Cable and DSL is great, but typically the connections are never bulletproof, even when hosting at one of the big hosting providers like Exodus. We have long ago adopted using cable or DSL or even dialup to host personal and small business websites. Using these low cost connections like broadband allows the average consumer enough speed to host their small web and e-mail server (providing your ISP allows you to do this) and save upwards of 50% by providing your own server and bandwidth. One drawback is the reliability of your connection, but there is now an answer from Tzolkin Corporation called AutoFailover

The AutoFailover service provides server monitoring and DNS failover - or as Tzolkin says it "AutoFailover features reliable server monitoring, load balancing,and automatic failover to create for you a fault resilient and high-availability Internet server environment".

What does all this mean to you? Well, for starters, you can have 2 servers with exact content on 2 different connections (one cablemodem and one DSL modem) in 2 different areas or in the same house/office, and have the web/e-mail/ftp servers automatically moved back and forth to the server that is up. If both are up, it can load balance or share the connections between the 2 servers. You can also load balance between up to 4 servers in all.















The Tzolkin Control Panel for Enterprise AutoFailover

The best thing about this service is that the AutoFailover actually does something about the failure, instead of just simply notifying you like some of the monitoring services out there like alertsite.com, redalert.com and others. The AutoFailover from Tzolkin not only tests the servers at protocol level, from 2 different agents in different geographical locations, they also notify you on failure of a protocol/service, via e-mail or pager, and move the DNS records to the proper server that is responding...all while you are sleeping. If your e-mail server fails, then the service will immediately relay all e-mail coming into your domain name to your yahoo, aol or alternate e-mail account. This allows you to offer something to your customers, vs. a dead webpage and bouncing/returned e-mail

There are 2 levels of the AutoFailover service; The AutoFailover SOHO (Single Server) offers a 2 minute monitoring interval, and monitors both web and e-mail If your server fails, the service will notify you via e-mail/pager, move your DNS record to relay to a backup site, such as a geocities webpage, a Yahoo website, or any URL.

The AutoFailover Enterprise (Multiple Servers) offers a 1 minute monitoring interval, and monitors one of the following protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, FTP, HTTPS, and POP3. If your server/service on that protocol fails, the AutoFailover Enterprise service notifies up to 10 e-mail addresses/pagers, and will will move your DNS record(s) to the backup site, such as another cable or DSL modem, or maybe even an alternate backup server you may have on another IP address. If your e-mail server fails, then the service will immediately move your MX records to the backup, and so on with HTTP, POP3, and HTTPS as well. The Enterprise AutoFailover can also load balance or distribute the connections to multiple servers. This is great for a super busy website, since customers will get better server performance if their requests are distributed to multiple servers. The Enterprise AutoFailover offers load balancing for up to 4 servers - all included in the fee.














The Tzolkin AutoFailover Control Panel for managing notifications

Still Confused? We put together a few scenarios to help you better understand how this service could work for an ordinary home/small business user, or the larger enterprise that wants to add more reliability to their web, e-mail and other Internet servers/services without breaking the bank doing so.

Scenario 1 - The Home and Small Business User
Joe has a cablemodem at his house in Philadelphia. His cousin Bob has a cablemodem in his office in San Francisco. Both Joe and Bob help each other out on occasion and offer a backup for each other's website when they have problems with their ISP's. Joe's cablemodem in Philadelphia is constantly having problems, and causing Joe's website to go off-line. Joe still wants to host his private domain website at home via his cablemodem, because he saves money, but wants a more reliable solution. Joe can use the Tzolkin AutoFailover Enterprise service to automatically move his DNS of his website to Bobs IP when his cablemodem or server goes down, and the service notifies both Joe and Bob via e-mail or pager. Since they have the service in failover - switchback mode, the website moves the back to Joe's cablemodem when his connection comes back online. This allows Joe peace-of-mind that his website is always up and serving his brochure. If Joe didn't have a nice cousin like Bob, he could still use the Tzolkin SOHO AutoFailover to provide a backup web and e-mail address for his domain.

Scenario 2 - The Small to Medium Enterprise User
Amy Hansen manages a medium size Insurance company in downtown Boston. Her IT department has been busy setting up a satellite office a few hundred miles away in a small suburb of a nearby state. In order to connect the satellite office of 15 employees to the Internet, Amy decided on DSL instead of a costly T1 connection. She realized that the DSL may not be as reliable as a T1 circuit, but the DSL was 1/10th of the price per month. Her web server requests have grown significantly, and she has decided to either outsource the website to a large hosting provider, or explore some other ideas by using her existing DSL connections at both offices. Amy decided to use the Tzolkin Enterprise AutoFailover to protect her secure order website, and help offer better website uptime for her site visitors. Amy decides to use the satellite office as the primary server, and sets up the backup/mirrored webserver over at the main corporate office. If the webserver goes down, or the secure order HTTPS protocol stops responding, or even if the DSL line dies at the satellite office, the service moves the website over to the backup server at corporate, all within a maximum time of 2 minutes. Amy can sit back and relax and work on the main server because she knows her customers can still place orders via the backup.