Deployment Guide for Blackboard and BigIP LTM?

Velhoon, I've got a document that I've been working on. If you are still interested let me know.

 

 

It involves some iRule stuff and a stream profile to work.

I'd definitely need some guidance on this.

Hi, We've been load balancing Blackboard with the BigIP for a while now.

 

 

I've got a small blog that I don't update, but there are links to the PDF file that describes our setup in great detail.

 

 

https://mysite.uky.edu/personal/njmccl0/Blog/default.aspx

 

 

We have 6 app servers and 2 collab servers.

 

 

Let me know if you have any questions at all.

I've seen a few cases now where this issue has come up and the deployment guide has not worked for these customers.

 

 

All of these cases were using 9.4.x, so we were able to resolve the problem by removing the substitution iRule and just using a custom stream profile to change every instance of source "http://host.domain.edu" to target of "https://host.domain.edu". This keeps any correct external site links from being substituted, but will properly change all of the absolute URLs being used by Blackboard. The other key to this approach is to use rewrite redirect on the http virtual server and simply have all traffic destined to there be redirected to the https vip.

 

 

This approach has worked every time. The only issue one customer had with this is that they had to adjust the way MS Office documents were being served on the back end server and he said it was very simple to change (didn't get the details on that).

 

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

Jeff

The iRule does something important that fixed several problems. If the stream profile is allowed to modify binary documents, then the internal checksum of the document will be off and be considered corrupt.

 

 

If you have somebody that uploads a Word file that has a link in there that points to the http://server.edu then the stream profile will modify that, causing issues.

 

 

We also had instances where Flash and other formats wouldn't work right in certain browsers.

 

Hi

 

Been asked to deploy black board application, on 2 3400s in HA pair running web accelerator, have no idea about it. Can someone guide me in right direction asap?

 

Cheers.

Hey, i'm happy to help you out. I've got my deployment guide linked up earlier in the thread, here is the url to download the PDF:

 

 

https://mysite.uky.edu/personal/njmccl0/Blog/Shared%20Documents/Blackboard%20and%20F5_v2.pdf

Thanks for the reponse very good document. I am new to this application and have some questions below, would appreciate if you answer...

 

 

1-What are Collaboration servers

 

2-we dont have ramcache is it ok?

 

3-on page 10 is there any configuration on stream profile? & why its needed

 

4-Should i leave the cookie name to session_id ? & use Cookie hash is this standard setup for blackboard

 

5-could you give more information on iRules, like more configuration of matchclass?

 

6- i dont understand 3rd iRule

 

7-Can yo guide me on how this application works...?

Just wanted to let everyone know I've successfully deployed Blackboard 9.1.8 with BIGIP LTM 10.2.3 HF1.

 

 

There are some changes with the new version of Blackboard that make the currently available guides that reference the University of Kentucky config somewhat obsolete.

 

 

 

I'm still onsite but in the next few days I'll have updated documentation available.

 

 

 

In the mean time feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

 

 

 

-SP

 

 

 

PS: Blackboard isn't a Microsoft product so I believe this thread is mis-categorized. I've submitted a request for a new Topic Group titled: F5 Education Solutions. We'll see what happens.

 

Hey SP,

 

 

Any word on that documentation? I have an F5 load balancer to configure for Bb 9.1 SP8 soon, and I could really use some help.

 

 

Thanks!