Direct Server Return?

We've got two nodes external to the bigip (that is, they'd appear on the external interface/vlan) that we've got configured in a pool. We want to load balance requests to these nodes via a VIP on our BiP 3400 running 9.1.2.

 

My question is this: is it possible to do direct server return (or something similar to that) where the bigip merely monitors health and forwards requests to nodes, leaving the bigip out of the loop for the remainder of the transaction? (ie, the nodes respond to the client directly)

 

 

We've got configurations on ServerIron lbs with a 3rd party that do this--involves binding the VIP to the loopback on the nodes and some other foo, but I'm not sure how to accomplish this with the BigIP. is this doable in iRules somehow?

 

 

The key is we still want to monitor node health so we're not passing traffic to dead servers.

 

 

Any ideas?

 

 

Thanks!