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Forum Discussion

abvaidya_182376's avatar
abvaidya_182376
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Jan 12, 2015

http and https session persistence based on a header value and client ip combination

I am trying to configure BIG IP SLB for session persistence based on value of a non standard HTTP header (lets say "XYZ") and facing a few   hitches on my BIG IP site. I want that all client HTTP...
abvaidya_182376's avatar
abvaidya_182376
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Jan 13, 2015

Hi Brad, i searched little more about this and found the below link which says that in case you want to have irule based persistence profile, for HTTPS, you need to have a client SSL profile which will decrypt the request and after persistence by persistence profile, a SSL server profile is required to re encrypt the request before sending to the server. 

      https://devcentral.f5.com/questions/error-http_request-event-in-rule-requires-an-associated-http-fasthttp-profile-on-the-virtual-server

A few questions

1) Is there any specific that is required in the client SSL and server SSL profiles for this to work? Like, is any property value required to be same in the two profiles?

2) I don't know much about Universal persistence as referred by you in your last reply. I just happened to use it. Is there any reason that i should use only this persistence? My used case is simply what i explained in my initial questions

Regards Abhishek

Brad_Parker's avatar
Brad_Parker
Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
Jan 13, 2015
You only need a server SSL profile if you want SSL to the backend server. You can just use the default server SSL profile unless you know you need to use any of the other parameters. There is no matching property to set between the two SSL profiles in this case as you are not using proxy mode. In my experience universal persistence is used in special cases like the one you defined(wanting to persist based on a combination of a header value and client IP). Many times source address persistence works well and doesn't require you to SSL offload and can also persist across Pools, Virtual Servers, and services as well. Cookie based persistence also has a lot of perks and that's what we use, but it requires at a minimum the client SSL profile as well. Cookie persistence writes a cookie in the clients browser that is a hash of the backend node's IP. This can also work across pools and virtual servers provided the same nodes are available and you use the same cookie name. I hope this helps a bit. https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/ltm_configuration_guide_10_0_0/ltm_persist_profiles.html