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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
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    Canada
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    292

    Hosting a Domain on 2 Hosts

    Is it possible to host a domain on 2 hosts? So if one goes offline the other one works.
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  2. #2
    Hi Mastdesi

    You sure can.

    You need two machines, one primary, the other is your backup. The backup mirrors the data on your primary server. Rsync will do. Then implement Linux HA (High Availability).

    You can even put up a third machine to run as your Linux Virtual Server if you wish to load balance the httpd transactions between both your servers (making both your primary and secondary at the same time).

    The project site is at linux-ha dot org.

    You just need both (or 3) machines to be in the same network segment so one can just take over the IP addresses of the other without IP related complications.

    Hope this helps.
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  3. #3
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    For that I need 2 dedicated servers? Because I have only 1 dedicated server and I'll get a shared account.
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  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Mastdesi View Post
    For that I need 2 dedicated servers? Because I have only 1 dedicated server and I'll get a shared account.
    Yes, I'm afraid you may need both to be dedicated machines. You need greater degree of control on both machines for it to work properly.

    How Linux-HA works is that you need both machines to have exactly the same data, configuration, and services, etc. They have to be identical.

    Then both machines monitors each other using heartbeat. (listening for keep alive data sent by the other machine informing it that it is up and running).

    When the other machine doesn't hear any heartbeat from the other, it takes over the other machine's IP address.

    The outside world will not notice that the IP address was taken over by the backup machine. Consequently, the already established connection to the dead machine will be lost as a result.

    Hope this helps.
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  5. #5
    The cheaper alternative is to just find a web-host that offers HA if there's any out there, otherwise, you can get those dedicated servers, then sell hosting services as well.

    If you do this (even if others are not), you will be selling a hosting service that is HA. At least your primary consideration for doing so is to make your own domain highly available (personal choice), so the web-host service is just a consequence (be it viable as a business or not).

    Cheers.
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  6. #6
    Join Date
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    If theres a hosting company with offer HA with shared, will it work fine with my dedicated and that shared?

    What do you mean by "you need both machines to have exactly the same data, configuration, and services, etc"? You mean their cpu, hdd, ram and stuff too?
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  7. #7
    If theres a hosting company with offer HA with shared, will it work fine with my dedicated and that shared?
    It probably wont. Both machines doing HA should be on the same subnet for it to work. So they should be on the same DC to say the least. It may also not work with one dedicated, and one shared since the shared machine will never have the capability of changing IP addresses when it needs to.

    What do you mean by "you need both machines to have exactly the same data, configuration, and services, etc"? You mean their cpu, hdd, ram and stuff too?
    I mean they must run the same application configuration, same services, etc (mysql, apache, sendmail/postfix, control panel should be running on both machines), but not necessarily with same hardware specs (CPU, RAM, etc). At the minimum, you might want to use the same HDD capacity on both machines since it is only logical to mirror both data on equally similar HDD space.

    Hope this helps.
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  8. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Posts
    95
    It's a pity it isn't (I think) possible to specify alternative preference nameservers in DNS management so if one host fails the other host kicks in automatically....?

  9. #9
    Yes, that would have been a better option to do. The thing with DNS is that, it takes a while to fully propagate the new information across the Net so when the fail-over occurs, it may take longer to access the new DNS data, even longer than waiting for the host to actually come back alive.

    Maybe an L4 or L7 switch will do the trick. DNS entry for your host is actually pointing to the switch, and the switch just re-routes it to the actual host, that may be running on different providers. This can be very costly to do.

    I wonder if running linux LVS (in place of the L4/L7 switch) to do this will be cost effective? I have never tried doing it this way yet. At least, there's another option right there.
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  10. #10
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Oregon
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    I just had my admin read over this and he offered this input:

    "Looking at that thread there is a much easier way to do it using LVS. The thing to worry about with HA is cookies and connections being sticky. Needing to stay on the same host. With LVS this is easy to do. The hosts don't need to be the same versions or anything. Only the data being shared has to be the same. Even different Operating Systems can be used. The web data is shared over NFS to the serving hosts. With a LVS server (Load Balancer) in the middle. All the connections goto the LVS server that then serves port 80 to the hosts behind it. This does several things for you. You can add and remove hosts as needed. You can load balance MySQL or just about any service that goes over a specific port, including SSH. This is almost exactly what a F5 box does, I even think they used the same LVS code. The back end boxes use the LVS node as a gateway so that you only need one outside IP address as well."

    "You can even HA two LVS servers that have a heartbeat between them. This is easy to implement. This also still only requires one IP address. As soon as one LVS servers goes down, the other picks up the ip from the down one. The only thing you have to do is wait for the ARP cache to reset on the switch."

    Thanks,

    David
    Last edited by canvas; 12-24-2007 at 01:01 PM. Reason: additional info
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