iRule for Server Testing

Oh, and about the node name out of the URI, Joe's rule example does that already.

This section here is the part that performs the lookup:

...
    Pull out the node name as the first element of the uri
     ie. /web001/foo/bar -> web001
    set node_name [lindex [split [HTTP::uri] "/"] 1]
    if { "" ne $node_name } {
       Now look for the node address in the lookup list
      log local0. "Searching for node: $node_name"
      set node_addr [findclass $node_name $::node_mapping " "]
      if { "" ne $node_addr } {
        log local0. "Routing to node: $node_addr " 
        node $node_addr
...

It does a lookup in this class to relate the "web001" or whatever the hostname is in the URI, to the actual IP of the node:

class node_mapping {
  web001 10.10.10.1
  web002 10.10.10.2
  web003 10.10.10.3
}

So, for a request with web001 in the URI, it will be forwarded to 10.10.10.1.

Hopefully that helps clarify a bit.

-Colin