Amazon EC2 Win 2008 r2 server starts and stops daily, redirect during off hours

Question

Ok. So this is my plan. I'll have a micro instance run a batch file to start the server at 6AM and stop the server at 10PM. The micro instance will be on all the time so I could leverage the webserver on that machine. I would like to inform the user that the service requested isn't available outside of those times.

Can't find the answer to this because most servers don't turn off/on daily.

How I set up the script to run on the micro server http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/arcgisserver/archive/2010/10/20/Introduction-to-scripting-with-Amazon-EC2.aspx

Thanks for your help in advance.

Answer 1

You the AWS Load balancer (Details here: http://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/) and put both servers in the pool, when the largest instance shuts down, all load will hit the micro and hence show the page you want.

Answer 2

This will require that your DNS host supports dynamic updates to the DNS server via a script so that you can change the DNS to point to the new server before you shutdown the other instance.

I'm not sure if Amazon supports active/passive load balancing but if they do you could use their load balancing service to do that with the bigger instance as the primary. This may be more expensive than keeping the other instance online through the night.

Answer 3

What about directing users to the micro server webserver which runs a redirect, but only after a successful ping, to the larger server? In the event of an unsuccessful ping the user would be sent to an error screen on the micro box.

No idea how to set this up.