Having .initialize issues

Sure, I think you can do something a bit simpler with iRules or a monitor, actually:

Set “Action on Service Down” to “None” on the pool settings. (Click here to read the LTM: Action on Service Down article for more on that setting)

Then you can set up either:

an iRule that marks the node DOWN using LB::down when a specific URI is seen

or

a 2nd monitor besides the app health monitor that looks at a specific page to determine if in the maint window.

iRule might be simplest/most deterministic, something like:

 
 when HTTP_REQUEST { 
   if { [HTTP::uri] starts_with “/drainserver” } { 
     LB::down [LB::server pool] member [substr [HTTP::query] “ip=” 3 &] [substr [HTTP::query] “port=” 5 &] 
   } 
 }

Then you could send a URI like this to drain a specific server (10.101.0.1:80, in this case):

http://virtualserver.domain.com/drainserver?ip=10.101.0.1&port=80

Then you could script the http call above instead of the iControl bit.

HTH

/deb