Adding another Front End Server

Objective

The E2E Gaming Deployment only has one front end Server built out by the shared macro.  In production, we recommend having two front end Servers for failover and load balancing.  This tutorial will walk you through the basic steps to get an additional front end Server up and running in your Deployment, each with its own Elastic IP (EIP). 

Note:   Please consult the referenced tutorials for additional details (if needed).

Prerequisites

A Deployment that is up and operational as a result of executing the E2E Gaming macro.  You should have (at a minimum) a running master and slave database Server, and a front end Server.

Note:  Although this tutorial was created to supplement the E2E Gaming macro/tutorial, the steps can be used for guidelines in other Deployments.

Steps

1. Create two new Elastic IPs (EIPs).
   1. One for each of your front end Servers (FE1 and FE2)
   2. See Create Elastic IPs for additional details (if needed)
2. Clone the existing front end Server.
   1. Rename it to FE2.
   2. You should now have a FE1 and FE2 (or names similar to this)
3. Log into your DNS Made Easy (DME) account.
   1. Create two new A records, using your new EIPs.
   2. For example, create "www" and point it to the first EIP.  Create another "www" and point it to the 2nd EIP.  (Leave DDNS off.)
   3. See the Add A Record Step in the Domain Setup with DNSMadeEasy tutorial for additional details (if needed)
4. Assign an EIP to your running FE1 Server
   1. Navigate to the public URL based on your DME setup.  For example, www.example.com.  You should see your application (or the phpBB application)
   2. Run the following command several times:  NSLOOKUP www.example.com  (You should see the same DNS resolution to the EIP assigned to your FE1 Server every time.)
5. Assign your other EIP to the other FE Server.
   1. Make sure "associate EIP at launch" is checked
   2. Launch your FE Server
      
      Note:   Once the server is operational and things have settled, running the NSLOOKUP command several times over should produce alternating results each time.  (EIP 1, EIP 2, EIP 1, ...)  This is because a boot RightScript has added the other front end Server to the HAProxy load balancing pool. 

Post Tutorial Steps

Note that even though the second FE Server is operational, if you navigate to its public URL in our phpBB application example, you will see the Introduction page (not the bulletin board application itself).  This is the page where you can start the installation process.  Normally, you would update your ServerTemplate to include the installation of your application.  In our phpBB example, this is still a manual operation. 

Note:  If you refresh your browser several times on the phpBB bulletin board example, you might expect to alternate between the phpBB application (which was installed and running on FE1) and the Introduction page (on FE2).  However, this is not the case because of the TTL. The default TTL on your A Records in DME is 1800 seconds (30 minutes).  You can of course force going to FE2 by using the EIP or the EC2 Public DNS URL in your browser address bar.