Forum Discussion
Anthony_Vaz_547
Nimbostratus
NimbostratusF5 LTM reverse proxy and HTTP Link rewriting
Hi everyone
I hope I can get some assistance with this.
We have an Oracle Portal system. As part of this portal we have a need to IFRAME content from another system elsewhere on the internet.
The Portal has a host name (for example) of portal.companyA.com
The other system has a host name (for example) of systemX.companyB.com.
This has to be IFRAME'd there is no other way of integrating the two systems together.
Both the Oracle Portal and the other system have Javascript and therefore the IFRAME does not work due to the different domains.
The typical fix for this is to reverse proxy systemX.companyB.com through portal.companyA.com.
Oracle have advised that since we have a BigIP LTM sitting in front of the Oracle Portal (for load balancing) we could also get BigIP to act as a reverse proxy.
I disagree with Oracle for the following two reasons and I'd like to know if my thinking is correct...
Firstly, the other system is on the internet, not local to the BigIP and therefore shouldn't be controlled by LTM
Secondly, although of course setting up an RP at lower layers is a piece of cake for BigIP, the upper layer issues of re-writing all HTTP links etc is not run of the mill and will require an iRule interrogating all HTML and Javascript content from the companyB server replacing all HTTP links. Although development of said iRule may not be too difficult, it does strike me that it is less than ideal.
Also, I found a firepass deployment guide on the F5 site (http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/firepass-rproxy-dg.pdf) that describes the HTTP link re-write capability and suggests that it's fully available and easily configured in Firepass.
Keen for any and all opinions - Many thanks in advance.
- As to the first objection - that the other node member is out on the internet and not local to the machine - the LTM makes no distinction between what's local and what isn't. A pool member can be on a locally attached subnet, or any IP:port combination to which traffic can be sent.
For proxying stuff, take a look at the ProxyPass iRule here:
http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/default.aspx/iRules/ProxyPass.html 
Anthony_Vaz_547Thanks ever so much - and very nice that an irule has already been built. Do you know how widely used the irule is?
We'll definitely try it out and shall report on the results- Judging by the number of updates that have been made to the rule, I'd have to guess that it's got some fans out there. Not sure if it's possible to know how many folks have downloaded it and are using it. The proxy pass question comes up pretty regularly in the forums.
