundrobin/DNS failover service...