If there's no internet service

[christappan]

Re: If there's no internet service

I know nothing of it, but I remember reading a post on here related to SQLite and up- and down-time. Might help.

[cavj1]

Re: If there's no internet service

Questions...are each of the applications hosted in house by the customer? Are you hosting them for the customer? If your hosting and that is a requirement then you should move them to a service provider that provides you with a managed server for your use. Think of something like Rackspace where they provide you a server in the cloud. These companies are fully redundant and should provide you with what you need.

If that is not an option then you need to have redundant internet connections. It cannot be two cable pipes, it must be from different carriers using different technologies. For example. We bring in 2 20MB Fiber pipes. Each comes out of a different CO on different carriers. Then for extra resiliency we use a standard cable connection. You'll need a firewall that can handle multiple pipes and be capable of putting the different circuits in a HA pair.

[Chet Sapino]

Re: If there's no internet service

I have two customer suddenly with important apps that will likely need to make accommodations for a loss of internet service, for a day or few days. Most of these interruptions can be "planned" with today's weather forecasting but not every one of them.

I Googled around, and didn't really find much on a strategy to deal with this. So, my question:

Are there ideas, schemes, things others have done to help keep users of a web-based database system working until the 'net comes back up? Then, of course, update the data when service is restored?

The best thing I can think of is a desktop/laptop A5 app that makes it easy for the user to download the critical stuff for any expected outage, then makes it easy to upload new/changed data afterwards.

You can probably use replication. When the internet server comes back on line it can catch up with a Master server running elsewhere with the latest data. The slave would have to be the internet server and the master database located on another server. You can do this with MySQL. I have three MySQL servers - One Master running with two slaves. I'm entering data on the Master which is up all the time. The two slaves are shut down periodically. When they come back on line they catch up to the master. All three databases are in sync. I don't have to run any code to do this. It is virtually automatic. Pretty easy to set up.

You have to be careful you define the replication users on the slave and Master as DBA's temporarily, if you are developing an application on the Master.

[Steve Workings]

Re: If there's no internet service

Thanks for everyone's thoughts on this.

In both of these cases, the apps feature terrific mobile capability, thanks to A5. Our current thinking is that in nearly every circumstance, *some* mobile connection will be available -- if not through an iPad's AT&T service then through a smartphone's "other" service. Then we just need the rest of the 'net and ISP to be up, and we have good experience with that already. So, for now we're doing nothing different but I wanted to cast a net to see what else we might consider.

[Tbrondolo]

Re: If there's no internet service

Steve,

I've used mobile broadband modems for short outages. The ones I use all provide up to five wifi connections, the only thing is that your client systems have to be on Wifi or you have to do a bridge between the existing router and the Wifi modem. Otherwise I would think a local server with database replication services running to the main server.

Tom