How to make the website Ping ARR server and say I am going down?

Question

I have successfully configured the ARR in Windows Azure environment, the web server instances are added to server farm.

Using Health Check option in server farm, instance that timed-out or not responding is made unhealthy.

My Question is

1. Instead of the ARR web farm (doing health check every 10 seconds) ping the website, is it possible or the web role itself ping back the ARR server and say I am going down ?

2. Is it possible to ping the ARR Server from web role and say I am going down? or this is there any best approach available.

   Please suggest.

Answer 1

I wanted some extra notifications with our ARR setup and I put this PowerShell script together that runs once an hour and checks the health status and notify me via email when ever any hosting server was seen as unhealthy. We also use other outside resources that ping the web farm externally once an minute and alerts us when it can't be seen (Pingdom). I have a feeling you're looking for a little more than this but I hope it helps a little.

#----- First add a reference to the MWA dll ----#
$dll=[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.Web.Administration")
 
#----- Get the manager and config object ----#
$mgr = new-object Microsoft.Web.Administration.ServerManager
$conf = $mgr.GetApplicationHostConfiguration()
 
#----- Get the webFarms section ----#
$section = $conf.GetSection("webFarms")
$webFarms = $section.GetCollection()

#----- Define an array for html fragments ----#
$fragments=@()

#----- Check each webfarm ----#
foreach ($webFarm in $webFarms)
{
    $Name= $webFarm.GetAttributeValue("name");
    #Get the servers in the farm
    $servers = $webFarm.GetCollection()
    #Write-Host  "Farm Name: " $Name
    $fragments+= "<b>Farm Name: $Name</b>"
    $fragments+="<br>"
    foreach($server in $servers)
    {
         $ip= $server.GetAttributeValue("address")
         $hostname= ([system.net.dns]::GetHostByAddress($ip)).hostname
         #Get the ARR section
         $arr = $server.GetChildElement("applicationRequestRouting")
         $counters = $arr.GetChildElement("counters")
         $isHealthy=$counters.GetAttributeValue("isHealthy")
         $state= $counters.GetAttributeValue("state")
         switch ($state) 
         { 
                0 {$state= "Available"} 
                1 {$state= "Drain"} 
                2 {$state= "Unavailable"} 
                default {$state= "Non determinato"}
         }
 
        if( $isHealthy)
        {
            $isHealthy="Healthy"
            $fragments+="$hostname -- $ip -- $state -- $isHealthy"
            $fragments+="<br>"
        }
        else
        {
            $isHealthy="Not Healthy"
            $notHealthy="RED ALERT!! This is what we trained for!"
            $fragments+="$hostname -- $ip -- $state -- $isHealthy"
            $fragments+="<br>"

        }        
         #Write-Host -NoNewLine $hostname " " $ip " " $state " " $isHealthy
         #NEW LINE
         #Write-Host
    }
    #NEW LINE
    #Write-Host


    if($notHealthy){
    #write the results to HTML formated email
        
        $smtpServer = "SMTP server"
        $smtpFrom = "email address"
        $smtpTo = "email address"
        $messageSubject = "Unhealthy Web Server"

        $message = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage $smtpfrom, $smtpto
        $message.Subject = $messageSubject
        $message.IsBodyHTML = $true
        $message.Body = $fragments

        $smtp = New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)
        $smtp.Send($message)
    }

}