Web host down for at least 12 hours, workaround?

What can I do to avoid disaster.

[ThomasAJ]

As far as I can ascertain my web host was off the air for at least 12 hours and maybe more. It is now OK but what would happen if it went permanently off-air?

I tell ya what! It would be a disaster for me.

What strategy can be employed to quickly move the site to another host? Can it be done? How can say a backup site be setup for flexibility?

Any thoughts?

Tom

[jpjones]

What strategy can be employed to quickly move the site to another host? Can it be done?

Yes, it can be done. Here's some ideas of what you'll need in place for starters:

- Control over your DNS records.
- DNS hosted on a different network to your web site hosting.
- Third party caching of DNS data (TTL) set to something low, e.g. 500 (5 Minutes), so that if you need to move, human visitors will find your site almost immediately. (Note, bots are unlikely to - as they cache DNS data regardless of settings and update it on their own schedule).
-A backup of your site in place on a second host, running on a different network (e.g. with a different hosting company on a completely different IP range).
-If your site uses databases, you need to employ some mechanism to keep the database on the backup host up to date.
-A monitoring utility which can page you if your live server is inaccessible

JP

[ThomasAJ]

Thanks jpjones

Before I ask questions about the details of your post, perhaps you or someone can direct me to a 'how to' here or on the web.

- Control over your DNS records.

YES I have that at my registrar but doesn't it take 24 to 48 hours to propogate around the world?

- DNS hosted on a different network to your web site hosting.

YES if you mean where the registrar is hosted.

- Third party caching of DNS data (TTL) set to something low, e.g. 500 (5 Minutes), so that if you need to move, human visitors will find your site almost immediately. (Note, bots are unlikely to - as they cache DNS data regardless of settings and update it on their own schedule).

Sorry but no idea what you mean, and what about the propagation issue?

-A backup of your site in place on a second host, running on a different network (e.g. with a different hosting company on a completely different IP range).

I can do that easily of course. So when disaster strikes host A I can point the DNS to host B.

-If your site uses databases, you need to employ some mechanism to keep the database on the backup host up to date.

Can do.

-A monitoring utility which can page you if your live server is inaccessible

Where do I look for such a utility?

Many thanks

Tom

PS how do you do the boxed extract of my original post in your post? i looked at the HTML format help but could not find anything.

[oilman]

>>PS how do you do the boxed extract of my original post in your post?

use the quote tags:
[quote]something here[/quote] and it will show in the box.

[Ankheg]

If you have full control over your DNS records (very few places give you this, even the "big" registrars), you'll be able to set the TTL (time-to-live) for each record. Normally it's 7200 or 14000, or something in that range; it varies a bit. As I understand it, by setting the figure really low, you'll be telling caches, browsers, and whatnot not to store the IP address a domain name points to for longer than -however many seconds-. This way, if you do have to change hosts, you can just switch the DNS "A" record for your site to the new IP, and within however many minutes, 95% of people will be redirected to your new site. (95% because a few ISP's override the TTL for various reasons; found this the hard way)

Propagation is a completely different issue, whereby the information *that your domain name exists* is disseminated to the network of nameservers; the only data included is which nameservers to query for the actual IP address...

At least, as far as I know. :)