Let's say I'm using Amazon's EC2 load balancer. I have it hooked up to two instances (excuse me if my terminology isn't correct). What happens if the load balancer fails? Do both instances fail to work now?
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2Stuff explodes. – Josh K May 06 '10 at 04:32
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? – Dec 02 '10 at 04:50
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Typically load balancers are clustered together into a high-availability pair.
If one load balancer fails, the secondary picks up the failure and becomes active. They have a heartbeat link between them that monitors status.
If all load balancers fail (or are accidentally misconfigured), servers down-stream are knocked offline until the problem is resolved, or you manually route around them.
Chris Thorpe
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2+1 I bet in general: Misconfiguration > Hardware + Software Failure – Kyle Brandt May 06 '10 at 12:19
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Yes if the load balancer instances both fail the service is essentially dead. Note that amazons uptime includes up to 4 hours of downtime a year (99.95%)
Jim B
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