How to redirect a website to backup server automatically ?

[now_i_m_here]

Hello Guys,

I have a server in a country (Location 1) and I have my company website on it and in this country the connection is very fast but not very stable so I have the same website on another server (Location 2) as a backup server so I want to do is as the following :

- www.mywebsite.com > Website loads from my Server at Location 1 .
- Server at Location 1 is down .
- www.mywebsite.com > Website loads from my Server at Location 2 .
- Server at Location 1 is back working .
- www.mywebsite.com > Website loads from my server at Location 1 .

How can I do this in DNS options ?

Also Can you suggest an easy way to do realtime backup from the server at Location 1 to Location 2 so that any changes made on Location 1 are cloned on Location 2 ?

[jcy1978]

Your first question isn't possible with a standard DNS server and standard DNS entries, although it could be with an add on script or maybe even a 3rd party DNS server that has support for such an option.

The second is possible through the use of the Linux utility rsync; which will synchronize the contents of two directories between two different servers, copying only the files that have been changed; Howtoforge and other sites have some good tutorials on this. You can set the copying to be done once every minute, once every sixty minutes, etc. through the use of the cron command.

For content that is highly dynamic (for example, a message forum such as this one), multiple servers can make use of the same MySQL database, which can also be made redundant through the use of clustering.

[neil.studyhost]

I believe having your dns at zoneedit might enable you to do this

check out #faq48