how to get what node is stuck with an F5 virtual - Persist type: dest_addr

The concept of "which node the virtual is pointing to" is not accurate.

Virtuals do not point somewhere. They load balance connections to configured nodes (pool members) according to the algorithm you have chosen (default is round robin).

If you are using Destination address persistence, what it means is that "destination Address" of incoming connections is used as a key into the lookup table that stores persistence information.

So, connection (or packet) going to 10.1.2.3 comes in, F5 does a lookup in persist table for "10.1.2.3", if it finds an entry, it directs the connection or packet to whatever the persist table says it should send it to. If there is no entry for that key, it will chose a new destination according to the algorithm configured (again, default is round robin) and then add an entry to the persist table with this key, then send the connection/packet to the chosen destination.

To examine this persistence table, you can do soemthing like:

tmsh show ltm persistence persist-records

The command has a rich set of options that allows you to filter the results by source or destination address etc. You can find more details in the "TMSH Reference" for your software version at http://ask.f5.com