Expanding web service across multiple servers on same domain name

Question

I have a web service that serves widgets. It is hosted on a server under server1.mydomain.com. (Linux, plesk, VPS)

I would like to have more physical servers which will be accessed via server2.mydomain.com etc. Note that its actually the same domain name pointing to another physical server. This configuration also has to support SSL.

My questions are:

1. Can this be done using DNS configuration?
2. What are the DNS settings of both servers required to achieve this?
3. Can SSL certificate be applied to different servers with same domain name as described above? Can it be done with multiple subdomains SSL certificate?

Thanks!

Answer 1

This could be done with a round robin DNS configuration, but this technique offers significant drawbacks, and I strongly recommend you look into alternatives for load balancing.

There are a number of available load balancing solutions, appliance or software, commercial or open source, most if not all of which will support SSL. Try posting this on Server Fault to get a community better suited for this type of question.

Answer 2

Can this be done using DNS configuration?

Yes. You can use a DNS provider like dnsmadeeasy.com to set up "A records" for each server. Each A record specifies the hostname like server2 and the IP address.

What are the DNS settings of both servers required to achieve this?

See above.

Can SSL certificate be applied to different servers with same domain name as described above? Can it be done with multiple subdomains SSL certificate?

Yes. You'll need to buy a wildcard certificate. http://www.digicert.com has reasonable prices on wildcard certificates. You can install the cert on any server using your domain.