Since 99.999% amounts to only 5 minutes of downtime a year, here is what you will need:
(1) At least two ISPs with each one able to handle all your traffic in case the other goes down. (2) A router for each ISP running BGP between the them. (3) Two front end switches right behind the routers. (4) Two firewalls (5) Two Load balancers. I highly recommend hardware load balancers. (6) Two switches behind the load balancers (7) The number of server needed to handle your traffic, times 2. Could probably VM some of the web servers. (8) If database driven, like SQL, Two SQL servers in a active/passive cluster. (9) For web server specs. instead of two big fat servers, go for more smaller servers. No need for redundant power suppliers, hard drives, etc. If one web server crashes, the other web servers in the farm will handle the traffic. If you web servers are going to store and server tons of files, like videos, then I would go with a RAID0 set up for better performance. One HD for the O/S with no RAID. Three HDs for the data in a RAID0 (10) If database driven (SQL server), spec out what you need that will allow the website to run on one database server. Triple that. Then get a second one of the exact same spec. At least RAID1 the O/S and RAID5 the SQL data. (11) UPS. Forget those small UPSs and go for one large one that can handle the entire load. Then, get a second one. (12) Generator. UPSs do not run forever. Then if you really want 99.999% uptime, take everything above and double it. But it in another location on the opposite side of the country (Ok, I admit we do not to this, but we do 1 to 12). For course, this does not take into account developers changing coding on a Friday afternoon and not testing their code. From: Chyka, Robert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 5:42 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Web Server Spec Question... We currently have our web site hosted off site on a partner's network. We are now brining it to our site for hosting. We have to buy a web server etc. it is going to run under IIS and needs 99.999% uptime. Would you cluster the server, just rely on redundant power, raid on the hds etc, or ???. Alos is it best to have the content be on a Raid 1 disk set? Just looking for some opinions etc. Thanks..Bob ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
