Can vB be made to ping another site before ...

[FUD]

Our server admin has been called away for several months and with him gone, we are experiencing a great deal of down time -- an hour here, a couple of hours there, etc.

I'm wondering if it is possible to:

1. Buy another vB license and install it on another server? ( ... should be no problem with doing that ...)
   
2. ( ... here's the hard parts ...) Configure vB so that when someone tries to use it (to either view or post), it will first check the primary site (by ping'ing or some other method which might be easier to program) to see if the main site is up.
   
   A. If the main board is up, then vB will forward the user to the main board.
   
   B. If the main board is down, then vB will allow the user to carry out the action (post or view).

I don't want to have both boards up at the same time because we already tried something like that a couple of years ago and it lead to confusion and a weakening of the board since the membership was split across the two sites and we were in effect competting with ourselves.

However, members are calling for a place to hang out during down time. I would envision the back-up site to just be a skelton site with a staff room and a single forum for the members.

Is this possible? Has something like this been done? Any comments / suggestions on how to do something like this would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.