Website Failover -- Use Managed DNS?

[jalperin]

Twice in the last week my dedicated server has been affected by a denial of service attack directed at other, nearby servers. I've been investigating how to reduce my exposure to problems like this, and would appreciate comments/suggestions.

One solution seems to be to acquire a second, backup server in a different geographic region (perhaps just a Virtual Private Server to keep the expense down) and use it as a backup. I could outsource my DNS to a third party service which provides for automatic failover. (That is, the dns provider would point to my backup server if it ever detected a problem with the primary server.)

Some questions:

1) Does this approach make sense or is there something easier/cheaper/more reliable?

2) Which 3d party managed dns service should I use. ultradns seems expensive. netriplex is about $50/month and dnsmadeeasy is $30 per year. Is dnsmadeeasy sufficient? It's so much cheaper, I'm a little concerned.

3) To make the backup server really functional, I'd need to mirror content on my primary server, and I'd need to sync up the mySQL databases. I assume that I can use the master/slave replication features of mySQL to handle the database end. What about mirroring the static content?

4) If I failover to the backup and MySQL database changes, I'd need to make those changes on the primary server once it comes back up. Suggestions on how to do that?

Thanks for any help.

--Jeff

[webdoctor]

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