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ryan_75748's avatar
ryan_75748
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Dec 01, 2008

monitoring WCF service with F5

we are building a client/service application inwhich the client is consuming windows communication foundation services. We presently monitor/LB other websites with F5 so we'd like to leverage that investment to monitor/LB clients across these services also. What/How do we configure an F5 system to monitor/LB a WCF Service endpoint? Does F5 support any type of scripting that would allow us to properly setup a contract and post a SOAP message?

 

thanks

 

ryan
microsoft
partner

2 Replies

  • hoolio's avatar
    hoolio
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Dec 02, 2008
    Hi Ryan,

     

     

    I haven't worked with WCF before, but if it's SOAP you should be able to use either a standard HTTP monitor or worst-case an external monitor. Can you test the app with a single HTTP request? If you capture the HTTP headers and body for a sample request can you post an example? If you can send a single static request to check the pool members, you can use a stock HTTP monitor. Configure the send string with the HTTP headers and body. If you need to send multiple requests or change the request dynamically, you'd need to use an external monitor.

     

     

    You can get examples for send strings in the monitoring forum (Click here). You can get examples for external HTTP monitors in the Monitoring Codeshare (Click here). If you want help configuring a monitor, post some anonymized examples of the requests (and responses).

     

     

    Aaron
  • Will_F_98397's avatar
    Will_F_98397
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    May 04, 2009
    We have the same issue with WCF/SOAP. Turns out the SOAPAction header was not being posted in the packet headers. The developers managed to code the health monitor in there application to trap the message the client (F5) was sending and return a different message (e.g. true/false string indicating the status of the application).

     

     

    From what I've been told this is a bug with BigIP (not EasySOAP as it may appear) but is not going to be fixed anytime soon.

     

     

    Tested with 9.3.x and 9.4.x streams. Have not tried this with BigIP 10.0 yet.