Forum Discussion

Charlie_Cliffor's avatar
Charlie_Cliffor
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Apr 26, 2010

Bluecoat Health Monitor

Hi,

 

 

This is probably more of a Bluecoat question than F5. But has anyone had experience setting up Health Monitors on the LTMs for Bluecoat 510 Proxys.

 

 

I am load balancing two Bluecoats located on different sites and connected to separate ISPs . I need a LTM health monitor to check that upstream Internet connectivity from each Bluecoat is available.

 

 

Bluecoats do have their own health checks to check this, but does anyone know how to create a health monitor for the LTM to act on this info.

 

 

Thanks

 

Charlie Clifford

 

management
monitoring
  • Hamish's avatar
    Hamish
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Apr 27, 2010
    Yes... I setup and looked after the monitoring for bluecoat devices from F5's for a few years at a previous position. Basically we had multiple monitors... Firstly an ICMP monitor on the node itself (Which I usually configure as the default). Just to ensure connectivity was there (Because it can timeout quickly compared to an HTTP check). Then you have X number of HTTP checks that run via each of the F5's. We used several sites that were heavily hit by our users. e.g. news.bbc.co.uk, a few of our own websites and several others.

     

     

    Then set a MINIMUM number of monitors that have to be up... e.g. 1. So if one website goes down, your F5 still gets used...

     

     

    Oh, I had a thought... You could also set these monitors to be inline maybe... Although I haven't tried, YMMV...

     

     

    H
  • Charlie_Cliffor's avatar
    Charlie_Cliffor
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Apr 28, 2010
    Just a quick question.. The HTTP monitor assumes a GET for the local node. How do I set up a monitor to go to e.g. www.google.co.uk via the Bluecoat node ?
  • Cspillane_18296's avatar
    Cspillane_18296
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Apr 28, 2010
    Hello Charlie,

     

     

    this can be achieved with transparent monitors.

     

     

    A few bits for you to read that explain this feature in detail:

     

     

    https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/LTM_config_guide_943/ltm_monitors.html1215697 (monitors in 9.4.x)

     

     

    https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/8000/900/sol8971.html (transparent ICMP monitors)

     

     

    If you have trouble accessing these or they don't make sense, let me know and I will post more information here for you.

     

     

    Thanks,

     

     

    Chris

     

     

     

     

  • Hamish's avatar
    Hamish
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Apr 28, 2010
    The basic send sequence for using a proxy is

     

     

    GET http://www.google.co.uk/

     

     

    It's just a standard URL instead of a server specific URI. The you need to add whatever headers your proxy requires... e.g. proxy auth etc (Although we used to mark the self IP of the F5's to not require authentication). What you test for in the return is up to you... Pick something that looks like it won't change (Or you'll be playing catchup).

     

     

    H

     

  • Charlie_Cliffor's avatar
    Charlie_Cliffor
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Apr 29, 2010
    Thanks Hamish..

     

     

    All sorted. I used the following (bbc site in this case) :-

     

     

    GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: news.bbc.co.uk\r\nConnection: Close\r\n\r\n

     

     

    with a response of 200 OK

     

     

    I also disabled the self-ip's for auth on the Bluecoats to speed up the monitor process.