Forum Discussion
Pras_73305
Nimbostratus
NimbostratusHow to I persist sessions across multiple BIGIP pools ?
Problem :
The BIGIP has 2 pools defined. One for port 80 and one for port 443. Let’s call them webtopuat_80 and webtopuat_443 respectively. There are 2 web app servers under these pools pointing to different port ’s, 8014 for http and 7014 for https
Webtopuat_80 has members
10.166.246.12:8014
10.166.246.13:8014
Webtopuat_443
10.166.246.12:7014
10.166.246.12:7014
3DNS sits on top of the BIGIP.
Our web application running on weblogic needs to switch between http (80) & https (443) during the login process. We need persistence to be set across bigip pools (webtopuat_80 & webtopuat_443) for the same web app servers, same IP address.
Here is the sequence of steps that’s happening on the web layer.
1.User hits http://webtopuat3dns.us.dell.com/webtop (Assume this hits server 1 IP : 10.166.246.12:8014)
2.The application switches the user to https://webtopuat3dns.us.dell.com/webtop . This hits server 2 IP : 10.166.246.13:8014) [This should not happen if we have persistence across the same pool, it would be nice if it goes to 10.166.246.12:7014, same ip different port]
How can we make sure in step 2, the user goes to the same server , i.e 10.166.246.12:7014 ?
- The_BhattmanClick here to take a look at Election Hash Load Balancing and Persistence on BIG-IP LTM. I believe that you can perform the same election accross the 2 different vips. That way the client returns to the same nodes.
Hope that helps.
CB 
Pras_73305Thanks CB.
I was wondering if there is a simpler option, like using Active HTTP Cookie to do the same. Will it load balance accross multiple pools ?
I'm saying simpler because, i've not seen my network team use any Election has balancing method on any of the controllers yet. So this might be a tough sell for me.
Cookie Name
You can set up multiple pools with the same cookie name. If you have multiple pools with the same cookie name and the same node as a member of those pools, the persistent session goes to any pool with that cookie name that has the node the session is persisting to.
Enter any name in the Cookie Name box. Names can contain any alphanumeric characters, dashes (-), and underscores(_).
The attribute Cookie Name is used with any of the three cookie persistence types. For Passive HTTP Cookie persistence and Active HTTP Cookie persistence it is an optional attribute. If you do not enter a cookie name, the BIG-IP creates a cookie name using the default.
•The Passive HTTP Cookie persistence default cookie name is the pool name.
•The Active HTTP Cookie persistence default cookie name is BIGipServer.
For Cookie Hash persistence, you must enter a name for the HTTP cookie being set by a Web site. It can be any name you choose. For example, you might use Apache or ASPSESSIONID.- The_BhattmanHow about this ?
http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/default.aspx/iRules/Weblogic_JSessionID_Persistence.html - Pras_73305I can try if that works.
WOuld you mind taking a look at the note from weblogic site on how to set the BIGIP for Active Persistance ?
http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs81/cluster/bigip.html618892
WOuld the above work ? I'm planning to try it tomorrow. But like to take some experts opinion before i fly solo!
Thanks 
Bruno_12199Hi,
Tx for the link (Weblogic_JSessionID_Persistence.html) ; this looks like what we need. The article precises that the rule must be set as an iRule (attached to the VIP) and that a source-address fallback should be defined. In that case, what primary sesssion affinity policy must I set ?
Rgds,
hoolioCirrostratus
The iRule uses UIE persistence as the primary method. You can specify a universal persistence profile as the primary method in the VIP configuration.
Aaron
