Survive a Server Failure with a Load Balancer

What you will build

A small highly available setup that shows which server answered each request.

Starting point: you only need a Vultr account. This challenge is self-contained, so you can do it without having done any other.

The plan

1. Deploy two instances and put a page on each that shows its own hostname
2. Create a Vultr Load Balancer in front of them
3. Configure a health check
4. Request the page repeatedly and show both servers answering
5. Stop one web server and keep requesting
6. Start it again and confirm it rejoins

for i in $(seq 1 20); do curl -s http://LB_IP/; done | sort | uniq -c

How you will be judged

• Evidence of traffic split across both servers
• Zero failed requests while one server is down
• Health check configured sensibly, with your reasoning

Destroy everything you created when you are done so you are not billed for it.