Greetings all, I've been developing web sites for the past several years, but have never "administered" web servers, but will be now. The closest I've come to interacting with a web server (except for a local host of course) is directly through HMS's wonderful Control Panel.

Here's my question:

My new employer hosts various sub directories (e.g. http://subdirectory.xyz.com/) on it's web site in-house. The hosting for the main web site (eg. www.xyz.com), which uses a content management system, is outsourced. The sub directories are currently being hosting on a Windows 2000 server. We recently purchased and installed 2-Windows 2003 Servers and want to move the applications to the new servers.

Can someone guide me in the direction (web site article, software required, etc) of how to set up the applications to work with each other. For instance, if one server is experiencing problems or goes down, the 2nd server will automatically take over.

I'm assuming we'll need some type of software application that ties the two together. I'm clueless on this topic, so any help or push in the right direction is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

MB

MB,

OK, are you going for the load-balanced solution (i.e: the servers act as 1 to balance the load equally, and process requests faster)? In this situation both servers are exactly the same, they have the same hardware and the data is replicated between both platforms.

Or, are you simply looking for a fail-safe, (i.e: If a server needs to go down, or does go down, the other one automatically picks up where the last left off?)

The load-balanced can do the latter, but you may need to invest some more money into the servers. Feel free to contact me directly, I can send you some more information:

jtolbert@hostmysite.com