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Category: Articles » Internet & Online Businesses » Web Hosting » Article » Article Code

How Multiple Server Hosting impacts your web site's uptime

This article describes the technology behind multiple server hosting and how you may utilize it to maximize your site's security and uptime. Hosting of web sites has essentially become a commodity. There is very little distinguishing one hosting company from the next. Core plans and features are the same and price is no longer a true determining feature. In fact, choosing a host based on the cheapest price can be more expensive in the long term with respect to reliability issues and possible loss of sales as a result of web site downtime. Selecting a host from the ... read more

Article Title:

Article Body:

This article describes the technology behind multiple server 
hosting and how you may utilize it to maximize your site's 
security and uptime. 

Hosting of web sites has essentially become a commodity. There is 
very little distinguishing one hosting company from the next. 
Core plans and features are the same and price is no longer a 
true determining feature. In fact, choosing a host based on the 
cheapest price can be more expensive in the long term with 
respect to reliability issues and possible loss of sales as a 
result of web site downtime. 

Selecting a host from the thousands of providers and resellers 
can be a very daunting task, which may result in a hit and miss 
approach. But although hosting may have become a commodity, one 
distinguishing feature that you must always look out for is 
reliability. 

If you don't know the uptime of your site, or its performance 
level, try an <a href="http://www.dotcom-monitor.com">independent 
web site monitoring</a> service. 

At the heart of any hosting company's reliability is redundancy. 
This ensures that if a problem exists at one point, there will be 
an alternative which ensures continuity as seamlessly and 
transparently as possible. 

Most hosts do employ redundant network connections. These are the 
high speed pipes that route data from the server to your web 
browser. But, redundant 'multiple web servers' have been 
extremely rare and very expensive, requiring costly routing 
equipment which has previously been used only in mission critical 
applications of Fortune 500 companies. 

However, a very neat but little known Domain Name Server(DNS) 
feature called 'round robin' allows the selection and provision 
of a particular IP address from a 'pool' of addresses when a DNS 
request arrives. 

To understand what this has to do with server reliability it's 
important to remember that the Domain Name Server (DNS) database 
maps a host name to their IP address. So instead of using a hard 
to remember series of numbers (IP address) we just type in your 
web browser www.yourdomain.com, to get to your web site. 

Now, typically it takes at least 2 to 3 days to propagate or 
'spread the word' of your DNS info throughout the internet. 
That's why when you register or transfer a domain name it isn't 
immediately available to the person browsing the web. 

This delay has stymied the security benefits of hosting your site 
on multiple servers, as your web site would be down for a couple 
of days if something went awry with one server. You would have to 
change your DNS to reflect your second server and wait days 
before the change was picked up in routers on the internet. 

Failover Monitoring

However, the round robin DNS strategy solves this predicament, by 
mapping your domain name to more than one IP address. 
Select hosting companies now employ the DNS round robin technique 
in conjunction with 'failover monitoring'. 

The DNS round robin failover monitoring process starts by a web 
hosting company setting up your site on two or more independent 
web servers (preferably with different IP blocks assigned to 
them). Your domain name will therefore have 2 or more IP 
Addresses assigned to it. 

Then the failover monitor watches your web server(s) by 
dispatching data to a URL you specify and looking for particular 
text in the results. When the system detects that one of your IP 
addresses is returning an error, and the others aren't, it pulls 
that IP address out of the list. The DNS then points your domain 
name to the working IP address/s 

If any of your IP's come back online they are restored to the IP 
pool. This effectively and safely keeps your site online - even 
if one of your web servers is down. 

The average failure detection and recovery time with a system 
like this can be as low as 15 minutes. This time varies depending 
on the speed of your site and the nature of the failure and also 
how long other ISP's cache (save) your DNS information. 

The time taken for other ISP's caching your information can be 
manipulated in the failover monitor by lowering the "time to 
live" (TTL) cache settings. These are the settings that other 
ISP's will use to determine how long to cache your DNS 
information. 

Of course you must bear in mind the matter of how frequently data 
is synchronized between your web site's servers. This will be the 
hosting company's responsibility, and this may become complicated 
where databases and user sessions are involved. 

The very expensive hardware based failover monitoring systems 
that point a virtual IP address to other ISP's, while behind the 
scenes juggling a number of unique IP addresses on different 
servers, is of course the most 'elegant' solution to multi server 
hosting. 

That way, the whole issue of ISP's caching your information does 
not come into play. 

Therefore, for web sites that need to have true 99.99995% uptime, 
without huge outlays of money, the technology is readily 
available and certain proprietary failure monitoring systems are 
now relatively cheap to apply.

Author Bio:

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