If the weight of an endpoint in a standard accelerator is set to 0, Global Accelerator stops directing any network traffic to that endpoint. This effectively removes the endpoint from the traffic distribution without deleting or disabling the endpoint itself. The traffic that would have gone to that endpoint is instead distributed among other endpoints in the endpoint group that have weights greater than zero, proportionally to their weights[2][4][6].
Key details about setting an endpoint's weight to 0 include:
- No traffic is routed to the zero-weight endpoint: The endpoint remains part of the endpoint group but receives no traffic[6].
- Failover behavior: If all healthy endpoints in an endpoint group have weights set to 0, Global Accelerator attempts to fail over to healthy endpoints with weights greater than zero in other endpoint groups (other AWS Regions). If no such endpoints are found, it routes traffic to a random endpoint in the closest endpoint group to the client, effectively "failing open"[3].
- Health checks and weight interaction: Only healthy endpoints with weights greater than zero receive traffic. If health checks are enabled, unhealthy endpoints are excluded from traffic routing regardless of their weight. If health checks are disabled, traffic is distributed based on weights even to unhealthy endpoints, but repeated failures cause redistribution[6].
- Use cases: Setting an endpointâs weight to 0 is useful for stopping traffic to an endpoint temporarily, such as during maintenance or phased deployments (canary releases), without removing the endpoint from the configuration[6].
- Default weight: By default, endpoints have a weight of 128 (half of the maximum 255), and weights can be adjusted between 0 and 255 to control traffic proportions[2][6][7].
In summary, setting an endpoint's weight to zero in a standard accelerator instructs Global Accelerator to exclude that endpoint from receiving traffic, while still keeping it configured and available for future use or failover scenarios. Traffic is then redistributed among other endpoints with nonzero weights, ensuring controlled and flexible traffic management[2][3][6].
Citations:
[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/about-endpoints-endpoint-weights.html
[2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/about-endpoints-endpoint-weights.unhealthy-endpoints.html
[3] https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/doc-detail/2833690.html
[4] https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/ga/use-cases/use-one-ga-instance-to-accelerate-access-to-multiple-https-capable-domain-names
[5] https://hands-on.cloud/aws-services/global-accelerator/
[6] https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/ga/user-guide/overview-4/
[7] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/about-endpoints-adding-endpoints.html
[8] https://github.com/jtouzi/globalaccelerator-and-autoscaling
[9] https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/globalaccelerator/add-endpoints.html
[10] https://dev.to/aws-builders/how-to-assign-static-ip-on-application-load-balancer-using-aws-global-accelerator-4chf
[11] https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/2.4.18/reference/globalaccelerator/index.html