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Maverick_80689's avatar
Maverick_80689
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
May 16, 2016
Solved

Layer 7 load balancing

Can anyone pls suggest the best way to load balance layer 7 request with version 11. I have tried multiple combinations, even disabled cmp on the vip but it still only distributes based on the source...
application delivery
LTM
  • Hannes_Rapp_162's avatar
    Hannes_Rapp_162
    May 16, 2016

    I think you've mislead yourself a bit. Unique client is determined by 

    src-ip:src-port
    combination, not just src-ip alone. If your clients share the same IP address, it's not a problem for the balancing results, unless you also use the SourceIP-based persistence method.

    By default, BigIP balancing occurs once. Once a balancing decision is made, it is locked in which means all L7 requests thereafter will go to the same destination, unless specified otherwise by iRules/LTM policies. So the default is L4 balancing. This will work great for most cases.

    In case of HTTP applications (or HTTPS if you do SSL offload in BigIP), you can get per-request-balancing by applying OneConnect profile to your Virtual Server. That would essentially be the L7 balancing you're looking for. OneConnect can significantly improve balancing results in case of low number of end-clients. However, in case of high number of end-clients, you can also get great balancing results without the use of OneConnect.

    For best balancing results, general recommendation is to avoid the use of any persistence whenever possible. If the use of persistence cannot be avoided, universal or cookie persistence methods are preferred over SourceIP persistence.

    Regards,

Hannes_Rapp's avatar
Hannes_Rapp
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
May 16, 2016

I think you've mislead yourself a bit. Unique client is determined by 

src-ip:src-port
combination, not just src-ip alone. If your clients share the same IP address, it's not a problem for the balancing results, unless you also use the SourceIP-based persistence method.

By default, BigIP balancing occurs once. Once a balancing decision is made, it is locked in which means all L7 requests thereafter will go to the same destination, unless specified otherwise by iRules/LTM policies. So the default is L4 balancing. This will work great for most cases.

In case of HTTP applications (or HTTPS if you do SSL offload in BigIP), you can get per-request-balancing by applying OneConnect profile to your Virtual Server. That would essentially be the L7 balancing you're looking for. OneConnect can significantly improve balancing results in case of low number of end-clients. However, in case of high number of end-clients, you can also get great balancing results without the use of OneConnect.

For best balancing results, general recommendation is to avoid the use of any persistence whenever possible. If the use of persistence cannot be avoided, universal or cookie persistence methods are preferred over SourceIP persistence.

Regards,

  • Maverick_80689's avatar
    Maverick_80689
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    May 17, 2016
    Thanks guys, I still need to try the oneconnect profile but almost everything else has already been tested. Even without any persistence profile load balancing only happens based on the source-ip(maybe port too but it doesnt effect the results in our case). We cannot use an uri/path based irule because the uri remains the same. I did look at that layer-7 switching article but there is nothing there that applies to our requests. Will keep you posted.