An IP you can transfer between servers

When you have a dedicated server with OVH, you have the possibility to get failover IPs to host your projects, SSL certificates, etc. The failover IP can be switched from one server to another in a few seconds. Therefore, a failover IP allows your hosting services to operate without any interruption and helps you overcome hardware failure issues, system overruns and all kinds of infrastructure problems. In order to take full advantage of the failover IP's power, your hosting services must be configured with the failover IP (as opposed to the server's static IP).
So if you switch the failover IP from one server to another, you keep the entire configuration linked to that failover IP. You are responsible for copying your projects and configuration files from one server to the other. Since the configuration files are linked to the failover IP, and therefore the data and configurations remain the same, everything will keep working once you have switched the failover IP to the new server. You don't need to reconfigure all your projects with the static IP of your new server.

Server change / Server upgrade

Your projects are on the dedicated server A (fixed IP A) and are configured to Failover Z.

You may order a new server if server A isn't sufficient to manage your projects. Here it is described as server B, with fixed IP B.

You need to make copies of your projects and configuration files from server A to B. Then...

... you can change the routing of IP Failover Z from server A to server B. Your projects' data, and configuration files assigned to the IP Failover on server B will continue to work without requiring any change in configuration (DNS, APACHE, SMTP, POP3, MySQL ...).

Working in a main server and a backup server

You have two servers: A and B. Server A is your main server, server B is your backup server.
Your projects are configured on failover IP Z, routed to server A. You can regularly copy your projects from server A to B.

When server A is down, you can switch the routing of failover IP Z from server A over to server B. Server B is operational again and it gives you time to fix server A.

When server A is fixed, you will copy the data of server B over to server A then switch again the Z failover IP routing from server B over to server A. Server A will then be operational again.

This configuration has two advantages:

• It enables you to back up the data on server A
• You can use server B if server A goes down

Hosting several projects

If you manage a large number of websites, you can host them on server A by using 2 failover IPs. Some of your websites will be assigned to IP Failover Y and the rest to Z.

When server A isn't powerful enough to host the websites for failover IPs Y and Z, you can get a new server B, then only switch the routing of failover IP Z over to server B. Server A is thereby being relieved from part of its workload and is once again operational.