Creating an Elastic Load Balancer

You can use the AWS Management Console to create an ELB and add EC2 instances to it. Steps for doing this are as follows:

Steps:

1. Log in to the AWS Management Console and click Load Balancers.
2. Click Create Load Balancer.
3. Type a load balancer name, then choose the ports and protocols to be used by your load balancer.

   The Common Applications drop-down list helps you find out the ports and protocols for some common web server configurations. You don't have to use one of these applications, however. What's most important are the values you set for Protocol, Load Balancer Port, and EC2 Instance Port.

   When you've finished setting these values, click Continue.

   Note:

   You cannot save a configuration that is identical to one already in the list. Attempting to save the Common Applications configuration for Microsoft IIS may result in an error because the settings are identical to those of the default choice Apache HTTP Server. If this happens and you want to use the default IIS ports and protocol, just click Continue.

4. Set the configuration options for the load balancer health check.

   Your load balancer periodically checks its attached instances to ensure they are still responsive. The checks are performed by pinging a page on the instance, by default /index.html, and determining whether a valid response was returned. You must either configure a page /index.html on your instances or change the value for Ping Path to a page located at an identical location on each instance. A good setting for Ping Path is a page related to your ArcGIS Server implementation, such as the REST URL of one of your map services.

   When you've finished configuring the health check, click Continue.

5. Click Continue to skip the wizard panel that adds instances to the load balancer. It's recommended that you configure the ArcGISServerStartUp.dat file on each instance before you add the instances to the load balancer. Before you can configure that file, the load balancer must already exist.

   You can add instances to your load balancer at a later time. You don't have to add any instances right now to create the load balancer.

6. Review the information about your load balancer and, if necessary, go back and make any corrections. When you're satisfied with the configuration options, click Create to create the load balancer.
7. Click Close to close the wizard.
8. Find your new load balancer in the Load Balancers section of the AWS Management Console. Note the DNS name of the load balancer. To take advantage of the load balancer, you should now include this in any URLs that you use to reference your ArcGIS Server.

Although you have created the load balancer, you still need to add it to the ArcGISServerStartUp.dat file so that it can be recognized by all relevant ArcGIS Server configuration files. You should now complete the steps in Referencing your Elastic Load Balancer in ArcGISServerStartUp.dat.