We currently use an EC2 instance to host an Ignition license. This instance is only used to provide Perspective webpages to users and we call this our FE server. We have several backend EC2/Ignition instances that collect and historize data from of remote plants.
Our user based is growing and so I need to scale out the FE perspective component of the system. Are there any special considerations I need to concern myself with if I create a new EC2 instance with Perspective loaded on it, and connect it to a load balancer? How will the session data be handled? Do I still need to configure the two instances as a primary and backup? Any other information will be appreciated.
While I've never set up load balancing with Perspective, I can tell you that you will not be using primary and backup, and if you're trying to scale out, you won't need redundancy on them and will need to use full licenses on these instances.
Typically, the load balancer will try to use "sticky sessions" to make sure once a session is started on one server/FE that the load balancer will keep that client connected to the same FE server throughout the session lifetime.
Yeah. The built-in Ignition redundancy feature is NOT what you want for load balancing Perspective. I went down that path briefly and tried to explain some of my pain over in this thread:
Your multiple FE servers should have nearly identical configs, not be aware of each other, but all talk to the backend Ignition servers via the gateway network.
You will want the AWS load balancer to be sticky in some form. You can use a simple one based on just source IP, but you can get fancier and look for the JSESSIONID cookie if you want.