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Frank_29876's avatar
Frank_29876
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Aug 12, 2011

How to balance to servers with an outbound-initiated connection

Today our server initiates a TCP connection to a provider which then sends our server requests.

 

 

We want to now have multiple servers handle these requests.

 

 

If the provider inititated the connection this would be a normal situation, but because our server initiates the connection I don't understand how to set this up.

 

 

1) We need to still initiate ONE connection.

 

 

2) We want the provider to connect to the f5 and then have the f5 balance the requests across all the configured servers.

 

 

Do we somehow need to have the f5 initiate the connection to the provider?

 

 

Can we have some other server inititate the request, but force traffic to the f5 and somehow have it complete the connection?

 

 

Will the f5 route all the packets for one TCP send request to one server?

 

 

-- Frank

 

 

config
design

4 Replies

  • hoolio's avatar
    hoolio
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Aug 12, 2011
    Hi Frank,

     

     

    The scenario isn't clear to me. Can you have the provider change the address it initiates a connection to to an LTM virtual server IP address? Or can you move the IP it connects to to a VIP on LTM?

     

     

    Aaron
  • Frank_29876's avatar
    Frank_29876
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Aug 15, 2011
    Since our server initiates the connection (not the provider), I assume the provider would have to connect to whoever initiated the connection.

     

     

    I suppose we could have a script or something in the LTM initiate the connection, but that would not be the most convenient thng to coordinate with he application servers.
  • The_Bhattman's avatar
    The_Bhattman
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Aug 15, 2011
    HI Frank,

     

    Yes it's entirely possible to write a shell script to initiate a connection which would trigger the provider to initiate theirs towards your virtual servers. Is that what are you looking to do?

     

     

    Bhattman

     

     

  • Frank_29876's avatar
    Frank_29876
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Aug 15, 2011
    From a connection point of view to the provider this seems the most logical, but I concerned with how to manage this.

     

    I don't want the f5 connected when there are no servers up.

     

    So how does it know when to connect and disconnect?

     

    I don't want manual intervention.

     

     

    Seems like I would want to tie it into the server group heartbeating, but I'm not sure how.