Web Hosting Blog

Mirroring is a direct copy of data or when taken from the internet terminology it is more like having 2 or more copies of a website, a data base or software. Usually, when one of the “mirrors” changes, this applies immediately to the “copy” or the mirror.

There are a lot of companies that offer Co-location, Dedicated and Managed Services. Some of them even come with the so called Software As A Service or SaaS which is exclusive service made on demand for the customer.

I think that the moment SaaS started was a crucial one for the Managed Hosting Industry as it delivered something different for the client - a personal approach and extensive support that is becoming more and more important in terms of reliability and quality of service. Other, more cheaper and advanced, but not that reliable and safe technology is server clustering.

Using the Mirroring Server method you can both make an exact copy of a whole system or make a mirror to exact parts of it, single data bases, files or websites. The real time copying delivers more options and capabilities to one system - gives the opportunity to make a backups from distance, schedule specific tasks for software located on different machines or even configure your email and office work.

What actually are Mirroring Servers?

Well, the name shows that it is a server which has its own mirror. In most cases it is a chain of machines (2 or more) that have the same information on them. In other words - all the data stored on the server 1 is duplicated on server 2 etc.

The purpose of Mirroring Servers.

The simple purpose of having the same information on 2 different machines is to minimize the risk of having downtime of your internet business. It does not matter what causes it - a software problem, hardware failure or network connectivity problem - the sole goal to have your server mirrored is to provide you with 100% uptime guarantee.

Whenever and whatever you do with your server data, it is always visible for the internet visitors and your customers and partners.

The service could be very important if you have web business and want it to be online all the time. No one likes his website or mail to be down, especially when we talk about serious business which relies on the online presence of a software or web based application for data exchange.

How the Mirroring Servers are setup?

This can be done in several ways depending on the installed software and the data transfer and encryption methods, but I will tell you how its done on our system.

The first step is to have an identically setup servers in two different data centers. As Host Color and its subsidiary branches operate in three data centers located in United States, Holland and Bulgaria, we can offer every client to choose where s/he wants the mirroring servers setup and running.

Secondly we use rsync open source utility to synchronize all the data stored on the servers and prepare it so it can be used for individual use in case of a problem.

Then the files are transferred through an SSL (secure socket layer) encrypted connection. For making your data bases work on two or more mirrored locations we synchronize the SQL data with MySQL replication and for the encryption we use the bundled openssl replication in the MySQL server.

For making all this to work properly and without any problems (which sometimes is quite hard, even for us), we have our own automation software which is taking care of all the processes involving encryption, transfer, synchronization and security of the mirrored machines and the health of the whole system.

The software monitors the servers system all the time and compares the equality of the data. It can run scheduled tasks and saves all the traffic logs. It also includes a restore module which can be used in case of hardware failure or misconfigured data transfer.

I hope this information will be very useful for you and if you have any questions or comments do not hesitate to contact our friendly and always helpful Technical and Customer Support 24/7/365. We will be glad to answer and help you finding the right solution for your business needs.

In the meantime please feel free to check out our Mirroring Servers page or compare and choose between our Fully Managed Servers and On-Demand services offered through Host Color and Host Color Servers websites.