3.4.0 Matrix Server Administration Guide

Chapter 3: Configure Servers 41

Migrate Existing Servers to Matrix Server

In Matrix Server, the names of your servers should be different from the

names of the virtual hosts they support. A virtual host can then respond

regardless of the state of any one of the servers.

In some cases, the name of an existing server may have been published as

a network host before Matrix Server was configured. You can either

reassign the public name of the server to the virtual host, which is

generally the better solution, or keep the published name associated with

the server.

• Migrate the existing server name to a virtual hostname. In this case,

you will need to assign a new name to the server. External sites that

then access the original server name will actually be served by the

virtual host—basically, a failover-protected version of the server, with

no difference in appearance to the clients.

• Keep the existing name on the server. If you do not rename the

server, clients will need to use the new virtual host name to benefit

from failover protection. Clients can still access the server by its name,

but those requests are not protected by Matrix Server. If the server

fails, requests to the server’s hostname fail, whereas requests to the