Faiover switch - DNS provider advise 1

[Pav1977]

Hi guys,

We are hosting our sites (we have to) and are now setting up collocation. The data will be constantly replicated to the collocation servers.

We were informed by our DNS company (Netnames) that they could do the A Record switching - when the live IP goes down (or any of the sites) then it would auto switch over to the collocation server (on another IP).

Now they are saying it's impossible.

Does that mean that we have to switch over to new DNS provider or is there another reliable way of doing it?

If we need to switch over to new DNS can you recommend somebody who does that sort of think whom you've used and know well?

I'm a web developer so forgive me if I used wrong terminology here.


Any help will be much appreciated.

Pav

 

[TechyMcSe2k]

Keep your DNS the same. Keep it pointing to the Public IP you have set up for these sites. The trick is to change your Routing table/NAT translations to point to the new servers at the Co-Location. These are connected to your domain as well; correct?

Outside DNS only has to change if you change the Public IP of your website.

________________________________________
Achieving a perception of high intelligence level can only be limited by your manipulation skills of the Google algorithm!

 

[Pav1977]

TechyMcSe2k wrote:
"The trick is to change your Routing table/NAT translations to point to the new servers at the Co-Location. These are connected to your domain as well; correct?"
Pav wrote: How do I find out about that? I suppose if if was that easy the DNS company would do it for us. It also needs to be done automaticaly when the live site goes down not by hand.

As to the outside DNS changing if we change Public IP - well this is what would have to happen - no???- the collocation and live servers are on different Public IP's so if the live one goes down the IP would have to change to the Public IP of the collocation server to make it show our sites. Ary you saying that there ss there a better way of doing it?

Many thanks for your response,

Pav

 

[TechyMcSe2k]

Who manages your internal network (routers and switches?) The outside IP should not change.

The servers reside within your network, so the changes will be made within your network. I would suggest setting both local and co-location servers in a load balanced way (appliance devices can handle this for you; maybe F5's?) so that it spreads the load AND gives you failover capabilities. Even an internal DNS round-robin can do this for you, but is probably not the absolute best solution.

I believe another post about what is recommended for automatic failover of your web servers would be called for here.

Any suggestions on this from any other forum members appreciated. What does everyone recommend for auto-failover of web services?

________________________________________
Achieving a perception of high intelligence level can only be limited by your manipulation skills of the Google algorithm!

 

[Pav1977]

Maybe I have my terminology wrong here. This collocation would be able to act as a disaster recovery site, should anything bring the web server down, including loosing the Internet connection to the building. I think for that we have to have the DR/collocation site on a separate external IP. Both servers will not reside within our network, just one of them (the main one).

Kind regards

 

[TechyMcSe2k]

Then, yes they would need to change their DNS to point to that public IP. As far as doing the change automatically, not sure. It would be automatic if you were using both sites in a round robin way; since the data would be fully replicated at the Co-Lo.

Any web specialists out there that can provide a better solution for this, to keep from having to call the DNS provider in the case of emergency? Although, the change from their end would replicate rather quickly, the users pc's connecting to your website may not.

________________________________________
Achieving a perception of high intelligence level can only be limited by your manipulation skills of the Google algorithm!

 

[TechyMcSe2k]

There are plenty of hardware devices out there to make your life simple. Now in the matter of a complete disaster (total LAN/Office distruction); users will understand a few minutes of downtime.

Google "auto failover website to DR site" to get more ideas

________________________________________
Achieving a perception of high intelligence level can only be limited by your manipulation skills of the Google algorithm!