Health Monitor to check content after logging in

Hi Shankar,

It may be difficult to get a monitor to 'login'. I had a similar request in the past where I needed to monitor a page that is visible only after a user logs in. We were using a cookie to track users' sessions, so we just created a cookie that had an indefinite session length and built a custom HTTP monitor to provide this cookie. The monitor send string would look something like this:

GET /somepage.php HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: mysite.example.com\r\nCookie: user_session_id=\r\nConnection: Close\r\n\r\n

That is assuming that your application is using cookies for user session persistence. If you're doing something else, you might have to get a bit more crafty.

On the email bit, I wouldn't use the LTM to send notifications. I'd look into Nagios, Opsview, Zabbix, etc. There are bunch of great monitoring solutions that do this very well.

Hope this helps,

George

Hi George,

 

 

Thanks for your quick reply..

 

 

Actually we have an application for this we have configured http health monitor and this looks for the content on the page and then places the pool member into load. Recently we had couple of issue with memory so the problem now is the login page looks good as how it should be, but after logging in it shows 404 page error. Will this cookie to tracker users help us!!

 

 

Thanks

 

S.Shankar Gandhi

 

Hi Shankar,

 

 

This sounds like an application issue if you are getting a 404 after logging in. I'd sync up with your developers and get more information about how the login process works. Once they give you the full picture of how it occurs, it will be easier to write a monitor to examine the application.

 

 

The other option would be to have your developers write a monitor page that runs on the origin servers. The monitor page can examine the various elements within your application and report success or failure. Then you can just point your health monitor at this page.

 

 

-George

George-

 

 

It’s peoplesoft application and I can say any type of simple monitor which looks for some content after logging in should help us.. Can this be tried by using some sort of irule or any sort of health monitor!!

 

 

Thanks

 

S.Shankar Gandhi

 

Dig around and you will find an example/thread of and external health monitor script that allows for logging in (plus some good info). I can't find the original, but here is a copy of the script I use to monitor sharepoint. The script type would be "external program".

 

 

 

!/bin/sh remove IPv6/IPv4 compatibility prefix (LTM passes addresses in IPv6 format) IP=`echo ${1} | sed 's/::ffff://'` IP=${1} PORT=${2} PIDFILE="/var/run/`basename ${0}`.${IP}_${PORT}.pid" kill of the last instance of this monitor if hung and log current pid if [ -f $PIDFILE ] then kill -9 `cat $PIDFILE` > /dev/null 2>&1 fi echo "$$" > $PIDFILE send request & check for expected response /usr/bin/curl -L --ntlm -k -v --user 'user:password' http://ipaddress/pages/default.aspx -H "Host:99.99.99.99" | grep -i " World Medical" 2>&1 > /dev/null mark node UP if expected response was received if [ $? -eq 0 ] then echo "UP" fi rm -f $PIDFILE exit

 

 

 

This External monitor logs into the specified URL and checks for the content, If specified content matches then only the pool member will be placed in load if not it will be out of load.

 

 

After two weeks ups and downs ,I got an External monitor configured for one of our application .,I have followed below steps to get this done.

 

 

 

Step 1 :Logged into node under /config/monitors created a file with httpmonitor_curl_post and added below script

 

 

remove IPv6/IPv4 compatibility prefix (LTM passes addresses in IPv6 format)

 

NODE=`echo ${1} | sed 's/::ffff://'`

 

PORT=${2}

 

 

PIDFILE="/var/run/`basename ${0}`.${NODE}_${PORT}.pid"

 

kill of the last instance of this monitor if hung and log current pid

 

if [ -f $PIDFILE ]

 

then

 

echo "EAV exceeded runtime needed to kill ${IP}:${PORT}" | logger -p local0.error

 

kill -9 `cat $PIDFILE` > /dev/null 2>&1

 

fi

 

echo "$$" > $PIDFILE

 

 

send request & check for expected response

 

curl -fNs http://${NODE}:${PORT}${URI} -d "${DATA}" | grep -i "${RECV}" 2>&1 > /dev/null

 

curl -fNs -i -L -H "Host: ${HOST}" "http://${NODE}:${PORT}${URI}" -b cookies.txt -d "${DATA}" | grep -i "${RECV}" 2>&1 > /dev/null

 

 

mark node UP if expected response was received

 

if [ $? -eq 0 ]

 

then

 

echo "UP"

 

fi

 

 

rm -f $PIDFILE

 

exit

 

 

Step 2: Logged into F5 GUI mode and created a external monitor with name http_Curl_post and under external monitor added the one which I created in step 1 ( httpmonitor_curl_post)

 

Step 3: Under Variables added

 

Host= hostname:port

 

URI=complete URL after .com

 

DATA= timezoneOffset=-330&userid=username&pwd=Password

 

RECV= Keyword which it need to check

 

 

Step 4 :Assign this external monitor to the pool.

 

 

I would like to say thanks Nobel & Nitass for helping on this.

 

 

http://www.thef5guy.com/blog/2010/08/sharepoint-2010-ntlm-and-big-ip-health-monitors/

 

http://ask.metafilter.com/18923/How-do-you-handle-authentication-via-cookie-with-CURL

 

 

 

Thanks

 

S.Shankar Gandhi