If you want to take advantage of AWS for spiky use, you need to automate the heck out of starting and stopping instances, redistributing requests to new machines, etc.
The thing is, this is not difficult to do with AWS:
$ ec2-run-instance ami zone --user-data-file spin-up-a-new-webserver.sh
...(you need to parse this for the instance id)...
$ elb-register-instances-with-lb $LOAD_BALANCER --instances $INSTANCE_ID
(In real life, use Boto (Python) or equivalent in your language.)
Once the new instance comes online and is legitimately serving up pages, the load balancer will begin redirecting requests to it.
This is why we use amazon - handling stuff like this is just a matter of calling their utilities.
The thing is, this is not difficult to do with AWS:
(In real life, use Boto (Python) or equivalent in your language.)Once the new instance comes online and is legitimately serving up pages, the load balancer will begin redirecting requests to it.
This is why we use amazon - handling stuff like this is just a matter of calling their utilities.