Hi guys I had a problem the other day with a site and it was down for 24 hours but could have been longer. I had a similar situation years ago with a client who lost (he guestimated) around 5,000 € simply because the site was down for a week. So, with this in mind I am thinking of replicating the site I have and placing it on a server but turned off so it doesn't display duplicate content to the search engines but what I need to know is what's the best way of redirecting traffic...? The website in question has a reservations engine sat behind it, if this goes down (the reservations engine) then no big deal, I can simply point people to another reservations engine I have sat on another server but if the main website goes down (for whatever reason) I'm losing money and I need to find a way round this. Has anyone else had a similar issue and how did they find a solid solution...?
This is an interesting question. The only thing I can think of, is the nameservers of the domain will be pointing to the servers you already have, so it would be difficult to redirect if nothing is coming from that server. Maybe there is a way to set alternate nameservers? Cheers,
This would happen by using any kind of mirroring, I doubt however that it would work on a shared hosting account. You need at least 2 different VPS accounts. Otherwise you can play with DNS, but this would bring downtime as well.
Thanks guys, I'll have a look at Round Robin. Here's the theory... Website 1 is the primary site with the reservations engine working away quite happily... Now, I know (based on past sales) that if the reservations engine is inaccessible, for whatever reason, we lose around 2,000 € PER DAY. So, scenario 1... Reservations Engine 1 goes down. Solution... I simply redirect all traffic to reservations engine 2 as I only have to update 3 hyperlinks accross the entire website. Scenario 2... Website 1 goes down. This is my biggest fear... Solution... I need to find a way of redirecting traffic immediately. Now, if it's a site issue I am thinking a 30* redirect in the htaccess file would be OK for a short period, maybe a few hours or a few days. However, what if the server itself is offline...? John Smith (AKA Net Admin) pulls out the wrong plug, power outage etc... I need a facility that will intercept a URL request and redirect to server x rather than y. We have a dedicated server sat in a facility that boasts 99.9% uptime, ok - for me, that means our site will probably be down for up to 4 days in any given year. Cost: circa 8,000 €
I'm sure big websites have backup engines, you probably wouldn't even have to change any hyperlinks on the site (and considering the site is down, I don't know if you could do this.) Yes, I am guessing you would need two or more dedicated hosts. Maybe you can find a host that does this automatically? (or ask your current one). It will probably cost extra but if you think it is worth it you could go for it. Note, I've even seen big sites go down like Myspace before though, so who knows? This is an interesting topic though, thanks for bringing it up. Cheers,
Note that if your site have dynamic updated content, then you will have to run database synchronization also. That will be additional problem to store database on two or more different servers.