Forum Moderators: phranque
If you're moving your site, then you should leave everything with host2.com.
If you're keeping your site on both hosts, then there are more questions:
What do you plan to do with it? Distribute the load/traffic, or ensure availability? There are lots of things to consider when doing this.
The problem with having the DNS hosted at multiple hosts is that you'll now need to deal with two systems when you update your DNS records, which may have different data.
I believe what you may have been trying to do was to have DNS point to both copies of your site on both hosts, not to different DNS servers. That way, you'd have some redundancy. (except not, in this case, but that's another story).
I don't fully know what your intentions are, but I can tell you from the get-go, that it's a complicated area that you're stepping into. If you can clarify what you WANT to do, then maybe I can help some more.
Setup new location or host2
Setup new DNS records to point to host2 IP addresses
Setup DNS records to a very small cache/refresh time. (refresh and expire in your SOA records).
Wait for DNS propagation, check the logs on host1 servers, make sure they're at 0-ish requests.
Cancel host1 account
The reason you'll have had an outage is primarily because of DNS propagation. It can take up to several days to really work its way through the system. It can potentially take a week or so if your visitors are from extreme locations, where internet is expensive, and ISPs and network admins tend to cache EVERYTHING, including DNS -- So your site will still resolve to the old IP address.
I hope that helps some!
eventually I plan to shift to host2. I have tried 5-6 web hosts and I have noticed that many times hosting is down for 5-6 hours. In that case , atleast if one version of the website is working, it will help.
[Edit]
I just re-read your last post, and I seem to have misundestood, sorry.
You want to have two copies of your website on two different hosts, which host the DNS as well as the website.
If that's the case, then you're using what's called round-robin DNS load balancing.
That system will work, as long as it's set up right.
Your host1 and host2 DNS records need to be the same. If you ever update one, you need to update the other.
Your nameserver entries for your domain are correct. host1 and host2. You can even add more, since you would have been givven secondary nameservers with the hosts, too.
NS host1-m
NS host2-m
NS host1-s
NS host2-s
You'll need to update your registrar information as well, of course, as well as having your NS records on your DNS servers.
In those records, you would put something like this:
www A 1.1.1.1 2.2.2.2
That tells the DNS server to respond with both of those IP addresses as the record for "www" on your domain. It will send them in no particular order, and the client will pick the first one it sees, and connect to that IP address.
So, clientA may get 1.1.1.1 2.2.2.2, and clientB may get 2.2.2.2, and clientC may get 2.2.2.2. (IIRC -- I think it's the DNS server that sets the order it's sent in, and not the client that picks a random IP address out of the results).
Either way, requests will be distributed amongst your two hosts that way. If host1 is down, then theoretically 1/2 of your clients will get to your site because they'll use host2.
Hopefully your hosts' DNS system will let you put two A records for a single entry.
HTH,
MM
