Cookie persistence via iRule

I think without a persistance profile, you will need to provide more information (cookie name, expiry time, etc) on the persist command.

Check out the examples on this page: Persist

Hm, I tried adding in some of the optional parameters (anything beyond 'persist cookie') as mentioned on that page, but still have the same issue.

Note: Items marked with  are meant to be replaced with a value. Arguments bracketed by [ ] are used to note they are optional. They should not be confused with Tcl command evaluation.

persist simple [] []       
persist source_addr [] []       
persist sticky [] []       
persist dest_addr [] []       
persist ssl []       
persist msrdp []
persist cookie [insert [] [] |
                rewrite [] [] |
                passive [] |
                hash  [ { []} []] ]
persist uie  []       
persist hash  []
persist carp 
persist none

   = The timeout in seconds.

So using this still throws the same error:

when HTTP_REQUEST {
        if { ([HTTP::path] contains "/xyz/") } { persist cookie insert BIGIP 0 }
    }

The persistence profile contains information about the persistence cookie. i.e. is it type Insert/Rewrite/Hash. Does it have a user-defined name? Is it encrypted? When does it expire?

The iRule command tells the BigIP to use cookie persistence... but it needs this extra information to actually do that. (You can pass some of these things via the persist iRule command, but not all.)

Thanks for the info, sfuerst.

Just noticed that same article says 'Note: The following persistence methods require a corresponding persistence profile be added to the virtual server: ssl, msrdp, cookie.' Sounds like there's no way around this then?

Thanks for again for the help so far.

I think I was overcomplicating this by assuming a default cookie persistence profile would take precedence over desired persistence behavior set in an iRule (specifically that the default persistence profile would be applied before parsing through the iRules). Looks like that was incorrect, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Using a configuration similar to what's below seems to work. With this, a cookie will only be set if you're hitting a URI of either /xyz/ or /abc/. Anything else won't use persistence (note the fallback persistence profile for source_addr shouldn't be required on the vserver).

Keep in mind this is config from a device on 11.4.1.

ltm data-group internal /Common/cookie_uris_datagroup {
    records {
        /xyz/ { }
        /abc/ { }
    }
    type string
}

ltm rule /Common/set_cookie_persistence {
    when HTTP_REQUEST {
    if { [ class match [HTTP::uri] contains cookie_uris_datagroup ] }
        { persist cookie }
    else
        { persist none }
}

ltm virtual /Common/my_server {
    destination /Common/192.168.1.100:80
    fallback-persistence /Common/source_addr
    ip-protocol tcp
    mask 255.255.255.255
    persist {
        /Common/cookie {
            default yes
        }
    }
    profiles {
        /Common/http { }
        /Common/tcp { }
    }
    rules {
        /Common/set_cookie_persistence
    }
    source 0.0.0.0/0
    source-address-translation {
        type automap
    }
    translate-address enabled
    translate-port enabled
}

this is what i understand Steven meant.

 configuration

[root@ve11c:Active:In Sync] config  tmsh list ltm virtual bar
ltm virtual bar {
    destination 172.28.24.10:80
    ip-protocol tcp
    mask 255.255.255.255
    persist {
        cookie {
            default no
        }
        source_addr {
            default yes
        }
    }
    pool foo
    profiles {
        http { }
        tcp { }
    }
    rules {
        qux
    }
    source 0.0.0.0/0
    source-address-translation {
        type automap
    }
    vs-index 13
}
[root@ve11c:Active:In Sync] config  tmsh list ltm rule qux
ltm rule qux {
    when HTTP_REQUEST {
  if { [HTTP::uri] starts_with "/test/" } {
    persist cookie
  } else {
     Use source address persistence by default
  }
}
}

 source address persistence

[root@ve11c:Active:In Sync] config  date; tmsh delete ltm persistence persist-records
Sat May 16 16:30:22 SGT 2015

[root@ve11c:Active:In Sync] config  date; curl -I http://172.28.24.10/
Sat May 16 16:30:25 SGT 2015
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 16 May 2015 08:11:08 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS)
Last-Modified: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 08:39:51 GMT
ETag: "41879c-59-2a9c23c0"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 89
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

[root@ve11c:Active:In Sync] config  date; tmsh show ltm persistence persist-records all-properties
Sat May 16 16:30:29 SGT 2015
Sys::Persistent Connections
source-address - 172.28.24.10:80 - 200.200.200.101:80
-----------------------------------------------------
  TMM           0
  Mode          source-address
  Value         172.28.24.13
  Age (sec.)    5
  Virtual Name  /Common/bar
  Virtual Addr  172.28.24.10:80
  Node Addr     200.200.200.101:80
  Pool Name     /Common/foo
  Client Addr   172.28.24.13
  Owner entry

Total records returned: 1

 cookie persistence

[root@ve11c:Active:In Sync] config  date; tmsh delete ltm persistence persist-records
Sat May 16 16:30:46 SGT 2015

[root@ve11c:Active:In Sync] config  date; curl -I http://172.28.24.10/test/
Sat May 16 16:30:52 SGT 2015
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 16 May 2015 08:13:30 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS)
Last-Modified: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:14:47 GMT
ETag: "420027-4b-925773c0"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 75
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Set-Cookie: BIGipServerfoo=1875429576.20480.0000; path=/

[root@ve11c:Active:In Sync] config  date; tmsh show ltm persistence persist-records all-properties
Sat May 16 16:30:55 SGT 2015
Sys::Persistent Connections
Total records returned: 0

I am very new to this but this looks like something that might help me if anyone could assist in clarifying what I would need to do...

I have an exchange server on our LTM running 11.5.3 and it has source address persistence working great for all users with the exception of a GOOD Mobile Messaging server that apparently the vendor says only works properly using cookie persistence.

I don't want to break Exchange by changing the persistence profile for all users but was wondering if there was a way to look at the source IP of the GOOD (GMM) server and change it to a cookie persistence profile instead. Is this along the same lines as the irule in this thread?

Does this mean I could assign both persistence profiles to the exchange VS and make source address persistence the default but use an irule to associate the GMM IP to a cookie persistence profile instead?

Any help is appreciated!