Forum Moderators: phranque
I have a 3 dedicated servers at different locations, and I want to offer my customers (and me) some failover backup in the event of one server going down.
I initially imagined that I could have a system whereby sites were given one of the 3 as the primary nameserver and the other 2 as secondary nameservers.
My thinking being that in the event that one server failed the sites would failover to the secondary nameservers. (Obviously I have issues with dynamic sites that record data within databases but I have a way around that)
But it appears that's not exactly how it works, I've set up one test site in this way, but people come to the site via any of the nameservers not just the primary.
This wouldn't be a problem for static sites but it makes it more difficult to manage for dynamic ones.
Can anyone suggest a solution that doesn't involve more cost. I really only need this service in the event of a catastrophic server failure, so a system that didn't spring into life for an hour wouldn't be a problem.
Jim
I had been thinking about this, my initial problem has been that the DNS is managed from the individual server so if the server goes down I have no option to change the ip address, but I've just asked my hosting company what the TTL interval is on their nameservers if I was to bring the DNS management back onto their nameservers.
So this looks like a possible solution, I will maintain copies of all the sites on the servers and point the DNS at the main one for that website. If the server goes down I change the ip address via the DNS management screen and (as long as the TTL is reasonable) the backup version becomes available.
