Hello! I was wondering if I had 2 hosting providers and I would have my website copied on the 2 different servers and I would add to the domain name servers the addresses of both providers, if one goes down, will it change automatically to the next provider instantly? Or does it take some time to do that? So, basically you wouldn't have any downtime. Did any of you try this? Is it wise to do that? I hope this is the right category for my post Cheers, Vlad
mirror sites used to be pretty common, but nobody uses them anymore because sites nowadays are full of dynamic content such as forums etc. but yes, the way to do it would be to make sure that the server which hosts your main also hosts the nameserver. that way if the server goes down, the secondary name server will be used, leading to your second site. like so: primary nameserver : ns1.auto4tuning.com secondary nameserver: ns2.second-hosting-company.com and make sure ns1.auto4tuning.com goes down when your website goes down. note that although nameservers are supposed to query your primary your first, for some reason many don't, and consequently you will get traffic divided up between your main and your backup server, when both are up. you asked if it is wise to do this. not really. my advice would be, add dynamic content, and deal with the downtime... downtime is less of an issue than a lack of dynamic content.
hey i just checked your site, that's some hot stuff you got on your site. anyway, i noticed you have forums, so basically your idea won't work. it's too hard to keep forum content synced between two servers... unless you are an enterprise and you can dedicate a lot of resources to that. for guys like you and me, you might as well forget about it, content is way more important.
Make sure the content isn't dynamic or you could be missing out on updated information. I wouldn't recommend using on anything like forums, or anything with user databases.