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THE SITUATION:
Here is what my client would like to do:
They have a small ecommerce site hosted on a commercial Win2K shared server account (IIS). The service has not been as reliable as we would like, but not terrible.
They would like to setup a new, similar account at a new hosting service, using win2003 and IIS, under a different domain, with a copy of the same site. Then the idea is to (once the new domain resolves):
1. Keep the old site/domain as an emergency backup, but 301 redirect to the new site/domain under normal circumstances.
2. If the new hosting service fails for more than a few minutes, we would like to stop the redirect, such that the old site quickly takes over again.
THE COMPLICATING FACTORS:
However there are complications that are making me unsure of how to proceed.
A. The domain name that is published on their marketing materials is "redwidgets.com". But that is an empty, parked domain on NSI, and is being redirected by NSI to "red-widgets.com", which is the actual current site.
B. "red-widgets.com" is the target of a current Google AdWords Select campaign and of the SEs.
C. I could just change that redirect on NSI during an emergency, but i understand that doing so takes up to 72 hours for propogation.
D. There are 2 Access databases involved, which cannot be hosted on the current hosting account and now run from my own shared account (the *.MDBs and *.ASPs files). These will be integrated back into the site on the new domain. But during an emergency, the database functionality would have to be switched back to my own account. This is just a matter of editing links, but a further complication.
THE QUESTIONS:
1. What is the best way to provide such a redundant backup site, without the expense of going to dedicated servers or such. Is the above method best?
2. Would an ASP 301 redirect be a practical solution and how would it best be used? As described above, or some other way?
3. How can we do this in such a way as to avoid any propogation delays during an emergency switchover.
4. Is there a simpler way of doing this that i'm overlooking?
Thanks all!
Related thread [webmasterworld.com].
Jim
