Hi,

We are an ecommerce site getting around 300 to 400 customers a day.
Our website is developed using php ? MySql - Apache. We have a
dedicated server (Linux) here in India & now we are looking at a back
up solution. So we took up another dedicated server (linux) in US. I
know having a back up server on the same IDC would have given us lot
of options like MySql replication or clustered server. But our
management felt the need to have the back up in a different
geographical location altogether. Hence we took up the back up server
in US. Now we have done the setup for that server too & its made a
replica of the existing server. On the primary server, the Control
Panel is Plesk, where as on the secondary server, the Control Panel is
Cpanel (Incase this info helps). Now there are two questions which I
have here:

A)
Website Monitoring & DNS Redirection
As part of the backup plan to be effective, we would need to have a
(1) monitoring service which would makes a check with our website (not
the DNS) & if possible the database as well and in an event the
primary service goes down (2) some script, should change the DNS
entries & point the Name servers to the secondary back up server.

B) Database Synchronization
The database of the primary server needs to be synchronized with the
back up server. The database server size is around 35 mb. Now, we can
do a one auto way sync, i.e. write the data from primary to the back
up server, but in an event the primary thing goes down, the
transaction would happen on the back up server and once the DNS points
to the main server again, the data on the secondary server would be
lost. Hence we are looking at a real time sync within both the
database. Incase, that?s impossible, we don?t mind half an hour/ an
hour different between the syncing of two servers. But we would like
to basically allow transactions on both the servers and at the same
time avoid any data being overwritten.

Now, for point A, I guess Zoneedit.com would be able to take care of
this, but if there is another service or some company who would offer
both the features (A) & (B) together would be very nice. Also Zoneedit
restores the DNS once the Primary server is up, so in absence of point
B (Database Sync), we would loose the data from that server.

Having said this, please note that we have taken up the secondary
dedicated server as well, so please do not recommend us a clustered
server or a three server setup for database synchronization. Also we
would not like to make changes in our code, where the entire scripts
are made to write entries in both the servers simultaneously. So If
you can recommend us a solution with the existing setup explained
above, would be much appreciated.