-4

How would you set up simple redundancy between these 2 "cloud" providers?

Does a DNS fallback seem reasonable (that would update records when one is down) or would it take too long to propragate the changes?

5
  • How are you planning on synchronizing you databases and other application state between the two providers?
    – EEAA
    Aug 17, 2013 at 23:18
  • there is no application state, it's a very dumb app that does basic geolocation
    – knocte
    Aug 17, 2013 at 23:20
  • If it's low traffic and doesn't bring in any revenue, who cares if it's down for a couple of hours every year? Aug 17, 2013 at 23:21
  • yeah, I don't care much, what I care is that there is an automatic fallback in place that switches the sites automatically when something happens
    – knocte
    Aug 17, 2013 at 23:22
  • 1
    Besides, this is pointless. Both Heroku and AppHarbor are on EC2... Aug 18, 2013 at 4:13

1 Answer 1

2

A DNS "Fallback" would be the only way but unless we're talking about a serious server failure would involve too much time between propagation and administration to be able to swiftly react. There's not going to be much of a "simple" way of performing this task using free providers.

If this involves your revenue stream then it may be worth investing in a less "free" solution that would be able to provide you the redundancy required.

6
  • 1st: I didn't mention free tiers (I could just think about doing this in order to employ more than 1 provider; this way I'm safer against provider-wide downtime). 2nd: it doesn't provide any revenue, and it's very low traffic
    – knocte
    Aug 17, 2013 at 23:18
  • More than a few of us saw your other deleted question. :) Honestly, though - you are going to have a much better time if you throw a couple bucks at a single provider.
    – EEAA
    Aug 17, 2013 at 23:21
  • even for a paid solution I wouldn't choose a single provider (guess why some months ago AWS went down and half of the internet was down...)
    – knocte
    Aug 17, 2013 at 23:23
  • Single provider, multiple regions. AWS has never had a widespread outage that affected more than a single region.
    – EEAA
    Aug 17, 2013 at 23:24
  • 3
    knocte: You're correct, you did not mention free, however I did see your previous question. Second, you're referencing hosts that offer a free client without jumping to something like a true cloud server with a contract and SLA, and asked for a "simple" solution. The "simple" solution is to pay for a loadbalancing service, seems pretty obvious but since you asked the question also seems reasonable to assume you don't want that. There are plenty of cloud providers with multiple networks who offer LB services and 99.9 SLA's. That's your simple solution, automatic and managed. Aug 17, 2013 at 23:37

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .