Forum Discussion
vrivoire_97090
Nimbostratus
NimbostratusMS Print servers
Hi all,
I am planning to use my new F5 LTM to load balance Windows Server 2003 print servers. For the moment, it doesn't work for me: I can see the shared printer but I can't map it.
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Here's the new link to the guide for creating the WMI monitor. As I recall it was pretty straightforward. I'm even using the same interval and timeout. Looking at my monitor properties, the only thing I see that is different is my alias service port is 3389 and the external program path is /usr/bin/monitors. Also, you'll need to enable remote WMI requests on the win2k8 boxes if not already enabled.
Monitoring WMI Services from Big-IP
meena_60183Nimbostratus
NimbostratusThe way I remembered why npath routing is needed is because the packet capture showed that the F5 will NAT the IP address in the tcp header but not on the tcp data. TCP data still showed the virtual server address. So, when the request is sent to the print server with the virtual server address, the print server rejects it.
When you configure a loopback address on the print server which is the same as the virtual server address, the print server will accept the request because it knows that as a loopback address.
We had frequent issues with that design where the server group had to restart the services or the server but now it seems to be ok. Most of the problems were related to the config on the server side.
Meena