From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Oct 8 22:32:07 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id WAA07785 for questions-outgoing; Tue, 8 Oct 1996 22:32:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from solar.os.com (craigs@solar.os.com [199.232.136.65]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id WAA07770 for ; Tue, 8 Oct 1996 22:32:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from craigs@localhost) by solar.os.com (8.7/8.7.0) id BAA28717; Wed, 9 Oct 1996 01:55:09 -0400 Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 01:55:09 -0400 From: Craig Shrimpton Subject: Re: Redundancy in FBSD web server To: James FitzGibbon cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 9 Oct 1996, James FitzGibbon wrote: > > I need to set up a web server that (in my client's humble words) "CANNOT > EVER BE DOWN". They've got the budget, so I recommended two servers that > can serve domains concurrently. > First of all, using Intel based equipment and the Internet as we know it, "cannot ever be down" is not a possibility. Unless you are prepared to use a system like a Stratus and co-locate the machine in a telco-grade facility complete with generators, I wouldn't promiss "NEVER." A fully (99%) reliant system, figure 10K per month minimum for service and 250K minimum for hardware. Now, if what they want is a "better than the other guy" setup, yeah, you could do that with mirrored systems but you'd better be multi-homed because even UUNET has semi-regular outages. Good luck and be careful what you promise. Even NYNEX frame relay which is about as reliable as it gets was out twice during the last six months. (One time for nine hours) BTW: Considering most people connect to web servers via flaky modem dialups, it's kinda pointless to build a excessively high availability system for general public use. Now if the client is Fidelity Investments, well they'll spend millions just to keep Lotus Notes running! Have fun, Craig +-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+ | Craig Shrimpton | e-mail: craigs@os.com | | Orbit Systems | information: info@os.com | | Worcester, MA 508.753.8776 | http://www.os.com/ | +-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+