General f5 SAP questions

Hi Nojan,

 

 

Thank you for your reply and all of your good information. I have read lots of documentation on the pros and cons of the web dispatcher. My main issue with the web dispatcher is that it is not an HA solution in itself because it has to reside on a server which could go down at any time. The only way to make it HA is to either run it on a clustered server or install multiple web dispatchers and us an HLB like the f5 to load balance to those servers. Assuming you choose the latter option, then that adds another stop along the way and another point of failure and it requires its own maintenance and upkeep. Also, load balancing to multiple web dispatchers when using SSL cannot work in a pass through (ROUTER) mode because they will always be sourced from the same IP of the load balancer and so be sent to the same app server every time (SAP Note 1026191). In this case you must terminate the SSL connection at the web dispatcher, which is an extra step along the way.

 

 

Also, the default SSL port for SAP is the J2EE http port +1 so if your J2EE port is 50000, your defualt SSL port is 50001. So I suppose in this case, since it is not 443, hiding the port number would not be feasible.

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

Brian