Hey, Firstly I do not profess to a genius when it comes to the technical aspects of web hosting so I was wondering if someone could possibly point me in the direction of how to do a specific kind of hosting setup or suggest me an alternative solution which already exists in the market place. Basically I have an idea to setup a hosting company that can offer zero downtime, truly, regardless of network or hardware failures. If you are available to help me and possibly do the work required please PM me or add me on msn: Thank you
This is now technically much easier now due to the advances in virtualisation technology, but it isn't a walk in the park and it is extremely (and I mean VVVVV) expensive to set-up in the first instance. For true zero-downtime you'll need to be operating out of at least 3 geographically diverse - perferably diverse internationally - datacentres with redundant systems in each of them. You'll be needing a 6-figure sum just to consider it, and a 7-figure sum to set-it up and manage it in the first year if you are going to do it properly with expert staff and IT managers. It's not the sort of thing that's going to happen overnight, and I doubt you'll get a PM from a forum from the type of person you really need. If you really want to do it you need to research it further and get some sort of budget in place. The type of people who can genuinely set-up this type of system are not going to come cheap and your equipment won't be cheap either. You could of course offer a 100% uptime guarantee with a refund if you don't acheive it, but that is a different thing altogether and isn't true 100% uptime hosting.
Hey, Well I've been thinking of a kinda cost effective way to do it, like this: Essentially what needs to happen (how I think of it in my head, not sure if its actually doable) is I need two (to keep it simple) servers. One located in one datacenter and the other in another datacenter. I then will have a seperate small DNS server in another data center which will obviously manage the DNS side of the service. A request will come into the DNS server. The DNS server will then check to see which server is online. Priority will be set for one particular server (server A). If that server is online the user will be directed to that server. If it is offline then the user will be directed to server B. Both servers will have to be synchronized constantly so if server A goes offline, the DNS server will send all traffic to server B. When server A comes back online the data from server B will then be resynchronized with server A and the DNS will then point everyone back to server A. Of course the DNS server will be the only weakness in the chain, but I can't see a way of resolving that one. Phew that was a long explanation. Would this kind of thing work?
You won't get 100% uptime whichever technology you use. Servers located in geographically diverse locations internationally will also not work since the IP address will change and once they change, cache comes into play due to which you cannot achieve 100% uptime. And I agree with 'RonBrown' here, what you are looking for _is expensive_.
Putting it simply, no. Two servers isn't enough for redundancy and you can't possibly be considering running all services - web sites, DNS, FTP, Databases etc - on a single server. The DNS caching issue alone makes 100% uptime in this scenario impossible. You can run networks over diverse DC's and diverse IP ranges when you use routers and load balancers to manage the routing as the actual IP of the target server isn't the issue - it could be anything and change several times per day. It's not a simple set-up, it is expensive, and it is technically possible but it is outwith the budget of most companies and people.
That is technically possible to provide downtime - no problem. I believe you need to find good reseller web hosting account . That is enough to start offering own web hosting