Running WordPress on-premise is great for control and performance, but if your home lab or self-hosted hardware goes down, your website shouldn’t go offline with it. In this guide, I’ll show you how I built a fully automated failover setup where traffic seamlessly moves from an on-prem server to AWS — and back — with no downtime.

The best part?
It uses tools you’re probably already familiar with:

• Coolify (on-prem & AWS)
• Route53 DNS failover
• A custom health check endpoint
• A lightweight PHP status script
• Zero manual intervention once deployed

Here’s how it works.

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🚀 Architecture Overview

For this example, we’ll use a fake domain:

examplefailover.com

And two WordPress servers:

Environment	Location	IP Address
Primary	On-Prem	10.10.10.10
Failover	AWS EC2	203.0.113.25

DNS is hosted in Route53, and SSL certificates are issued using the Route53 DNS-01 method.

Here’s the traffic flow:

1. Route53 checks the on-prem server’s health using a dedicated endpoint.
2. If healthy → traffic goes to on-prem.
3. If unhealthy → traffic automatically fails over to AWS.
4. When restored → traffic automatically returns to on-prem.

You get real-world high availability without running load balancers or Kubernetes.

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🔧 Step 1: Configure SSL on Both Coolify Instances

Both Coolify deployments (on-prem & AWS) need valid SSL certificates for:

examplefailover.com
www.examplefailover.com

Inside each Coolify instance:

1. Open Settings → Domains & SSL → ACME DNS Providers
2. Add your Route53 IAM credentials
3. Add domains to your WordPress app:
   • examplefailover.com
   • www.examplefailover.com
4. Click Enable SSL

Using DNS-01 validation means both servers can generate certificates no matter which one DNS currently points at.

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🔧 Step 2: Create a Reliable Health Check Endpoint

Using your homepage for health checks is risky. WordPress crashes, plugin errors, or PHP upgrades can accidentally trigger failover.

The fix is to build a dedicated health check endpoint that bypasses WordPress entirely:

https://examplefailover.com/healthcheck/index.php

Create the directory inside WordPress’s volume:

mkdir -p /var/lib/docker/volumes/<YOUR_VOLUME_NAME>/_data/healthcheck

Add a smart PHP health script:

/healthcheck/index.php

<?php
header('Content-Type: application/json');

$server_type = getenv('SERVER_TYPE') ?: 'unknown';

$response = [
    "status" => "healthy",
    "server" => $server_type,
    "hostname" => gethostname(),
    "ip" => $_SERVER['SERVER_ADDR'] ?? 'unknown',
    "time" => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
];

echo json_encode($response);

Tag each environment in Coolify:

On-Prem:

SERVER_TYPE=on-prem

AWS:

SERVER_TYPE=aws-failover

Now loading the endpoint returns clear JSON:

{
  "status": "healthy",
  "server": "on-prem",
  "hostname": "coolify-primary",
  "ip": "10.10.10.10",
  "time": "2025-12-07 14:33:12"
}

This helps you debug and verify which server is responding.

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🔧 Step 3: Create a Route53 Health Check

Go to:

Route53 → Health checks → Create health check

Use:

• Protocol: HTTPS
• Domain: examplefailover.com
• Path: /healthcheck/index.php
• Port: 443
• Request interval: 30 seconds
• Failure threshold: 3
• Optional string matching: healthy

If the endpoint fails, Route53 marks the server as UNHEALTHY.

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🔧 Step 4: Set Up DNS Failover in Route53

You will create two A-records for each domain, a primary and a secondary.

Root domain (examplefailover.com)

Primary (on-prem)

• Type: A
• Value: 10.10.10.10
• Routing policy: Failover → Primary
• Health check: Use the one created above

Secondary (AWS)

• Type: A
• Value: 203.0.113.25
• Routing policy: Failover → Secondary
• Health check: None

Repeat the same for www.examplefailover.com.

This ensures both root and www domain fail over correctly.

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✔️ Failover Behavior Explained

Normal Operation

Healthcheck OK → Route53 routes traffic to on-prem (10.10.10.10)

On-Prem Fails

Healthcheck FAIL → Route53 routes traffic to AWS (203.0.113.25)

On-Prem Recovers

Healthcheck returns OK → Route53 routes traffic back to on-prem

Visitors experience zero downtime — it’s seamless.

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💡 Why This Setup Works So Well

• Zero cloud load balancers required
• No need for highly available networking gear
• Coolify deploys identical apps in both environments
• DNS-01 SSL validation avoids certificate conflicts
• Dedicated health endpoint avoids WordPress false positives
• Route53’s global health check network ensures accuracy
• Failover is fast and automatic

This approach gives you “cloud-level high availability” with simple, inexpensive tools.

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🎉 Conclusion

Pairing Coolify with Route53 failover lets you build a robust, self-healing WordPress environment without complex infrastructure. Whether you’re self-hosting for fun or running a real production site, combining:

• on-prem hardware
• AWS failover
• automated SSL
• a dedicated health check
• and smart DNS logic

allows your site to stay online under almost any circumstance.