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Thread: Failover hosting?

  1. #1
    Sublime HEXUS.net
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    Failover hosting?

    Guys, can anyone point me in the direction of a company or something about failover webhosting?

    We host a webserver on-site, which has offline backup in conjuction to RAID disks etc, but I've heard of a system where you have two mirrored web servers, one onsite, and the other offsite, if the main server goes down, then the mirror server automatically takes over..

    I'm presuming that such a system would switch over ip addresses automatically, rather than changing a DNS entry?
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  2. #2
    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    erm depends, changing the DNS isn't the best way because of the DNS TTL (time to live) records.

    Its common practice to keep a TTL fairly high to improve speed.

    As such its most likely a proxy or router been changed, big sites have load balancing proxies (their job is to share work accross other servers that generate their dynamic content). Now the proxie just blindly forward stuff, so if one of the nodes "behind" it falls over, it can just use another.

    A 'cheaper' way but would be under the contraints of networking, would be to have a router at the entry to your network designated IP block, that as soon as the bristol office went down, switched to coventry or something. But that won't be applicable in most situations.
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    Goat Boy
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    You need an intelligent router. Something like this:

    http://www.f5.com/f5products/products/bigip/

    There are cheaper solutions out there, and there are some software solutions out there. Depends on your requirements really. Do you need to handle session failover too?
    "All our beliefs are being challenged now, and rightfully so, they're stupid." - Bill Hicks

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    Hmm, wouldn't it need to be a hosted service if we wanted to keep the backup server off-site?

    At the moment we have a leased line service and we host all the systems onsite, but presumably with such a system we'd need the "switch" to happen further upstream?

    Beeny: no, I don't think we'd need session failover if that helps any..

    Personally, I'd rather shift all the online systems to hosted in a datacenter and run a couple of clustered systems, but I think that's probably not going to happen any time soon..
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  5. #5
    Administrator Moby-Dick's Avatar
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    what do you want to provide redundancy against ?

    leased line failure or server failure ?

    if its server failure , then add a 2nd web server and use Network Load Balencing ( cheaper than using a Big Ip kit but requires 2k3 server )

    if its line failure then you'll have to colocate with a provider that usues multiple connections.

    the scenario to mention would possibly use some form of virtual Ip to redirect a service to wherever you wanted ?
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    Yup, that's it Moby with the virtual IP thingy

    Basically we've got all our eggs on one basket at the moment, which is hardly ideal..
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    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    problem is with most virtual IP functions (same goes if its only virtual HTTP, or one entry point on a cluster of IIS servers) is at some point you need failure not to occur.

    Most of these methods are protecting against equipment failure, rather than connectivity failure.

    I'm assming its connectivity your worred about?
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  8. #8
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    (I'm still trying to work out what on earth you were on about..)

    The system I'm thinking of protects against both..
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  9. #9
    Gentoo Ricer
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    You can add two IP A records to the same FQDN. if one host goes down the client tries the second address.
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    Administrator Moby-Dick's Avatar
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    thats Called DNS round-robin , its not ideal , but it is one way of doing it.

    its certainyl useless for load balencing , but you can use it with failover monitoring but dont forget you'll need some form of process to keep your sites in sync.
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

  11. #11
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    aye, hopes of load ballancing is pretty much out the window since theres no way to order which way the A records arrive at the client, somewhat random from my observations.. but at least the failover will work if that isn't a major problem.
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

  12. #12
    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    as you mention aidanjt with that method i found no way of prioritising IPs, that is to say, try x.x.x.x first if that fails try y.y.y.y

    Okay so your wanting something that will protect against conectivity (ie your net dieing) and hardware (the box just dieing). If you need no load balancing, and don't have a problem with clients going to severs seamingly randomly, then try aidanjt's method it will work (fairly easily).

    If you want to load balance, then you need to look at either clever routing for an IP, this is quite hard espesually over two sites, or clustering. Problem with clustering is most aren't tolerant of the entry machine going down.
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  13. #13
    Administrator Moby-Dick's Avatar
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    improving uptime gets more and more complex ( and more expensive ) for every point you get closer to 100% uptime

    for arguments sake if its costs x to get to 95% uptime , the next 2.5 % could cost double that and so and so fourth. You have to choose what an acceptable level of availability vs cost to maintain that availability is.

    movein your production servers to a hosted environment would most likely be the biggest jump ( assuming you choose a host that has taken adequate precautions with power and connectivity ) , then all you have to deal with is hardware failure.
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