Fail Over ideas for a single server

[brianep]

Howdy all, I was really into IT and web development 10 years ago. over the past decade I haven't really put a lot of effort in it after I left. So... I started an accounting firm recently. I have one server that has windows 2012r2 with IIS (running owncloud and our web site). It also has a copy of quickbooks on it as a back-up. If this server goes down and our staff needs to get on it could mean bad news for us, of course.

I have been trying to figure out what the best solution for a fail over system might be. I don't have ton of time to work on it but I am hoping to build the system myself. I would like to have a Amazon EC2 system to act as a backup that automatically starts once if the server crashes. I have looked into chef but I am worried I might be headed down the wrong path. Any thoughts and ideas would be helpful.

 

[carnageX]

A RAID system would also be a good choice for a server so you can get back up in case of drive failure. That and weekly (monthly?) image backups of the system, and daily/weekly backups of data (to a separate storage both onsite as well as offsite).

 

[brianep]

Thanks for the reminder. I forgot about the good ol' RAID option