Disabling a Pool Member for maintenance from the Server Side

Hello F5 DevCentral -

My Application and Database Teams have been requesting assistance with two issues.

1. Can they disable a server for maintenance and mark down the F5 health monitor when they work on the server?

    

2. Can they disable one web page from a node(server)? Then mark the page down under maintenance and somehow the F5 can exclude that web page from the pool? This might require an iRule I believe.

    

I have both Hardware and VE BIG-IP F5 LB's and I have reviewed both links below to answer 1, but when I completed all of the steps below the App and Database Team state question 1 is not working.

https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K12818 and https://devcentral.f5.com/questions/redirect-to-a-maintenance-page

Step 1 – Created Virtual Server with IP: 10.4.24.23. I have a VS with IP: 10.4.24.23 which is reachable and has multiple DNS A records (multiple FQDN’s) assigned to it by our InfoBlox Team.

[xxxxxx:Active:In Sync] ~ ping -c 2 10.4.24.23

PING 10.4.24.23 (10.4.24.23) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from 10.4.24.23: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=2.97 ms

64 bytes from 10.4.24.23: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=0.746 ms

Step 2 – Created test Pools with the pool name “SharePoint2013-PoC_80_pool” and “SharePoint2013-PoC_443_pool”.

The pools contain two test servers with IP’s: 10.4.20.87 and 10.4.23.206 listening on ports 80 & 443.

Step 3 – Created a Custom Monitor called “monitor_http_TestEnabled2” under Local Traffic ›› Monitors ››

Step 4 – I have applied the Custom Health Monitor to the Node(Server).

Step 5 – The Application Team has created a text file called server.txt which is reachable via http://controlfile-test.corp.mdsdata.com. When I run the curl command to reach the server, I get the “disabled” message.

[xxxxxxxxx:Active:In Sync] ~ curl http://controlfile-test.corp.mdsdata.com/server.txt

Status: disabled[xxxxxxxxx:Active:In Sync] ~

When I ping the server with the server.txt file I am getting a response back from a different web page assigned to the VS.

[xxxxxxxxx:Active:In Sync]~ ping -c 3 controlfile-test.corp.mdsdata.com

PING controlfile-test.corp.mdsdata.com (10.4.24.23) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from farm2.corp.mdsdata.com (10.4.24.23): icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=0.858 ms

64 bytes from farm2.corp.mdsdata.com (10.4.24.23): icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=0.966 ms

64 bytes from farm2.corp.mdsdata.com (10.4.24.23): icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=0.531 ms

xxxxxxxxx:Active:In Sync] ~ ping -c 3 controlfile-test.corp.mdsdata.com

PING controlfile-test.corp.mdsdata.com (10.4.24.23) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from itsforme-test.corp.mdsdata.com (10.4.24.23): icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=0.892 ms

64 bytes from itsforme-test.corp.mdsdata.com (10.4.24.23): icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=0.974 ms

64 bytes from itsforme-test.corp.mdsdatas.com (10.4.24.23): icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=0.921 ms

When I ping the actual server IP from the CLI I get a response back, but from the GUI I can see the custom monitor for the node displays it is marked down, which I believe is the correct result.

Finally, The Server Team is telling me they do not belive the Customer MOnitor is working. Can someone tell me what the Server Team side has to do to get this to work? Im quite new at working with the F5 LB , therefore helping me understand what has to be done on the server side would be a great help, so know what to ask the server team for. Sorry for the very long question :-).