Amazon Elastic Load Balancers and ArcGIS Server

Creating an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) is a way to scale out your ArcGIS Server deployment to handle more users. An ELB unites multiple Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances under a common web address. You can then harness the power of all the instances under the load balancer to respond to requests.

In the case of ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2, each instance beneath the ELB should be identical. You should ideally create the ELB before you begin launching the instances you will attach to it. Each instance should have an ArcGISServerStartUp.dat file that points at the load balancer DNS name.

The suggested workflow is as follows:

1. Create an ELB.
2. Launch one EC2 instance with ArcGIS Server.
3. Load your data and applications on the instance.
4. Place an ArcGISServerStartUp.dat file on the instance and point it to your ELB. Stop and start the instance once you have finished.
5. Create a custom AMI from your instance.
6. Use the custom AMI to launch one or more instances.
7. Add your instances to the ELB.