What happens to the IP if my server's host crashes?

November 10, 2013 3.1k views
manuch
By:
manuch
I am a new customer thinking about migrating my VMs from Amazon EC2 to DigitalOcean. So far I'm pretty impressed with everything. Still, I have a question on my mind. Amazon has an explicit "Elastic IP" management page where you can get your IPs and assign them to your VMs. DigitalOcean doesn't have this. So here's what's been bothering me: what happens if for some reason the host where my VM is running crashes, becomes defective and is replaced with a new one? I will of course restore my VM from a backup/snapshot and all is good - but will I get a new IP? I'm planning on running a small web hosting, and changing the IPs of all sites because of a server crash sounds very complicated. How is this handled? Thanks for your help.
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2 Answers
pablo November 10, 2013
"... but will I get a new IP?"

No. You can keep your old IP, under the scenario you described.

"... changing the IPs of all sites because of a server crash sounds very complicated."

While it does sound complicated, it doesn't have to be if set up right; but, again, you will not have to assign new IPs simply b/c of a server crash.
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manuch November 11, 2013
Thank you, it's good to know that the IP doesn't change in this case.

But related to your answer where you say that "it doesn't have to be complicated" even if the IP changed: what do you mean exactly? I agree that I can use CNAMEs to point www hostnames to for my customer's domains. But how do you handle the domain apex issue? You can't redirect "domain.com" to a CNAME. You'd have to change those manually in the DNS. Or have you found a solution to this?
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