Does it make sense to have an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer with just one EC2 instance

Question

my question is simple. Does it make sense to have an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) with just one EC2 instance?

If I understood right, ELB will switch traffic between EC2 instances. However, I have just one EC2 instance. So, does it make sense?

On the other hand, I´m using Route 53 to route my domain requests domain.com, and www.domain.com to my ELB, and I don´t see how to redirect directly to my EC2 instance. So, do I need an ELB for routing purposes?

Answer 1

ELB automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple EC2 instances, in multiple Availability Zones. AWS free tier give one free EC2 microinstance and one free Elastic Load Balancer. 

ELB is mainly used when we are running multiple instances so there is no benefit in using ELB for single Amazon EC2 instance.

To point user domain name to any instance follow these steps:-

• Go to management console and select EC2
• In EC2 click on Elastic IP
• Allocate new address 
• Associate this new address with your EC2 instance
• Copy the assigned Elastic IP address and use it in your Route 53 sub-domain

Elastic IP is assingned to Users account.

  If user has an elastic IP in their account and its not in use then they will charge you additional amount.