Getting F5 LTM to deliver WebSphere 6.1 Applications

I know that there are numerous posts concerning F5 SSL offloading and WebSphere, however, I have tried everything and I am coming up short.

I am using F5 to deliver a Maximo 7 application residing on WebSphere 6.1. I have configured an HTTPS virtual server that is directing traffic to an IBM HTTP server that routes traffic to a JVM. I also have an HTTP virtual server with a standard SSL redirect iRule. I am running SSL traffic to F5 and non-SSL traffic back to the web server. To keep things simple I am only running the application from one JVM.

client <---ssl--->F5<----nonssl--->IBM HTTP Server with Plugin<--nonssl--->WebSphere

When I go through the F5 SSL virtual server I am able to get a login page, however, I am not able to login. I can directly access the web server and the JVM using http and everything works. I am fairly confident that I am having a problem with http/https redirects. Here is what I have configure and tried.

· As per a previous post on dev central I tried the following IBM document http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21221253 I configure the customer header HTTPS-FRONT-END: on WebSphere and on F5 I configured the Request Header Insert of HTTPS-FRONT-END:. Without this configuration I will not get a login page on the application. When in doubt I have configured WebSphere virtual hosts for the relevant ports with a wildcard on the host names.

· I notice on the latest F5 deployment document http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/f5-ibm-websphere7-dg.pdf mentions setting Redirect Rewrite to Match. I have tried this setting and as per another dev central posting tried Any. There was no change.

I have had issues similar to this with WebLogic but configuring the correct Request Header Insert resolved the problem. I am working with IBM support but I thought I would try the F5 community and see if anyone could help.