[Gauss-parl] Maintainance downtimes

[Felipe Wersen]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 12:07:06PM +0200, Roland Orre wrote:
> 
> Ah, that was a good hint, even though I don't understand it really,
> but you say that apache can act as a proxy by itself. Can you describe
> what the above declaration does?

I'm curious about that one too. *waiting for explanation* :)

> > >  (is it possible to set up a DNS so it gives a list of potential
> > >   machines in priority, instead of just one per name?)
> > 
> > No. Unfortunately web does not work that way (Both mail and nameservice
> > does, which is cool).

Mail service (MX) can specify priorities, name service (NS) can't. Both
of them can specify more than one entry per name.

> Are you sure?  When I do for instance
> host google.com
> google.com has address 216.239.39.99
> google.com has address 216.239.37.99
> google.com has address 216.239.57.99
> and another call
> google.com has address 216.239.57.99
> google.com has address 216.239.39.99
> google.com has address 216.239.37.99
> 
> i.e. it is giving different order different times.

This will also depend on your DNS resolver, but the fact that you are
getting a different order is that google's DNS server does round-robin
load-balancing, the first (top) address you get goes to the back of the
list (bottom) each time for the next DNS query (by anybody).

google: "round robin"

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/Round_Robin_DNS.html

> Doesn't this indicate that you can have a list of web servers as well?
> OK, they may all need to be active though...

They don't all need to be active. There are a couple of things to think
about, but this can nevertheless be made to work the way you seem to want.

// Felipe