WPCloud.ca's WordPress Failover Service – Wpcloud

Understanding WPCloud.ca's WordPress Failover Service

Website downtime can be costly and disruptive. WPCloud.ca's Failover Service provides an extra layer of protection for your WordPress website, minimizing downtime and ensuring business continuity in the event of a server outage. This article explains how the service works, its requirements, and how it helps keep your site online. It is important to note that this service is in addition to our standard Disaster Recovery procedures.

What is Failover?

Failover is a backup operational mode in which the functions of a system (in this case, your WordPress website) are automatically taken over by a secondary system when the primary system becomes unavailable. This typically happens due to a server failure, network outage, or other unexpected event.

How Does WPCloud.ca's Failover Service Work?

Our Failover Service utilizes a combination of real-time replication and intelligent DNS management to provide near-instantaneous recovery from outages:

Replication: Your WordPress website (including files and database) is replicated to an offsite server located in a geographically separate data centre (different province). This replication occurs automatically every hour, ensuring that the backup server has a near-current copy of your site. This is done incrementally; only the changes are replicated.

Monitoring: We use Constellix, a leading DNS management platform, to continuously monitor the uptime and health of your primary WordPress installation. Constellix checks your site's status from multiple locations around the world.

Automatic Failover (Constellix Required): If Constellix detects that your primary website is unresponsive (down for between 1 and 5 minutes), it automatically updates your domain's DNS records. Specifically, the "A" record, which points your domain name to your website's IP address, is changed to point to the IP address of the offsite backup server. This directs visitors to the backup copy of your site.

Restoration: Once your primary server is back online and stable, Constellix automatically updates the DNS records again, pointing your domain back to the primary server. Your site is then served from its original location.

Key Benefits:

Minimized Downtime: Failover happens within minutes, significantly reducing the amount of time your site is unavailable.

Automated Process: The entire failover and restoration process is automated, requiring no manual intervention from you (if using Constellix).

Data Protection: Hourly replication ensures that you have a recent backup of your site ready to go.

Geographic Redundancy: Hosting your backup in a separate data centre protects you from localized outages.

Requirements and Considerations:

WPCloud.ca Hosting: This service is available for WordPress websites hosted on WPCloud.ca's platform.

Constellix DNS (For Full Automation): To take advantage of the automatic failover and restoration, you must use WPCloud.ca's fully managed Constellix DNS service. This is because Constellix is integral to the monitoring and DNS-level failover process.

Manual Failover (Alternative): If you choose to use a different DNS provider, you can still use the Failover Service, but you will be responsible for manually updating your DNS records (changing the "A" record) in the event of an outage. WPCloud.ca will notify you of an outage, but the failover itself will not be automatic. You will also need to manually point the DNS back to the main server, once it's restored.

Disk Space: The failover service includes 10GB of offsite storage. Additional disk space can be purchased in 10GB increments.

Restoration Back to Main Server: After a failover event, and restoration of the main server, the DNS will automatically be repointed to the main server. The latest version of the website is on the failover server, so any new content or changes will be migrated back to the main server automatically.

Pricing:

The Failover Service is an add-on to your existing WPCloud.ca hosting plan. Pricing is per. install, meaning each WordPress site.

Base Price (Includes up to 10GB): $17/month per. install

Additional Disk Space (Add-ons):

11GB - 20GB: +$5/month

21GB - 30GB: +$10/month

31GB - 40GB: +$15/month

41GB - 50GB: +$20/month

51GB+: Contact Us for a custom quote.

How to Enable the Failover Service:

To enable the Failover Service for your WordPress website, please contact our support team. We'll guide you through the setup process and answer any questions you may have.

WPCloud.ca's Standard Disaster Recovery:

It's important to understand that the Failover Service described above is an additional layer of protection beyond our standard disaster recovery procedures. All WPCloud.ca hosting plans include internal failover and recovery mechanisms. You can find more details about our standard DR policy here: WPCloud DR Process.

WPCloud.ca's Failover Service provides a robust and reliable solution for minimizing website downtime. By combining hourly replication with intelligent DNS management, we help ensure that your WordPress site remains accessible to your visitors, even in the event of a server outage. The use of Constellix is a requirement to utilize the automated features of the failover. This service, combined with our existing DR policy, gives your website a very high level of protection.