Failover

Setup a Dreamhost-independent Failover system

Preface
While Dreamhost offers an amazing array of features and support, its uptime is not guaranteed.

Any number or problems or issues can prevent DNS, email, and web services from functioning properly. The goal of this page is to gather and provide information on ways to maintain connectivity to your website, and email, in the event DreamHost services are inaccessible.

General Overview
There are many different ways that a "failover" system can be constructed. Generally, the idea is to have two separate servers running; when one has problems, visitors are sent to the second. Here are some ideas (none of which have been tested). Please add to this page!

Crude and free http / web Failover

 * 1) use a reliable domain name registrar other than DreamHost.
 * 2) use a reliable DNS Service such as Zone Edit or DNS Made Easy.  This allows one to completely circumvent DreamHost's network when problems occur.
 * 3) get a free hosting account somewhere and make a quick, generic error page.

Steps:
 * 1) configure your Registrar to point to your DNS Service.
 * 2) configure your DNS Service to failover to your non-Dreamhost error page.
 * 3) this will only give you an error page (with your logo, etc), but is still better than your visitors thinking they got the wrong website!

Pay a bit for fancier http / web Failover

 * Same as above, but pay for reliable hosting somewhere other than DreamHost, and a real failover service from your DNS Service. Instead of a generic error page, this will allow you to make periodic copies (called "mirrors") of your website on another non-Dreamhost server.


 * You will be able to use the failover feature from your DNS Service to monitor and redirect people to the backup mirror of your site.

About the mirror

 * This part of the solution can be arbitrarily complex. It can be as simple as a few HTML files that you manually copy over to the "backup mirror", or it can be a completely independent version of code and databases updated automatically (via cron process for example).   The level of "completeness" of the backup mirror is up to you and depends on how much money you want to spend + how complex your site is + your level of technical expertise.

Email Failover

 * Most real Failover systems from your DNS Service will also allow you to redirect email to another server. In fact, it would be fairly foolish to rely solely on Dreamhost for your email.