How do I prevent the automatic failback in active-passive failover configurations with a Route 53 health check?

Short description

In active-passive failover configurations, a secondary resource is on standby if the primary resource changes to unhealthy. If the primary record's health check status changes from unhealthy to healthy, then Route 53 automatically changes the target to the primary record.

To manually fail back, revert the health check configuration or use weighted routing to change the record's weight.

Resolution

To check that the primary resource is healthy before the automatic failback to the primary resource occurs, change the health check configuration or use weighted routing.

Health check configuration

To prevent Route 53 from performing health checks, activate the Disable option in your health check. After you deactivate the health check, Route 53 regards the status of the health check to be in a healthy status.

Activate the Invert health check status option in your health check. As a result, Route 53 regards health checks to be unhealthy when the status is healthy, and then healthy when the status is unhealthy. For more information, see values that you specify when you create or update health checks.

To activate the Disable and Invert health check status options in your Route 53 health check, complete the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Route 53 console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Health Checks.
3. Select the health check associated with the primary record, and then choose Edit Health Check.
4. Choose Invert health check status, and then choose Disabled.

Fail back manually after you confirm that the health check associated with the primary record is healthy. To deactivate the Disable and Invert health check status options, follow the previous steps.

Weighted routing

Suppose you have a record that sets the primary resource as the destination that has a weight of zero. Also, that same record sets the secondary resource as the destination that has a nonzero weight. In this situation, Route 53 doesn't automatically fail back to the record that targets the primary resource.

Note: You can check the record's routing policy from Route 53 listing records.

Use weighted routing to prevent an automatic failback to the record that targets the primary resource. Set the weight of the record that targets the primary resource to zero. Then, set the weight of the record that targets the secondary resource to a nonzero value.

To change the weight of the record, complete the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Route 53 console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Hosted zone.
3. Select the hosted zone that contains the records to edit.
4. Select the record to edit, and then enter your changes in the Edit record pane.
5. For the record that target primary resource, set the value of Weight to zero. For the record that target secondary resource, set the value of Weight to a nonzero value.

After you confirm that the health check that's associated with the record that targets the primary resource is healthy, you can fail back manually. Change the weight of the record that targets the primary resource to a nonzero value. Change the weight of the record that targets the secondary resource to zero.

Related information

Editing records

Creating and updating health checks