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patrickb323_703's avatar
patrickb323_703
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Jun 11, 2009

Cross-domain sticky site question

 

Can the following requirement be implemented using F5? what would be involved? is this straightforward to implement and something commonly done?

 

 

Requirement: load balancer server assignment should be sticky across specified domains. I.e. a user should be assigned a single server in a cluster for his entire session regardless of different domain request URLs. The user should be able to make requests on domain1.com and domain2.com and be assigned the same server.

 

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We will run into cross domain browser restriction issues for sharing data across domains. But, this will be handled at the Java servlet level using redirects and a master/slave cookie domain and session management process.

 

 

I am not familiar with load balancers beyond the basic cluster concepts. I want to make sure that I am not making an outlandish assumption that this can be handled easily by a load balancer.

 

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  • L4L7_53191's avatar
    L4L7_53191
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    Jun 11, 2009
    How is the user's session going to be identified at the application layer? If you know how the sessions will be handled with the application it'll help identify your options with the BigIP. Normally I'd expect a JSESSIONID but I'm not sure it'll work across domains like this, at least barring some special configuration in the application.

     

     

    -Matt
  • patrickb323_703's avatar
    patrickb323_703
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    Jun 11, 2009

     

    We will be using jsessionid in the client cookie. We will be implementing a master/slave cookie domain model and series of browser redirects to achieve cross domain cookies at the application level. This process needs to occur on a single JVM . We can do it on a single server but for a cluster, I am worried about the load balancer routing the user to a new server during the browser redirect process.

     

     

    Basically we will be implementing the cross domain cookie provider pattern described in detail here: http://www.theserverside.com/patterns/thread.tss?thread_id=31258

     

     

    thanks, pat
  • L4L7_53191's avatar
    L4L7_53191
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    Jun 11, 2009
    In this case you may be able to simply use JSESSIONID persistence. Have a look at some of the (many) different options available to you via a quick search on this site. The good news is that you should be able to accomplish this across domains - the key bit is that we store a session table entry based on the cross-domain cookie.

     

     

    -Matt
  • SNU's avatar
    SNU
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    Mar 04, 2014

    Hi Matt,

     

    can you please provide the details for implementing the JsessionID persistence ?

     

    Thanks, Najeeb.