Live "switch-over" backup system

[fkasmani]

Hello,

I'm looking at setting up a "live" backup and disaster recovery system for colocation clients.
It would be a system whereby, if something went wrong at their local machine, they can immediately "switch-over" to their server colocated in a data center anywhere in the world and continue with their work without any downtime - no need to bring down their backed up data from their colocated server and then restore it, etc....

Any suggestions on what sort of software would be required at both ends?
Would the standard 1u or 2u servers (in the data center) be sufficient for such work?

 

[Jgwynne]

i've heard of this being done before with linux os's

it required a block level copy from server A to server B and a short TTL in dns records

and a manual change of IP or a dns monitoring and failover system.

joe

 

[RobertMaltby]

If reliability / uptime is so important, have you thought about a cloud setup?

Sure, it's more expensive.. but the piece of mind that it offers is unlike anything else..

Check out cloudflare and onapp for ideas on this..