Backup Webserver

[Tripple]

I'm not sure where to put this question, so I try it here.
Thanks to this site I learned how to setup a backup MX record for a mailserver. The second server just holds the mail untill the first server is back online.

Does something like that exists for a webserver? What I mean is, when a webserver goes down, can I forward to another server showing a 'sorry' page? Maybe with a dns record? The second webserver doesn't have to have a backup of the site, just one page for all requests.

[falko]

Maybe you're looking for something like this?
http://www.howtoforge.com/high-availability-load-balancer-haproxy-heartbeat-debian-etch
http://www.howtoforge.com/haproxy_loadbalancer_debian_etch
http://www.howtoforge.com/load_balancing_apache_mod_proxy_balancer

[Tripple]

Not really.
This is not what I'm looking for:
and two (or more) backend Apache web servers that hold the same content.
I just want a page saying 'Sorry, this server is not available at the moment. Try again later.' (Or something like that).

In my own server room I change the settings of my router when I want to shut down a server. All requests on port 80 are forwarded to the same server with a sorry page. But I have no access to the router for my servers in the datacenter. When one of them should go down, never happened before :-), sites wont be available at that time. I don't like that.

[falko]

Maybe you can still use heartbeat for it, but on the webservers. If webserver2 detects that webserver1 is not responding, it jumps in and delivers the sorry page.

[Tripple]

Yes, maybe it should work that way. Let's Google.

thanks