Thanks for the interesting insights everyone. I'll definitely look at your suggestions. And yes, the data center is off-site so that means the servers will be on a different network. On 8/25/07, Warren Young <warren at etr-usa.com> wrote: > Brian Mathis wrote: > > > > Messing with DNS is really the wrong way to go on this. You'd be > > forcing all of the DNS servers involved to start messing with their > > caches, update more frequently, etc.., pushing the problem out onto > > "everyone else", and you have no control over any of it really. Cache > > time is only a suggestion, and not all DNS servers follow it. > > The only moral of this story is that you can't control everything. That > doesn't mean you shouldn't do what you can to speed the changeover. > > Temporarily lowering the DNS cache time for a server during a time of > change is well established practice. The only problem is that it'll > increase the load on the primary name servers for that domain. That's > the best argument for it being temporary. > > > The way to go is to assign that same IP address to another box during > > maintenance, and have that box show the page. > > The original poster did not explicitly say so, but the impression I got > is that this "data center" is off-site, and possibly managed by a third > party. Letting multiple machines handle a single IP only works within a > single physical site. When multiple sites are involved, the only way to > move an IP is to change global routing rules, which is more fraught with > problems than the DNS change-over, which you already don't like. > > I guess theoretically you can have a single IP at multiple sites, with > both routes being advertised as viable, but this will cause chaos as > half the packets go one direction and half go the other. "Don't cross > the streams" indeed. -- Stand before it and there is no beginning. Follow it and there is no end. Stay with the ancient Tao, Move with the present.