LB on hash key with onloading and offloading

Hi,

 

 

I'm a complete newbie for F5, so I hope my question makes sense. We would like to load balance on a pre-hashed cookie value. The value is hashed using a proprietary (i.e. Oracle) hashing algorithm. We can store the hashed value as a cookie, and we'd like to select a server from that cookie value without further hashing.

 

 

Furthermore, we'd like to be able to implement multiple states for a member for gracefully rolling down and up servers during application redeployment. The four states we would like to specify for a server are:

 

 

Up: The server receives all requests designated to it by the pre-hashed cookie value.

 

Down: The server does not receive any requests

 

Starting: The server only receives connections from new http sessions (i.e. no JSESSIONID) designated to it by the pre-hashed cookie value, and subsequent connections from the same session.

 

Stopping: The server only receives connections from existing sessions that were previously designated to the member.

 

 

Do I need to use iRules to implement this type of strategy? Any tips on what it would look like?

 

 

Brian