Help: Initiating a script on a server from another server...

From: Sam Pinizzotto (sam.pinizzotto_at_mail.tju.edu)
Date: 10/28/04 

Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 08:24:00 -0400

Can someone help a VERY amateur scripter with a couple tasks...?

I am trying to put together a solution for failing over a server when the
website of the main server goes down. I have the monitor script working and
it correctly monitors the live website for status using the get http
command. Once it recognizes a site is down, I want to call a script on the
server that has the down site, and switch the IP to a secondary IP address
(I wanted to just disable the static IP, but can't find the commands to do
this). Once that IP is switched, I will switch the IP on the secondary
server to the live IP address. This will automatically bring up the
secondary servers website as the live site and complete the failover. I have
tested this using command line tasks, but cannot figure out how to call the
script on the other server to disable the live IP address.

I would use a DNS change, but our site security people don't allow this
option. Also, a DNS change will take time to propagate through the net and
is not immediate. Binding the live IP to the failover machine, seems to be
the best and quickest solution avoiding website downtime.

Can anyone help?

Sam Pinizzotto
Thomas Jefferson University