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Paul_M_61335's avatar
Paul_M_61335
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jan 25, 2008

Persistence and the Cookie

OK, I'm new to F5 and load balancing in general. I've cruised the F5 website and found the deployment guides and they have been helpful to a point. My question for anyone who can answer or cares to respond is: How do I determine what are the best settings for my network in regards to Persistence profiles and Cookies, specifically and/or just in general? The deployment guide says try this Persistence or this Cookie and then says "we used the defaults in this example, use the settings best for your network" How do I determine this? My network is complicated but not out of the ordinary for most major corporations. Can anyone suggest a document I should read or a web site I should visit to find this and other questions answered? Any help would be appreciated!
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  • hoolio's avatar
    hoolio
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Jan 25, 2008
    Hello,

     

     

    I assume you're talking about persistence for HTTP or (HTTPS traffic which the BIG-IP is decrypting with a client SSL profile). If that's the case, most commonly, administrators use cookie insert persistence.

     

     

    The benefit to this is that it allows per-browser persistence. Contrast this with source address persistence where you are treating all clients coming from the same IP address as the same user in terms of persistence. So if you have a lot of clients connecting from the same IP address (through corporate or ISP proxies), cookie insert persistence is a simple way to distinguish between them. Just make sure to add a OneConnect profile to your VIP so that multiple HTTP requests over the same TCP connection are parsed individually for persistence (and load balancing).

     

     

    I'm not sure what other docs are available on this. You might try searching further on AskF5, or see what other people suggest here.

     

     

    Aaron