Server Management

Server Config
1

I’m planning to launch a fairly ambitious website. One of things that I need to be able to guarantee is the uptime of this website.

How can you guarantee the uptime of a website if it has a centralized database? If the database becomes inaccessible to the servers, then the website will obviously go down. So, how do companies prevent this? Do I have to have multiple copies of the server running at all times?

I was thinking about hosting my website on Google’s App Engine. I figure that it will cost about $0.60 per user per month for storage and not much for the entire site in terms of bandwidth and CPU usage. However, I’m a little nervous to do so because if I ever need to move to another service for any reason, I think it will be difficult to switch from using Big Table to another database technology.

Ideally, I would host the server myself. But, I don’t have the resources in terms of machines and bandwidth.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how I can be a little more comfortable with a choice of database and possible hosting options.

If anyone knows of a cheap way that I could do this myself, I’d be most interested in that.

Thank you,

2

Ah, thats why I have never heard of mirroring. Been stuck in the world of MSSQL. No need to go to another DB, because SQL Server is to damn awesome. :wink: Thanks for the link, I am going to dig into it as a starting point, and even implement it ASAP. Hey, it’s nice to add it to a resume. :slight_smile: Thanks man.

3

Hi,

Microsoft refer to it as clustering rather than mirroring as such. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189134.aspx - should give you a start for reading about it :slight_smile:

Thanks,

4

Sorry, should have been more specific. I am using SQL Server 2008 Standard. Thanks for your help.

5

The best methods include mirrored database servers. If one goes down you still have another.

6

First time I have heard of mirrored databases. Curious, if I do this for myself, would that mean I need two db licences (per mirror) or one license (with separate DB’s under one umbrella) in order to do this? I would like to do that with SQL Server, that’s why I brought up multiple licenses. Thanks

7

What database are you using?