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Standby Web Server
- Thread starter Trekkie
- Start date
Check into 'rsync' ( It is probably a fairly standard packaged software in most Unix/Linux systems these days. It can be used to maintain a mirror of your main server, by continually keeping track of all changes in the main system, and copying over only the difference. This is much more efficient than just blasting a copy of all files every few minutes over to the standby server.
Note that when a database is involved, you have to consider just how to mirror that. It is not advisable to simply use rsync to copy over all the files where the database is stored (can introduce some serious data corruption, if you aren't careful). It is much better to use a database-specific mirroring system. Most database systems have some form of maintaining a 'hot copy' for failover purposes, and they do a much better job of maintaining data concurrency than you can do just by copying over the files with rsync.
Then, aside from this, you will just need some method of switching all requests to the backup server if the main server goes down. There are many ways to accomplish this, but the most common is to handle it at the networking end, with a load-balancing router, or some such. If your server is to be hosted at a professional hosting facility, they should have this capability. If you are doing your own hosting, you might want to search around for some of the cheaper 'network appliance'-style load balancing routers. -------------------------------------------
Big Brother: "War is Peace" -- Big Business: "Suspicion is Trust"
(
Note that when a database is involved, you have to consider just how to mirror that. It is not advisable to simply use rsync to copy over all the files where the database is stored (can introduce some serious data corruption, if you aren't careful). It is much better to use a database-specific mirroring system. Most database systems have some form of maintaining a 'hot copy' for failover purposes, and they do a much better job of maintaining data concurrency than you can do just by copying over the files with rsync.
Then, aside from this, you will just need some method of switching all requests to the backup server if the main server goes down. There are many ways to accomplish this, but the most common is to handle it at the networking end, with a load-balancing router, or some such. If your server is to be hosted at a professional hosting facility, they should have this capability. If you are doing your own hosting, you might want to search around for some of the cheaper 'network appliance'-style load balancing routers. -------------------------------------------
Big Brother: "War is Peace" -- Big Business: "Suspicion is Trust"
(
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