Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Reseller Hosting : How to have an automated backup website?

[DediPlace]

Hi!

I am a reseller from 2 different host. One is for linux and the other is for linux/win2k. May I know if there is a way that I can have an automated backup website. Can I just modify the nameservers of my website? For ex., ns1 and ns2 on the linux host and ns3 and ns4 on win2K host? When Linux host is down, my website will load my site at the win2k host and vice versa.

Is this possible?

[DediPlace]

Or

Is there a script to know if your site is down?

I just want to know if there is a script to check if the site is cannot access? The site will run this script and if the site is down or cannot be accessed, the script will forward the request to my another website from a different host. Is this possible?

[Essentials]

If you readup on php you can have a simple script check a domain to verify the site is up using the fsockopen function and if not have it email you. Just run the script from cron job every couple of minutes.

[apollo]

nope..it will not work because there will be a problems with DNS caching (you can even try low TTL settings but still... applications do cache)...

[userfriendly]

There are DNS services out there that can try to do this for you, they are not guaranteed to work though. The way they do it is by keeping the expire time on the zone low, and frequent checking of your server(s). If one goes down, they change the A record to point to the site that's up.

Another method you could try, although it's asking for trouble, is to use round robin DNS.. basically pointing to both your sites.. but you're at the mercy of the browser to make this work..

I recommend you simply find a host that doesn't really go down ever.. even if you pay significantly more to host your company's site at a reliable host.