server failover
 

hi,

i'm setting up a backup server for apache and mysql. both of them are in the same machine.

my problem is how to direct the web traffic to the backup server when the primary server fails. the server is only inside a LAN.

and how do i synchronize data for the servers.

thanks

You can use something like heartbeat for the failover. It basicly works by having slaves ping the master server, if the master doesn't respond it then assumes the ip of the master until it responds again. You would need to setup some type of central storage for this to work correctly since it sounds like your sites serve dynamic content.