Sysadmin Is there a Newb based tutorial on clustering servers?

Greetings,
I am a newb! However, with the help of the Lord I was able to successfully install Centmin mod. I thank the Lord for touching each one of you hearts to help me. However, I am wondering is there a newb based tutorial on how to setup clusters of servers, not only for geo-location but mainly for backup. As an online eCommerce store, I believe that it will be critical to have this setup or similar setup.

Specifically, the ability to have a master slave and a separate server to mitigate problems down the line. I ask because I believe that this would be a cost effective solution but do not quite yet understand how this would work in practice.

As a startup, I want to start off my business the right way but as of right now money is sparse, anyone know of some good tutorials for newbs?

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However, if that cannot be accomplished how can I use centmin with a failover ip based solution. I pray for the Lord's help in this regard.

 

Thanks, but I believe that through the Lord's help that I can do it. Any resources, I guess basically needing two servers not for load balancing as much as for backup just in case one server goes down as the software I use is known to glitch.

 

Well for the price it has very top level modules that I need to effectively lists products. For instance, they have a scanner module that I can scanner the barcodes and it will do a webscape of amazon and other websites. That alone it worth it. Not to mention that I have a significant amount of money invested in it already.

The problem with most software it that it is hosted by the company. This is an open source software that I can host on my on website and it is pci compliant. Seeing that I have had problems in the past with people overseeing my data, or should I say limiting access to my data, I would rather do it all in house. That is why I prayed about it and that is why, I am here.

X-cart is having a lot of bug issues because they are trying to fit a bunch of modules to work together with one another with a seamless install for the end user. However, up until this time I have been developing my site and honestly it has been frustrating the amount of error and crashes that has occurred. So much so that I want to protect the database even from myself entering products because it can glitch and cause the all the products to be lost.

The staff is helpful and shows a lot of love to me and other customers so I guess it also has to do with loyalty as they will go out of their way to help. At this point, I have to start over because there were so many glitches and the database of products and category items that I have are corrupted so when I place them inside of the cart they are not corrected structured in the program thus giving even more errors.

The software is very good but they just need to work out the kinks, it will be fine over time but in the meantime it is crucial to backup things that will save me from entering products and categories over again from scratch. That is frustrating; especially when you have the items in the excel format but know that they will not transpose to x-cart correctly.

So while I know what you will think, possibly what you will say but for the price, I can not beat it anywhere. This type of software would cost me multitudes more at other vendors and I have very little money. I love your website as I can read and take action. It has a database of actionable steps anyone can follow in order to have a fast and functioning server. I do not mind reading. Honestly, I read and the steps you take are actionable and you present them in an honest way.

For example, this website is great in the search engines because it is optimized to meet google standards. That is why I can create a forum talking about X-Cart or server and it jumps on the first page of Google. So I am not a fool, I see what you are doing and I take actionable steps to recreate it (What you are doing); while looking at my competitors who seemingly have little to no knowledge that this even exists in terms of server/website optimization. I thank you for the website but will have to implement a strategy before I enter 1000's of products in the database. I hope you understand. God bless you!

 

Thanks @SFLC what I expect is to have a fully backed solution that will be dependable. I start small as I am still developing the site but will increase as traffic does. I expect to have tremendous amount of traffic to my site but will upgrade accordingly. I guess I am not making it clear that I am not concerned as much about load balancing as much as not having a fatal error crash my site.

Just imagined you have a website with over 30,000 products that is also used as you retail pos system. If it goes down you pretty much have lost your business. So while I cannot say conclusively what setup will be the best for me at this time. I believe that it is most important to have the framework now established so I do not have problems in the future. Thus I would like to have it set up now and if traffic surpasses the threshold then it would be easy for me to upgrade to a new server; however, if I go barebones now without even looking at the possibility of backing up my servers and website at an enterprise level, I might as well not go into business.

Thus, I need to setup a fool-proof setup that will be future upgrade-able that I can do in house. My thoughts are:

• Daily backup of mysql database (Taken off site and sent to two hubic accounts)
  
• Daily backup of mysql database and files by X-Cart software (Taken off site and sent to two hubic accounts)
• Two servers with master/master or master/slave that has two hour delay just in case first server goes down and also for team to upload products without touching live site.
• Dev store to upgrade the modules and make sure things are working and any html or customizations needed to the site go without fail.

I believe that this setup will be beneficial and help to start and grow my business to be the top in its category. I may have to look at best practices with an eCommerce store but as a store who sells one off products and has a very high turnover the store will have constant updates of products and inventory. Thanks for you reply. God bless you!

 

For anyone inquiring, I have researched several options and by going with CRM (sales and customer data), PIM (Product information management), ERP (Enterprise resource planning) and it will allow me to have my product database and other things on another server without directly affecting the main site.

The names of the programs are:
Magento Magento Connect - The Magento Extension Marketplace
OROCRM https://www.orocrm.com
Akeneo Akeneo the Open Source PIM
and maybe an erp...

So instead of having two servers with replicating data, I will have a database of my products on another server that updates via api. The above software is open source. Although, I am having issues with Centmin Mod with the CRM and PIM, I believe that the Lord will take care of it. This is just an update if anyone else were unfamiliar with these programs as I was. God bless you!

 

Well, I have it installed it just not loading properly. Just have to troubleshoot it.. Takes some time. Thanks...

 

Thanks @Colin,

I will take that into consideration but you must understand that my depth of understanding of system admin is very limited. I took a class in high school I believe in DOS, maybe in 1996 or so. Through the Lord's help I can catch on quick but I am not able to setup a complex setup at this time.

As far as downtime versus revenue, I have made a backup script that backs up the database and the the file structure on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. I will consider writing a script that will be hourly that will delete every hour but I now only have a script to backup the site and database manually when I make changes. I have a simple script that does not work but will send the files to two separate hubics at different intervals. It works manually but the problem with the script is either the cron is wrong or I have a simple error but I have not found it.
Script

Code:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/rclone copy /home/nginx/domains/domain/backup hubic1:default/Backups

Cron

Code:

00 6 * * * /bash /root/tools/rclonecopya.sh && curl -fsS --retry 3 https://hchk.io/217dbf3b-cc62-43f9-b63c-xxxxxxxxxxxx > /dev/null

The pim and crm will be needed to take risks off the main site as I will have many barcodes and single products with high turnover. I will just have these programs backed up with the database only.

If I need to restore the website from backup it will take me about 15 minutes but if I have to renew the OS it would take considerable longer but around 1 hour.

What I am facing now is that the pim and crm seemingly is not compatible as Akeneo needs a lamp server and I have been trying to hack it to make it work on nginx; unsuccessfully. There is a docker image GitHub - theiconic/docker-nginx-akeneo: Akeneo PIM docker using Nginx but I do not have the ability to contain that in centmin mod at this time.

I have time but I do not have the money and I have had very bad experiences with outsourcing. Some of these programs can be utilized on webhosting platforms that automatically install but being at the hands of a middle man host is something I am not likely to go back to.

So due to my knowledge as a system admin I will have to learn to do these things but having three servers would have multiple points of failure, if I am not able to manage them. So at this point, I have to keep it simple but needing an enterprise solution if that makes sense. God bless you!