Basic Questions About Servers And Downtime

[ISR]

I have some very basic questions about what functions are lost or preserved when a server goes down. For instance, when a server goes down:

 

1) are people surfing the web able to access my site on the server?

 

2) am I able to access my account via ftp or Cpanel?

 

3) am I able to receive mail through POP3 or send mail through SMTP (if I've assigned TCH as my mail servers)?

 

I'm guessing the answer to all of these is "no". If the answer to 3 is no, what happens when someone sends me an email message and the server is down? Will the sender's message get bounced back to them? Or will it be held in some sort of electronic limbo until the server comes back up and then be sent to me?

 

Also, is the server for email the same physical server as that for the account's web site?

 

Finally, does TCH employ some sort of mirroring, such that if a server fails, requests to that server are automatically sent to a backup server without any noticeable break in service?

 

I apologize for all of the questions, but I couldn't find answers to them elsewhere on the TCH site or forums. I'm in no hurry for a response, but such information might be useful to novices like me in the rare event that our server goes down.

 

Thank you!

[TCH-Rick]

If a server goes down none of the services you have mentioned would be available until the server is back up.

 

As for the email, it really depends on the server sending the email. If your mail server is unavailable it should retry later. This is generally set up to retry for several hours if not days. The mail will be delivered when service is restored.

 

The mail server is the same physical server as your site server.

 

We do not have a mirrored server. Backups are made offsite so that if a server were to crash and could not be restored a new server can be brought online and the sites copied from the backup.

[ISR]

Thank you very much for your helpful answers!