Changing ISPs and DNS Hosts 5

[mugs82]

My company currently uses a fractional T. We host our own website and email. We are going to switch from our current ISP to a new ISP and a full T. Our DNS is hosted by the old ISP

The switch is going to take place on a Friday morning around 11am. I sent out an email notifying everyone that the internet would be down for about about 3 hours while we activated the new circuit and reconfigured our router with the new ISP's settings and that there would also be a time frame (2-48 hours) in which our DNS records would be changing that would cause problems for some with incoming email and the ability to connect to our website.

Well, a few in Senior Management went postal. How could we be doing this in the middle of the day (ISP is huge...this was the only time they had unless we wanted to wait for a few weeks). Of course, their concerns are valid: Customers may be trying to order from our website and some customers email in orders. However, we aren't set up to provide uninteruptable web hosting and such.

I do not have a spare router to activate the new circuit with before doing the DNS switch. I am going to get pounded for this...anyway...I was wondering what you guys thought and how you would handle senior managements concerns

 

[manarth]

mugs82: the easiest way is to let the Big Fish decide. present them with the options.

[ol][li]we can buy another router and operate both at the same time. Cost is £xxx.xx, impact to web/email service is xxxxx, timescale is xxxx.[/li][li]we change over the weekend. timescale is 4 weeks.[/li][li]we change on a Friday. impact is 3 hrs downtime.[/li][/ol]

This gives you the chance to explain that whatever they choose, there will be an impact, but because they're deciding which option to take, they're take responsibility for it.

Besides, Big Fish like to make decisions

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please tell us if our suggestion has helped[/li][li]need some help? faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[ecobb]

You may be looking at 3 hours down time in your office on Friday, but for the rest of the world it could be much longer. When you change nameservers on your DNS record, it normally take 24-48 hours to propogate those changes throughout the world, depending on when other ISP's update their DNS servers. For example, if ISP-A only updates their DNS Servers at midnight, and you change your DNS record at 11am, no one that uses ISP-A will be able to access your domain until ISP-A's DNS servers are updated again at midnight with the new information. But, if you change your record before midnight, and you don't have the equipment set up, then no one can reach you until you do get the new equipment up and running.

There is a work around for this, but it's going to depend on how good your relation is with your current (old?) ISP. When you make the changes to your DNS records, contact the &quot;old&quot; ISP with your new IP addresses. Just tell them the new IP address for our web site is &quot;xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx&quot;, or mail server is &quot;xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx&quot;, and so on. That way, if any requests are made to your &quot;old&quot; ISP, their DNS servers will redirect them to your new system. After a few days, you can then call the &quot;old&quot; ISP and have them drop/delete your records from their nameservers.



Hope This Helps!

Ecobb

&quot;My work is a game, a very serious game.&quot; - M.C. Escher

 

[mrdenny]

Mugs,
You might want to look into renting a router for a couple of months. Check with your regular switch/router vendor, they might be willing to rent you one. Then you can bring up both circuits at the same time, and not have such a major outage.

You might be able to get some assistance in this from your new ISP.

Denny

Denny

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

 

[mac9]

Mugs,
It's 10:48am (PST) on Friday morning, so you're probably very busy right now, but here's my thoughts on your post.
If 3 hours of 'planned' down time sends Senior Management postal, you may want to consider redundent ISP's with a load balancer.
Our load balancer has DNS entry from both ISP's and auto-failover, etc.
Yes, we are talking serious money, but the down side is lost business and customer confidence.

Hope all goes well.
mac

 

[mugs82]

Thanks Everyone! We were down for 13 hours from Friday at 5pm. Didn't hear one complaint. Just a few people in the company that panick when they think they might miss an email...I explained that it was possible to avoid any downtime at all - but it would cost money. They weren't interested. So anyway, all is well now.