John Plemons wrote:
The web machine uses a PHP shopping cart running atop MySQL, all of the main and important information is kept as a part of the MySQL DB. So the main thing I would want to mirror is the application and the DB. I'm a surplus dealer, so hardware isn't a big issue, I have extra servers that can be up in a couple of hours without any big layout of money. I'm just looking for the best way to keep down time to a minimum and as always to KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid. Simple to manage, simple to maintain...
Use rsync for the PHP files and read up on setting up mysql replication, endless howtos and stuff out there for doing that. Keep the slave db server in read-only mode until you need to fail over to it, flip the read-only bit and restart, off you go..
nate