Failover

[triad73]

Is there any way I can set a failover so when my site is down, it redirects to some other server?

[spadija]

As far as I know, no. If you can't connect to the server in the first place, there's no way for the server to redirect you somewhere else.

[icedhabbo]

nope theres no chance of that so better have a back up

[misson]

@spadija: note that it is possible to have a failover server, just not on X10. You can run a heartbeat server on the DNS server, and change the address for the site name when the main server stops sending a beat.

@icedhabbo: triad73 isn't talking about restoring data after a server crash, he's talking about having the site accessible on a different host when the main server is down.

[cybrax]

Something like DyDns for instance?

[slacker3]

Linux-HA or (probably easier to set up) DynDNS and/or a small shell-script

[Livewire]

Linux-HA or (probably easier to set up) DynDNS and a small shell-script

Linux-HA looks like it needs to be installed; wouldn't work on x10.
DynDNS is probably the only one that'd work on x10, assuming it doesn't require -any- work at all on x10's side. If it does, it probably won't work there either.

DynDNS isn't 100% foolproof though because some systems will store the DNS address it gets when it first goes to look for it - if I were to view the site, then the server dies, I'll start getting timeout errors until I clear my dns cache and it goes to get the new address. It's not 100% perfect, but it -might- help.


The other part of the issue is there's been times that the server and service are up, but taking a long time to respond - I'm not sure how DynDNS treats that for failover purposes...

[lemon-tree]

Whichever way you look at it, if your site is so vital that it must always be up then you need paid hosting.

[cybrax]

Scratches aged brain cells... Javascript inside a web page can detect broken links and if needed substitute an alternate url path. It's not an elegant solution and does rely upon the visitor having a cached page to start with.

Though have used a similiar system in the past to split traffic loads between several free hosting providers, scripts & Pages on themain site, images & downloads on another etc so when the first site image hosting images exceeds its traffic allowance the alternate gets selected.