Website on more than one server IIS (NT 4)

[Portend]

How would you go about putting your website on three different servers? NOT just putting it on but how do you get it so that if one server should crash your site is still up and running and everything just gets routed to your backup? I have 2 servers of my own and I was wondering how I coiuld accomplish this using NT 4 and IIS?

Thanks in advance

 

[n0cmonkey]

Not too long the anandtech guys wrote an atricle mentioning how they did it. Take a look for it. Basically a load balancer which monitors the status of each site will do the trick. I am sure Cisco and other similar companies have the technology.

 

[Zach]

Don't bother with a load balancer.

Put the web site files on a backend file server, or pick one server to store the files (you could also have two copies, but what a hassle!). Then, make sure each system has it's own IP on the internet, and set www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com to use both IP's. It's called "roud-robin" DNS, both IP's are shared by that one domain name. Try it, do an NSlookup on yahoo.com and you get two IP's...

 

[Zach]

<< Not too long the anandtech guys wrote an atricle mentioning how they did it. Take a look for it. Basically a load balancer which monitors the status of each site will do the trick. I am sure Cisco and other similar companies have the technology. >>



As for load balancers, I bet he doesn't need one.. but if he wants one, Anandtech uses a free Linux version of load balancing software installed on cheap sytems. But, if Portend only has one server and is running fine right now, I'm sure he doesn't need a load balancer.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<<

<< Not too long the anandtech guys wrote an atricle mentioning how they did it. Take a look for it. Basically a load balancer which monitors the status of each site will do the trick. I am sure Cisco and other similar companies have the technology. >>



As for load balancers, I bet he doesn't need one.. but if he wants one, Anandtech uses a free Linux version of load balancing software installed on cheap sytems. But, if Portend only has one server and is running fine right now, I'm sure he doesn't need a load balancer. >>



If he only has one server and is running fine right now he would not have needed to ask the question. The post mentions 2 servers though. There are a many things that could and should be done with webservers (especially IIS). A proxy server (ie squid) in front of the webserver can cut down the load tremendously (and there are products being worked on to help with security). Squid is also a free product that will run on linux.

Round robin DNS is fine. I am not sure about the BIND configuration for this (and I have no clue what MS uses for this). One of the problems with round robin is that usually there is no way for the dns server to know if the other systems are still up and running. I am sure more advanced products would have to have this capability. Although some can set off some nasty alarms in the IDS system I am sure you have set up...