What is server mirroring, and how does it work?

Although dedicated server hosting is considered to be highly reliable and safe, things happen: if you lose data stored on the server, it may cost you a lot. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure backup options for your business, and server mirroring is one of them.
What is server mirroring, and how does it work?

Although dedicated server hosting is considered to be highly reliable and safe, things happen: if you lose data stored on the server, it may cost you a lot. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure backup options for your business, and server mirroring is one of them.

What is server mirroring?

This is a backup method that can come handy when the primary server fails: there’s another server to perform its functions. Mirroring of dedicated server works by synchronizing two servers so that the failover server always had the same data as the main server. In case of failure, switchover will happen automatically, and the user won’t even notice this change as all the same data will stay accessible. Server can be monitored in different ways, and you can even use two servers while RSync or some other technology will synchronize the data across the local network.

Local server mirroring

To establish the process of server mirroring, two web hosting servers should be hosted in one data center, have the same specifications and run on the same platform. One server performs the master role (it serves users normally), and another is setup to be a slave server that performs these functions in case the main server crashes.

The data is uploaded in the master server, and is regularly synchronized with the salve server so that users could continue working with the same files in case of a switch. If the slave server is used and some alterations are made on it, it will be automatically synchronized with the master server as soon as it becomes available.

Benefits of server mirroring

This backup option has a lot of features and advantages:

  1. Solid protection against hardware failure. Since two servers are running simultaneously and have the same data hosted on them, you will always be backed up and have enough time to repair the primary server. Downtime isn’t an issue anymore.
  2. This solution can appear to be less expensive than some other backup methods, so you will always be able to remain within your budget.
  3. Great performance. Both dedicated servers will have equally good specifications for you to be sure that the slave server can handle traffic spikes. Inxyhost offers a wide range of high-performance dedicated web hosting servers that meet your requirements and can be used for the most demanding businesses.

Cross Platform Disaster Recovery as an alternative solution

This approach is similar to server mirroring, but virtual environment is used for storage instead of another physical hosting server. What is the benefit of this solution? If the data center is affected as a whole (due to natural disasters or power outage), traditional server mirroring won’t help, while virtual environment will stay safe.

Since a cloud platform is used, this backup method appears to be much cheaper. There are practically no platform limitations, and you can use a number of various environments. Besides, Cross Platform Disaster Recovery provides great scalability: you can scale up and down according to your needs and have overall control over the amount of resources used.

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