Mirror server hosting !!?

We鈥檝e been asked to offer a technical proposal for a new established TV station, and the IT manager of the station has a long list of requirements, we covered it all, only one issues lift as we never done it before:

They want about 20-60 GB server for hosting and they want to have a mirror server, incase the 1st server was down, so it would redirect the visitors to the mirror server, I'm thinking of getting them a dedicated or semi-dedicated server, but how do you do the mirror issue.

Some one said to get two dedicated servers, but:

1. How we make it that when one is down, it automatically directed to the other.

2. Should they be from two different companies and to different countries?

3. The web site will be with CMS and DB, how do you make sure that the mirror server have all the new data that was updated in the 1st server鈥檚 DB, do they have like shared DB or something, and how..

P.S. We use PHP/ MySql technology.

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I don't really have much experience in this, but someone I know recently dealt with similar problems. So if someone with real experience gets around to this, feel free to add good input.

The database part is actually the easiest. All you have to do is set up your primary as a master and your mirror as a slave under MySQL. You can read the docs about how to do this. It's pretty straightforward (http://dev.mysql.com, I think.)

I don't think 2 different companies or 2 different countries will actually matter. You can probably market it a bit better as being safer from accidents and network problems if things are more spread out. You might want to have some method of using a backup network/ISP, either physically using a smart router that autosenses or using software. That part isn't too hard, especially in Linux. I don't know how big or mission critical your operation is, but typically, you'll want to have at least one off-site place to store your data away from your main rack in case there are things like floods, earthquakes, etc. You don't really have to be in another whole country, though.

The autoswitch is the point where I have the vaguest idea. Typically, when I think of large operations, they have a load balancer that will automatically distribute the load to the right boxes and if one of the web servers is not working, the load just won't go to that web server and the others will pick up the slack. In your case, I'm guessing you could have the mirror site either redirect the DNS server or just take on the IP of your primary site if it detects that your primary is down, but there are probably *much, much* better ways of doing things. If the site takes off at all, you'll probably want to get a load balance with multiple web/database servers anyway.

Hope some of this rambling helps.

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Once you add in the Master and slave MySQL setup previously mentioned you will need to have a DNS solution assuming the two hosts are not related. Look at a product called Simple Failover. It allows for checking the uptime of two disparate servers and then forcing by DNS to the server that remains 'up'.