After reading this I am wondering if there is a way to point one IP to another 
in DNS?

------------------------

Keith Smith

--- On Wed, 5/19/10, Ed Knapp <[email protected]> wrote:

From: Ed Knapp <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: load balanced configuration
To: "Main PLUG discussion list" <[email protected]>
Date: Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 6:09 PM



Re: load balanced configuration
One thing struck me here with your description...



“and a change to the DNS and we are off and running”



While your DNS records might be changed relatively quickly during an incident, 
the change

Itself can take quite a while to trickle down to the end users/clients out in 
the cloud.

Any client’s DNS resolution that has not expired in the cache nor manually 
refreshed will

still fail to properly resolve/connect.  It doesn’t usually, but I tell clients 
to plan for 48 hours

Estimated time for the change to completely propagate.



I would hate for you to get blindsided with a person hovering over you asking 
how much longer

It is going to take before the site is back up and operational.  It is 
frustrating when you have

Fixed the issue [  problem :-)   ] but have to just sit and wait for it to 
complete.



There are certainly strategies to mitigate this risk and I do not know if you 
maintain your

Own DNS servers or do you work through a hosting provider/domain registrar.



I hope this helps a bit.



Ed





On 5/19/10 2:07 PM, "keith smith" <[email protected]> wrote:







Currently we have two servers in our main data center.  One serves our shopping 
cart.  The other contains quite a bit of content that is data driven (reads).  
The content site is very active.  The orders on the shopping cart are spread 
apart by one or two minutes during the busiest part of the day.  We store a lot 
of data with each order so most of this is writing. The shopping cart is backed 
up to the server in the other data center.  Supposedly if there is a problem, a 
few things need to be done to the backup server in preparation to make it live, 
and a change to the DNS and we are off and running. 



The problem I am trying to solve is the other server (content site) is not 
currently backed up automatically.



Another layer of this is these are managed servers.  We have an excellent 
relationship with the data center owner and have 24/7 access to him and his 
staff.  He manages all three servers and has always done a good job.  



I am the one tasked with keeping our sites online 24/7.



I was hoping by configuring two servers, each in a different location, that, in 
the event of one of the data centers being completely severed from the Internet 
that the other server would automatically, without any human intervention, take 
over the full load of the other server and those visiting either of our sites 
would not know there had been an issue.



In a nutshell I am trying to create an automated backup that is a automated 
fail over solution.



I appreciate all your feedback!



------------------------

Keith Smith



--- On Wed, 5/19/10, Dan Dubovik <[email protected]> wrote:



From: Dan Dubovik <[email protected]>

Subject: Re: load balanced configuration

To: "Main PLUG discussion list" <[email protected]>

Date: Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 1:45 PM



The question I have, are you trying to actually load balance things? Or just 
have a remote location that you can fire up with live data at a moments notice? 
 Basically, are you wanting an active/active configuration, or active/passive? 

active/active across DC's can get kind of hairy depending on what the network 
looks like.  active/passive won't give you any performance gains, but can 
simplify the configuration, while providing the HA you seem to be after.  As 
Kaia pointed out, what the traffic looks like (reads vs writes) is a 
consideration.  If it is something that users don't write to, and data doesn't 
have to be replicated across DCs frequently, this further simplifies things.



Ultimately, the configuration will depend on what the application and network 
looks like currently, and what level of redundancy you want / need.



-- Dan.



On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Matt Iavarone <[email protected] 
</mc/[email protected]> > wrote:

I think the original question was around stateless load balancing, not 
clustering.  Cross DC clustering is a headache, but HA web sites aren't exactly 
terchnical challenges these days. 

On May 19, 2010 4:33 PM, "Alex Dean" <[email protected] 
</mc/[email protected]> > wrote:





On May 19, 2010, at 2:47 PM, keith smith wrote:



>

>

> Hi Plug,

>

> I am considering combining the ... You're entering a world of pain. :)



HA is cool, but is no panacea.  If you haven't actually experienced downtime 
due to your server crashing or your datacenter losing connectivity, I recommend 
thinking long and hard about it.  Don't solve a problem you don't have.  The 
downtime created from unneeded failovers will likely exceed the actual/real 
downtime caused by either a server or datacenter being offline.  Managing the 
cluster itself (as distinct from the services provided by the cluster) needs to 
be accounted for as an expense/responsibility.



I don't want to sound overly pessimistic.  I've set up quite a few HA clusters, 
and actually enjoy it most of the time.  But it WILL cause you headaches in the 
middle of the night which you wouldn't have had if you only had a single server.



Leave yourself lots of time to set up a development/test cluster, and abuse it 
in many ways.  Pull out network cables, kill the switch, yank out power cables, 
etc.  Do this with real hardware, not VMs.



When the cluster nodes lose contact with each other, both will decide to become 
primary.  This is a split brain.  This can happen when the switch in-between 
them gets busy and starts dropping pings.  Now, you can always recover from 
such things.  I'm just recommending you become very familiar with these issues 
before going live with this setup.



http://clusterlabs.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://people.linbit.com/~florian/heartbeat-users-guide/ 
<http://people.linbit.com/%7Eflorian/heartbeat-users-guide/> 



Let me/us know if you have specific questions once you start setting things up. 
 Good luck!



alex

---------------------------------------------------

PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected] 
</mc/[email protected]> 

To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:

http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss



---------------------------------------------------

PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected] 
</mc/[email protected]> 

To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:

http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss





-----Inline Attachment Follows-----



---------------------------------------------------

PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected] 
</mc/[email protected]> 

To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:

http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss





---------------------------------------------------

PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected]

To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:

http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss


 

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected]
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss


      
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected]
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss

Reply via email to