Thanks Mike... that makes sense in the way you described that the irule would be trigged by an event. This article, for anyone interested, helped me solidify that understanding(https://devcentral.f5.com/tech-tips/articles/irules-event-order). I do still have a question though because the two events that I'm most concerned about are on the same line of that article.. HTTP_REQUEST & HTTP_CLASS_SELECTED. How do I know which one fires first? If my ASM HTTPClass is matching the uri "/abc" and I have an irule with the event "HTTP_REQUEST" matching the uri "/abc"... how would the LTM process this? I've been told that it will first go through the ASM policy then if no pool or redirect is defined it'll fall to the irule and follow the pool assigned in the irule.
From the article's
"Client Request Events":
CLIENT_ACCEPTED
CLIENTSSL_HANDSHAKE
CLIENTSSL_CLIENTCERT
HTTP_REQUEST / CACHE_REQUEST / RTSP_REQUEST / SIP_REQUEST / HTTP_CLASS_FAILED / HTTP_CLASS_SELECTED
STREAM_MATCHED
CACHE_UPDATE
CLIENT_DATA / RTSP_REQUEST_DATA / HTTP_REQUEST_DATA – Only occur when collected data arrives
AUTH_RESULT / AUTH_WANTCREDENTIAL – Only occur when authentication commands return
LB_SELECTED / LB_FAILED / PERSIST_DOWN
As always thanks for the help/support/knowledge
Nimbostratus