Cheap Redundancy and The Data Center
This is a really quick note that will eventually become an article with more detail.
The premise is this: No shared hosting plan is perfect. Even dedicated hosting plans have glitches once in a while. Google has problems and so does Amazon once in a while. Computers screw up. When you depend on your web site to generate your income, it’s important that if the server is screwed temporariliy, that your customers don’t get a 404 error. Right?
The solution is cheap redundancy by doing the the following:
- Two different hosting plans
- Two different data centers (some hosts out there are just resellers of other hosts)
- Set up your site on one host
- Copy it (database, everything)
- Put it on another host
Enter the DNS of the first host in your registrar's DNS fields
NS1.nameofFIRSThost.com
NS2.nameofFIRSThost.com
NS1.nameofSECONDhost.com
NS2.nameofSECONDhost.com
For forums, blogs, and online stores where there needs to be a synch of the databases (for posts and new products), that’s a complicated issue. But at least with the second host you can put a “Web Maintenance” message up with your logo and email and other contact info (your phone number). It’s worse to have a 404 error or just a spinning nothing.
The next thing you need is a monitoring service like SiteUpTime. There's an add on feature to their ultra low cost plans that can check if a certain phrase is on the page, it's called "Web Page Content". If your first host is down, have a certain phrase that it checks against. Then, when the second host kicks in, don't have the phrase on the home page. This service will email you. Check it out.
