Enacting GTM failover from a monitored host

Currently we have 2 data centers that are using GTMs to control failover between them. Today, if we want to take a data center out of service for an application then we go into the pool on the GTM and disable the VS' member for that data center. We are currently trying to deploy a failover solution that would allow our applications team to put up a system down string on the server that is being monitored by the LTM. The idea is that the monitor on the LTM's pool receives the system down string for all of the members of the pool, disables the pool, then the VS is marked down or disabled and the GTM would take that data center's VS out of service sending all traffic to the other data center.

 

 

Everything works just like we had hoped... except for this one little piece: when we disable all of the memebers of a pool, the pool stays GREEN. Because the pool is green the VS stays up and since the GTM is looking at the VS, it doesn’t failover.

 

 

Does anyone have any recommendations for how else we could initiate a graceful failover? We don’t want all of our existing connections dropped. I can't imagine that there isn’t some way to do this.

 

 

Thanks for any input or suggestions!