IP Address Changes - When Backup Server Kicks In

[nobsseo]

Hi guys,

I have a site and we are implementing a redundant server - it kicks in if the first server goes down. The hosting company has setup domains as follows:

www-3.abc.com
www-4.abc.com

Apparently www-3.abc.com is the main server, with our domain name, www.abc.com, on it. If this server fails www-4.abc.com kicks in. From an SEO perspective do you see any problems with this? They said that users will see our main domain www.abc.com as always, however if the second server kicks in the IP address for our domain will change and server the content on the second server.

Does anyone foresee any SEO issues with this? If the domain stays the same, and only the IP changes, i see no worries. I am assuming www-3.abc.com and www-4.abc.com has to be setup to make this work... but i don’t think the search engines will find these URLs if we don’t link to them, so there is no dup content issues.

Does anyone know anything, or see any SEO problems, related to this?

Thank you in advance!

[theBear]

There is no reason why those servers should ever need a different FQDN.

If anyone happens to guess the other FQDNs you could have duplicate content all over the place and fairly fast depending.

Just my two cents worth.

[nobsseo]

Thanks for your reply. What is an FQDN?

Cheers

[theBear]

Fully qualified domain name.

[WW_Watcher]

IMHO, I would install a load balancer in front of these two servers & run them parallel, When All is well and good you get twice the performance, with both the network & processing split. You then maintain enough processing power on each box so that either one can handle the load, but make use of the hardware, you have incurred the expense, it will be running full time anyway. Give it something to do. This also gives you full control to take one offline, upgrade it, put it back in the pool, remove the other one and upgrade it, with no loss of service.

Total smoke and mirrors to the search engines and everyone else. Totally Scaleable to any future need of processing & bandwidth.

But that is what I would do, but then again, I am biased, it is what I used to do. So my opinion may be slanted to a particular way of solving a problem, when there might be a simpler way.

Back to watching,
WW_Watcher

[nobsseo]

The way it is setup is the domain/hosting is scanned every 5 minutes. If the primary server fails, the secondary server kicks in. It takes 10 min for it to kick in, because it has to propogate.

I see no problems myself, since the domain will be the same -- no dup content -- and all that will change is the IP address. So if Google HAPPENS to come to the site while the primary server is down all it will see is that the IP address has changed.

If you think im missing something here let me know.. thanks

[theBear]

Then what was this:

www-3.abc.com
www-4.abc.com

all about.

WW_Watcher is a networking guru, there should never be a need to have multiple names pointing to the server. Even if the server is actually a load balanced or multiplexed group.

The only problem I see with the setup is the one that I saw when you said there were two FQDNs.

I also run a system involving load balanced failover. It also takes far less than 10 minutes to switch over.

There is only one FQDN for the system.

What you were describing with the two FQDMs above is equivalent to the www/non-www/ ..... mess and can cause you the same problems. The multiple IP addresses should not be a problem (please note the use of the weasel word should, because if the webserver is setup with the IP addys as valid aliases then they can mirror the sites as well).

Good luck.

[Romeo]

There is only one FQDN for the system.

Which system?

There is nothing wrong to have these www3 and www4 names defined as additional DNS A records to denote the different server boxes. Dealing with names is easier than dealing with raw IP addresses. They are needed to access the different server-boxes by ssh, scp, rsysnc or ftp and are used in various backup and replication and other management scripts running on each box. Perhaps I wouldn't have called them www3/www4 but edgar/bobo instead.

Which of the following statements may be easier to be understood?

• "Hey Joe, our webserver just switched from the www3-box to the www4-box."
  
• "Hey Joe, our webserver just switched from 192.168.153.76 to 10.221.85.193".
  "10.221.85.193?"
  "Naa, I meant 10.221.85.192, the replacement box for 10.212.86.139 that was exchanged last week."

To avoid any SEO problems, just don't mix the DNS and the webserver config levels and make sure that the www3/www4 names don't creep into the httpd config. As long as the webserver knows that he is 'www' at any time and nobody else (especially, not www3 or www4), all will be fine.

Yes, a real loadbalancer would be better and faster, but there is nothing wrong to do it this way, if a 10 minutes switching time is OK for the customer by saving the invest into a loadbalancer.

Kind regards,
R.

[theBear]

Romeo,

No one said anything about the named form being easier or harder to remember than an IP address.

The OP asked if under certain assumptions (part of which in this case was multiple names) anyone saw any problems.

The answer I gave was yes there are potential problems, that of duplicate content (just take a look at all of the threads dealing with such on this forum).

Also if the OP is happy with 10 minute switch over that is fine with me. I just mentioned that it didn't have to take that long. The nice cheap system we use has served us well for over two years now.

[WW_Watcher]

Nobsseo
IMHO what theBear is saying, and I totally agree, is that If your failover/backup server can be accessed via the internet with it's fqdm "www-4.abc.com", then it is possible it could also be indexed by G creating a duplicate content issue. Even though you say you would not "link" to it, so the search engines would not find it. You might (like many others) find that G, Y, & MSN finds things that you do not want them to find and indexes them anyway. Do not leave things to chance, give exact instructions on what will be indexed, & how.

Back to Watching
WW_Watcher

[theBear]

Bingo WW_Watcher, let me just state a "couple" of ways that could happen:

Toolbars, Adsense units, peaved former employees, botched web server configurations, and just listing the name in a DNS record (I leave that one as an exercise for really paranoid folks).