Forum Discussion
NimbostratusStart AWS instances from the F5?
I wonder if it is possible start AWS instances from the F5, i give you an example, suppose you have 1 physical server and a backup in AWS, as AWS works on demand, the idea is to have it off until needed, then what i want to know is, is it possible that when the F5 monitor detects that the physical server have problems (is off for example), start the instance of AWS and start sending traffic there?
1 Reply
Daniel_EppersonEmployee
Hi Fabian,
Yes, this is possible in many ways. It probably wouldn't work exactly as you describe via monitors from just the BIG-IP, though that is possible too. More than likely you would involve an "orchestrator" such as BIG-IQ Cloud to handle interaction with the AWS API.
One suggestion from an older post here: https://devcentral.f5.com/questions/add-amazon-elbs-behind-a-f5-loadbalancer was to allow AWS CloudFormation (orchestration) to handle starting/stopping/monitoring the pool members (servers). Then you could have a script on the pool member itself that makes an API call to the BIG-IP to add it as a pool member when it is starting up. This would need to be carefully tested.
Another AWS-orchestrated method would be to use the DNS FQDN provided as the "front end" by AWS for the pool members to populate the BIG-IP pool members as described here: https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/ltm-implementations-11-6-0/32.print.html
Hope that helps.
