I'm not sure if this is really off topic or just something that does not
often come up. I was going to include the perl list but then I realized
that the code language was irrelevant it is a logistical problem.
I have a hosted web site and wish to set up an identical web site but as
an alternative. This way there is no single point of failure that can
take out both hosted web sites. This means one must be on a different
telco (ISP) than the other and neither can be tied to a server
installation that has the same power provider and that sort of thing.
Plus they probably should be in different parts of the country sort of
like mirrors in order to reduce internet traffic congestion. Of course
all this I can arrange by choosing 2 web hosting companies sufficiently
separated in this regard.
The problem is this. The primary host web site must be able to ping the
alternative and vice versa. This is a simple matter using a batch
process in both so each knows the other is up or one is down. Of course
if the primary is down the alternative assumes the role of primary until
the original primary is back up. Since the virtual web server cannot
make these kind of decisions, when to offload users, it must be done as
a CGI process and that process must check the up or down status of the
other. So already, I have introduced overhead at a CGI level of
operation just to determine whether a user should be offloaded to the
alternate site.
In order for this to even work it appears that the primary must have the
advertised domain name and the alternative must have an unadvertised
domain name and so is not directly accessible by users. They point
their browsers to the primary domain name and the CGI process at that
virtual server must somehow redirect if by some measure of activity it
deems that browser should be offloaded to the alternate site. The
easiest solution I can come up with to effect this kind of operation is
to have the CGI process generate the HOME page for the advertised
primary domain name but if off loading is required the URLs on that HOME
page point to the unadvertised domain name location.
This is all fine except when the primary hosted web site dies. Now no
browser can get to the unadvertised alternative domain name because it
is not known. So this is the dilemna. How does the alternative hosted
web site make itself look like the primarly hosted web site when the
primary web site is down?
Maybe someone has an entirely different approach to this kind of
coupling.
Sorry for a brain twister like this right in the middle of a difficult
election time for everyone.
Bye-thanks_TED
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