We need a solution to route web traffic from 1 web server to another.
We have 2 dedicated Windows 2008 Servers with our hosting company. 1st server is our main web server and the 2nd is a back-up server. We run multiple sites and have multiple IP addresses for the web server. The backup server has its own IP addresses.
We would like to be able to route traffic to the backup server in case the primary web server goes down.
In order to switch traffic to the backup server, we need to transfer the IP addresses from the web server to the backup server which is not ideal.
What would be the best solutions to quickly route traffic from the main web server to the backup server? The fancy solution would be an automatic fail-over but manual switch would work too.
Would a 3rd server acting as a load balancer be needed? Is a load balance overkill in this scenario?
I'm sure there is a fancy solution if you throw enough money at it but since we are a small company, the budget is tight.
One thing to note, we do have a 3rd Windows 2008 server which could be used as a load balancer.
Looking forward to your solutions.