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By this article one can get to know about the technology used in multiple server hosting as well as how to utilize it to maximize one’s site and security and uptime

Now the hosting of site has converted into a commodity where competition has raised to a very higher level and it’s very difficult to discriminate among the hosting plans on the basis of core plans, features and prices. Moreover choosing a host based on the cheapest price is not a better idea rather it thereafter proves to be very expensive in terms of reliability as well as possible loss of sales as a result of website downtime.

Choosing a best out of thousands of providers and resellers is a very scary task, which is rather based on hit and trial method. Even if hosting has become a commodity still while choosing for new host one should look for reliability.

Now at the heart of any hosting company’s reliability is redundancy. Redundancy offers an alternative remedy in case any problem occurs. This is to ensure continuity of work as seamlessly and transparently as possible.

There are several hosts, which employ redundant network connections. These are the high-speed pipes that route data from the server to one’s web browser. As against this, redundant ‘multiple web servers’ are quite rare and expensive and so are rarely used. They are expensive due to use of costly routing equipment, which has previously been used, only in mission critical applications of Fortune 500 companies.

There is yet another very neat but little known Domain Name Server (DNS) feature called ’round robin’ which allows the selection and provision of a particular IP address from a ‘pool’ of addresses when a DNS request arrives.

The Domain Name Server (DNS) database maps a host name to their IP address. Thus instead of remembering a vast series of numbers (IP address) one can just type in his/her web browser www.mydomain.com, to get to one’s website.

Now in order to publicize DNS info throughout the market it will typically take minimum 2 to 3 days. That is the reason when one registers or transfer a domain name it isn’t immediately available to the person browsing the web.

This delay has foiled the security benefits of hosting one’s site on multiple servers, as the site would be down for a couple of days in case of any problem with one server. As a remedy one has to change his/her DNS to reflect the second server and has to wait for several days before the change was picked up in routers on the Internet.

There is yet another solution for the above problem i.e. the round robin DNS strategy that solves this quandary, by mapping one’s domain name to more than one IP address.

One should now select that hosting companies which employs the DNS round robin technique in conjunction with’failover monitoring’.

The DNS round robin fail over monitoring process starts by a web hosting company setting up one’s site on two or more independent web servers. Thus one’s domain name will therefore have 2 or more IP Addresses assigned to it.

Thereafter the fail over monitor watches one’s web server(s) by dispatching data to a URL one specifies and looks for particular text in the results. Now when an error is returned from one of an IP address, it pulls that IP address out of the list. The DNS thereafter points one’s domain name to the working IP address/s

In case any of the user’s IP’s come back online they are restored to the IP pool. This helps in effectively and safely keeping one’s site online even if one of the web servers is down.

In this case an average failure detection and recovery time with a system is very low with just 15 minutes. However this time varies depending on site’s speed as well as the nature of the failure and also how long other ISP’s cache (save) one’s DNS information.

The time taken for other ISP’s caching one’s information can be manipulated in the fail over monitor by lowering the “time to live” (TTL) cache settings. These are the settings used by other ISP’s in order to determine how long to cache one’s DNS information.

One must also keep in mind the matter of how frequently data is synchronized between his/her website’s servers. Now this comes under the hosting company’s responsibility, and this becomes complicated where databases and user sessions are involved.

The most elegant solution to multi server hosting is very expensive hardware based fail over 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.

This way, the whole issue of ISP’s caching one’s information does not come into play.

Thus in order to get 99.99995% uptime, without spending big amount of money, the technology is readily available and certain proprietary failure monitoring systems are now relatively cheap to apply.

Liquid Web owns and operates three private data centers. By owning our data centers rather than leasing, we are able to design, build and maintain an ideal server environment. This allows us to provide our clients fast, secure and reliable performance at all times.

Data Center Design

The Liquid Web network has been designed to accommodate clients demanding the highest quality network performance. There is a central focus on redundancy allowing our network to rapidly self-heal failures without interruptions to connectivity. At Liquid Web, we own our infrastructure. [More]

You may have noticed that most web hosting providers boast either a 99 or 99.9% uptime guarantee, a percentage that refers to how often the service will be up and running.  As a customer, these numbers look very impressive as they are not that short of perfection.  However, after learning more about these calculations, you may think twice when encountering a seemingly respectable uptime guarantee.

What is Covered in the Guarantee?

In most cases, the uptime a web host refers to only covers the servers and not the network.  When it comes to network issues and general maintenance, downtime is something that can heavily outweigh the advertised uptime guarantee.  This is why some customers running mission-critical operations look for SLAs (service level agreements) that compensate you in one way or another if downtime exceeds the agreement.  Unfortunately, several of the leading hosting providers usually do not make such an offer available.  The situation becomes even more complex when considering the potential downtime you could experience during the course of a year.  When doing so, the near perfect 99% doesn’t look so attractive.

Let’s work with a few examples.  A 98% uptime means that over a 12-month period, your website could be down for 175 hours and 19 minutes, which translates to about a week.  99% isn’t much better as your site could be unavailable for approximately 87 hours and 39 minutes over a one year period.  This is still a lot of time for someone running a busy website.  Most providers try to uphold the 99.9% uptime guarantee because it translate into the most reliable.  This is far more respectable as it means that you will only endure about 8 hours and 46 minutes of downtime over a 12 month period.  Sadly, downtime usually exceeds this number by far.  Even worst, many customers are in a no-win situation, forced to suffer from unavailability without being compensated for the excessive downtime.

Recognizing a Respectable Uptime

The best way to approach the perplexing issue of uptime is to select a hosting provider with a good reputation in the industry.  Downtime is unavoidable but it is much better when dealing with a company that will not try to manipulate the numbers and do all they can to ensure the highest availability.  Look for a host that provides good support so if something does happen, you can get in touch and find out how and when the service will be restored.

As far as the uptime guarantee goes, it is something you should look into if you are truly concerned about the availability of your site.  Read the fine print, do some investigating and if possible, choose a company that bases their uptime percentage over a monthly period.  If the calculations are made over a year, you could have a difficult time getting accurate credits for any downtime incurred.  Most reputable hosting providers take various measures to ensure reliability but things do happen.  When they do, you want a host that provides a fair playing ground with a guarantee that has your best interests in mind.

Source: http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/05/12/making-the-most-of-uptime/