Bluecoat Health Monitor

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

Thanks for the reply Hamish. I will try this out.

 

 

Regards

 

Charlie

 

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 ?

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

 

 

 

 

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

 

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.