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I would like to create a high-available setup (e.g. a small cluster) for a webserver, i.e. it will run Apache, PHP and MySQL.

There will be between 2-8 small websites running with only very little traffic and workload. High availability is however very important.

I don't want to be dependent on 1 datacenter, so there must be a minimum of 2 servers placed in different datacenters, and if one server goes down, the user must experience no or only a minimum of downtime - and no data loss.

I have considered Amazon AWS using their Elastic Load Balancing, since it is possible to buy 2 EC2 instances in 2 availability zones and set up load balancing and RDS (Multi-AZ).

However this seems rather expensive. Using the AWS price calculator http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html it totals to 185$/month the first year (including the free tier).

Are my calculations incorrect or is there a cheaper way to make this HA setup?

Best regards

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  • 9
    If you can't justify $185/month for high-availability, your app doesn't need high-availability.
    – ceejayoz
    Oct 3, 2012 at 14:59
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    Oct 3, 2012 at 15:16
  • Hi. I see the problem! I will look into the rules and FAQ, so I don't make a similar mistake. Thank you
    – xyz
    Oct 3, 2012 at 15:22

1 Answer 1

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sorry cheap and high-available aren't two words that have ever gone together. You get what you pay for and generally speaking a service like AWS is going to be the cheapest option you can get if you use a reserved instance.

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  • Okay, that sounds reasonable. I guess this is the way to go then. Thanks for you answer.
    – xyz
    Oct 3, 2012 at 15:09

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