Deploy High Availability WordPress with Quick Start in InMotion Central

Introduction

A WordPress site on one server goes offline whenever that server does. A high availability setup spreads the site across several servers, so one failure doesn't take it down. Building one by hand means load-balanced web servers, shared storage for uploads and plugins, and a replicated database.

The High Availability WordPress Quick Start template in InMotion Central builds all of it in one step. It creates five Ubuntu 24.04 LTS servers: two web servers running WordPress behind a public load balancer, and three database servers in a MariaDB Galera cluster behind a private load balancer. Uploads, plugins, and themes are kept in sync between the web servers with GlusterFS.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to deploy the site, sign in, and confirm every part is working.

Steps to Deploy the High Availability WordPress Template

1. Open Quick Start in Your Cloud Project

1. Log in to InMotion Central and select Projects from the left navigation bar.
2. Open your cloud project and click Quick Start in the project sidebar.
3. Locate the High Availability WordPress template card and click Deploy.

2. Configure Your Deployment Settings

In the Deploy High Availability WordPress dialog, review or customize the settings:

Basic

• Stack name: Enter a name for this deployment (for example, wordpress-ha). Use letters, numbers, dots, underscores, or hyphens.
• Base name: Enter a prefix for the servers and load balancers (defaults to wp-ha). The servers are named wp-ha-web-1, wp-ha-web-2, and wp-ha-db-1 through wp-ha-db-3.
• Image: Choose Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
• Flavor: Choose a flavor with about 2 GB of memory (for example, gen2.micro). All five servers use this size.

Application

• Site title: Enter the name of your site (defaults to My WordPress Site).
• Admin user: Enter the username for the WordPress administrator (defaults to admin).
• Admin password: Enter a strong password for the administrator account.
• Database password: Enter a password for the database user WordPress connects with.

Networking

• Public network: Keep External selected. The website's public IP address comes from this network.
• If your project already has a private network, select it from the Private network dropdown.
• If your project does not have a private network yet, InMotion Central offers to create a Private Network + Router deployment first, using the prefilled subnet (192.168.10.0/24) and DNS servers (1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8).

• Private network CIDR: The address range allowed to reach the database, file replication, and web ports (defaults to 192.168.10.0/24). Use the same range as your private network.

SSH

• SSH key: Select an existing SSH key, click Generate New Key, or click Paste Public Key. You need a key to sign in to the server.
• SSH whitelist: Confirm the comma-separated IP addresses or CIDR ranges allowed on port 22 (prefilled with your current public IP address). Leave this field empty if you want port 22 closed.

Only the web load balancer has a public IP address. To SSH to the servers, connect from inside the private network and include your private network range (for example, 192.168.10.0/24) in the whitelist.

3. Launch and Monitor Your Deployment

1. Click Deploy (or Create Network And Deploy if you are creating a private network at the same time).
2. Scroll down to My Deployments at the bottom of the Quick Start page to track progress.
3. Wait about 10 to 15 minutes while the five servers boot, the database cluster forms, the shared file storage is set up, and WordPress installs. When setup finishes, the Status column for wordpress-ha changes to CREATE_COMPLETE.

4. Copy Your Site's Address

1. Next to your wordpress-ha deployment under My Deployments, click Outputs.
2. Copy the site_url value. This is your site's address on the web load balancer's public floating IP address. The outputs also show floating_ip and db_cluster_address (the private address of the database load balancer).

How to Know the Installation Was Successful

1. Open a browser and go to the site_url. Your new site loads with its title and a Hello world! post.
2. Go to the site_url followed by /wp-admin and sign in with the admin user and password you chose.
3. Upload an image to the Media Library. Because uploads are shared, the image loads no matter which web server answers the request.

What Was Automatically Set Up

• Two web servers (wp-ha-web-1 and wp-ha-web-2) running Apache, PHP, and WordPress, kept on separate physical hosts.
• A public load balancer on port 80 that sends visitors to both web servers and stops using one that fails its health check.
• Shared WordPress files: the wp-content folder (uploads, plugins, and themes) is a GlusterFS volume replicated between the two web servers, with a small tie-breaker copy on wp-ha-db-1.
• Three database servers (wp-ha-db-1 through wp-ha-db-3) in a MariaDB Galera cluster, kept on separate physical hosts, behind a private load balancer on port 3306.
• A firewall that allows HTTP only through the load balancer, database and file replication traffic only from your private network range, SSH (port 22) only from your whitelist, and ping.