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I'm looking to transfer the ipaddress for my site from one ip address to another. Reading through the Register.com documentation it says that it may take awhile for the DNS changes to replicate/propogate.

Since this transition includes a different sql database, how do I force the update so I don't lose any data that may be add/updated during the transition period?

ganders
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1 Answers1

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Welcome to the web hosting shell game.

First, you can drop your dns TTL to something absurdly low -- we use 60 seconds when we are about to move things. That said, not everything honors your TTL value.

A lot depends on specifics but there are a few ways to do this. Probably the most effective would be to push the front end out to a proxy, have that proxy back-haul to your current site then, when ready, repoint the proxy at the new host. I would suggest using a service such as cloudflare as the proxy rather than handling it yourself.

Another approach would be to use a second, temporary domain name while things propigate. To do so setup your new app to listen on new.example.com as well as www.example.com; then when ready setup the old server to redirect all requests to new.example.com. Give it a day or so then setup the new server to redirect new.example.com to www.example.com so you keep a cannonical domain name.

Wyatt Barnett
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  • Thank you. I was planning on implementing CloudFare eventually, but was going to wait until I switched hosts. Sounds like I should do it for the transition... – ganders Oct 22 '14 at 15:48
  • Once CloudFare is configured, does that mean that the redirection will be immediate, instead of the 24 to 72 hours that it takes w/o CloudFare? – ganders Oct 23 '14 at 17:45
  • First, 24 to 72 is overblown at least in Europe/USA -- typically you will get 2x DNS TTL time effectively. Once you are cloudflare the update should be pretty immediate as you aren't changing dns but reconfiguring an nginx proxy at the end of the day. – Wyatt Barnett Oct 23 '14 at 19:42
  • Got signed up for cloud flare, just waiting for traffic now. Thanks for the recommendations! – ganders Oct 28 '14 at 12:40