What to do... HELP....

[Steven Sporen]

There are a couple of things you can do. Here are a couple of solutions:

Microsoft IIS
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnmind99/ht
ml/basics0699.asp
Talk about setting up a virtual cluster - may or may not help you?

You could get DNS to 'prefer' the 20Mb/s link. Either by putting in a custom
DNS response algorithm or even easier add 10 IP's to your 20Mb/s link,
because it's 10 times for capable of answering the request, then add
multiple IP's to the www.mydomain.com record. E.g.

  www.domain.com  A 202.99.9.1   #<- 20Mb/s US link (Next 10 IP's)
                  A 202.90.9.2
                  ...
                  A 202.90.9.10
                  A 190.32.1.1   #<- 2Mb/s UK link

When a client requests the DNS record the DNS server responds in a
'round-robin' enabling load balancing across many servers. A browser if it
can't connect will try the next IP address in the list and thus the system
won't appear down.

Cisco make a product that Microsoft use, I believe it's called localdirector
(could be mistaken). What it does is monitor the servers which are up and
sends traffic through to them - it can also understand BGP paths making the
decisions of the IP address it responds with based on location. For example
I'm in South Africa when I request an IP address for www.microsoft.com the
device checks my AS Number and compares it to it's list of servers around
the world (which it also constantly monitors) and picks the server with the
nearest number of hops thus making it faster for me.

Hope this helps.

-----Original Message-----
From: Morpheus [mailto:morpheus at bsdbox.co.uk] 
Sent: 14 October 2001 04:39
To: comp-protocols-dns-bind at uunet.uu.net
Subject: What to do... HELP....


Hi All,

I have two webservers..
one in Manchester and one in London..
the one in Manchester in on a 2Mb connection..
and the one in London in on a 20Mb connection...

the one in Manchester is at present the main web server.
This server also everyweek day takes up all of the 2Mb line.

I have just a got a server in London which I am looking to move the web site
over to and to make this one the main web server instead of the Manchester
one..

What I need to do is make the one in London the main server but at the same
time if the server in London dies or times out. I need the traffic to goto
the Manchester one..

hopefully that is possible...

this is a sample of my dns record that I thinking of doing.



$TTL 86400
@   IN SOA ns.domain.co.uk. morpheus.domain.co.uk. (
    2001073001 ;serial
    3600 ;refresh
    900 ;retry
    3600000 ;expire
    3600 ) ;minimum
;
; Name Servers
;

   NS ns.domain.co.uk.
   NS ns0.domain2.com.
;
; Mail Records
;
   MX 5 smtp.domin.co.uk.
   MX 10 mxbackup.domain2.com.
;
; Servers
;
;  Manchester's ip = 192.168.0.6
;  London ip = 193.52.165.194
;  These are not the real domains and ip of the servers.....   I know you
know that but just to make sure...

localhost.domain.co.uk.  A     127.0.0.1
domain.co.uk.                A     193.52.165.194
domain.co.uk.                A     192.168.0.6
www                             A      193.52.165.194
www                             A      192.168.0.6
lonweb                           A     193.52.165.194
manweb                         A      192.168.0.6

ftp.domain.co.uk.  IN CNAME domain.co.uk.
pop3.domain.co.uk. IN CNAME smtp.domain.co.uk. pop.domain.co.uk.  IN CNAME
smtp.domain.co.uk.




Hope that i have made this clear....

if you have any ideas. Please help....


Thanks....
Simon....