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Timo_Schlueter_'s avatar
Timo_Schlueter_
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Mar 01, 2010

Health Monitor for LDAP-Node

Hi,

 

 

i´m currently working on a Big IP LTM (BIG-IP 9.4.5 Build 1049.10 Final). I want to use Big IP to loadbalance the traffic thats caused by ldap requests.

 

The problem is that twice a day we discover high peaks of ldap requests. This often ends in high loads on the servers an sometimes leads to a complete lockup. I now want to "balance" this traffic between six ldap-servers using Big IP.

 

 

There are six ldap-servers wich i have configured as nodes inside a pool. For now, the Health Monitor for the nodes is gateway-icmp only. Using round-robin, everything works fine and the requests are now spread through all the servers.

 

I now discovered that there is a template for monitoring ldap-servers. I configured a health monitor which now monitors the ldap pool.

 

Unfortunately this monitor cant be assigned to a single node. From what i understand this means that the monitor just checks if the pool is available (through ldap authentication) but doesnt check for ldap on single nodes.

 

 

What I wanted to achieve is that Big IP checks if a single node answeres the ldap-request send from the loadbalancer and therefore marks the node as available or not. With this setup we could "balance" the incoming traffic to different nodes.

 

 

For now its just the pool thats beeing checked. This doesnt solve the problem I have.

 

 

I´m new to Big IP so if theres a configuration guide i really have to read first, feel free to link it.

 

 

Maybe the answer isnt that difficult.

 

 

Thank you.

 

 

Timo

 

 

management
monitoring
  • Timo_Schlueter_'s avatar
    Timo_Schlueter_
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Mar 01, 2010
    everything is fine.

     

    I managed to assign the ldap-check to a single node.

     

    The strange thing is, that if you go through "Local Traffic" -> "Virtual Servers" -> "Nodes" -> and then choose "Node Specific" in the dropdown menu, you can't assign all the available checks.

     

    But if you go through "Local Traffic" -> "Virtual Servers" -> "Pools" -> "Members" you can choose "Member specific" and then add all the checks you want to the single node (here called "Member").

     

     

    Since it works for me now, this thread is no longer needed.

     

     

    Thank you anyway..

     

     

    Timo
  • hoolio's avatar
    hoolio
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Mar 01, 2010
    Hi Timo,

     

     

    A node (IP address) health monitor either needs to be valid for an IP address, like ICMP, or have a specific alias port defined in the health monitor. A health monitor without an alias port definition will inherit the port from the pool member (IP:port) definition.

     

     

    Another difference between applying a health monitor to a node versus a pool member is that when a node monitor marks a node down, the node is marked down in all pools the node is defined in. A monitor added to a pool or pool member only affects that single pool member.

     

     

    Aaron
  • Timo_Schlueter_'s avatar
    Timo_Schlueter_
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Mar 02, 2010
    Hi Aaron,

     

     

    thank you very much.

     

    Thats all I needed to know.

     

    For my setup I can assign the Health Monitor to the single pool member since I don´t use a single node inside multiple pools.

     

    The LDAP-Authentication-Monitor works great and with it working I can even get rid of the TCP Monitor that checks port 389 (LDAP default).

     

     

    Thank you!

     

     

    Timo