Forum Discussion

Johan_44545's avatar
Johan_44545
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jan 29, 2010

Preserving URLs?

We want to use F5 load balancer and not use Web Dispatcher for load balancing.

 

 

 

This is what happens:

 

(friendly = BIGIP VIP)

 

 

 

User (use a friendly URL http://friendly.comp.com )

 

|

 

\/

 

External F5 Load Balancer

 

 

|

 

-------------------------------------------

 

| | | |

 

A/SCS App1 App2 App3

 

 

 

The application servers are installed using virtual host names and they answer to http://app1:port/index.html http://app2:port/index.html ...

 

 

 

 

Now finally for the problem: (This obviously works very well using WebDispatcher but we do not have that component now)

 

 

 

 

When the user type in their browser:

 

http://friendly/index.html

 

 

They get the nice and friendly SAP index screen that we all know and love.

 

 

On the index page you have all the different links for example nwa, useradmin, webdynpro etc.

 

 

When using F5 these links does not resolve to the correct name.

 

They resolve to http://app1:port/useradmin or whatever. This obviously does not work for the user because the user can only use http://friendly/nwa or whatever...

 

 

Now the million dollar question:

 

What is the most expedient way to configure F5 and/or SAP so that it displays the "friendly" URL to the user?

 

 

 

Please advise!

 

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sap
  • Nojan_Moshiri_4's avatar
    Nojan_Moshiri_4
    Historic F5 Account
    Jan 29, 2010
    The SAP Deployment Guide (http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/sap-bigip94-dg.pdf) shows one method of changing the Web Server Host Name to reflect the "friendly" name, or the Virtual IP name. Please check it out and let us know if that resolves the issue for you.

     

  • bls9701_10560's avatar
    bls9701_10560
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jan 29, 2010
    Johan,

     

     

    Are you allowing the f5 to hit your SCS instance? That may be causing the problem since when it hits the message server it will cause an actual redirect to an app server (instead of a pass through). I have the f5 hitting only the individual app servers. If I type in http://friendly.comp.com, all links in the Netweaver startpage show http://friendly.comp.com URLs. If I go to http://app1.comp.com, they all show http://app1.comp.com URLs. I'm also using this for all Java systems, not jsut portal (including PI, NWDI, SLD, etc.) Hoep this helps.

     

     

    Brian
  • hoolio's avatar
    hoolio
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Feb 01, 2010
    There is a v9 and v10 ProxyPass iRule that you could modify to do this external/internal hostname and port rewriting:

     

     

    http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/default.aspx/iRules/proxypass

     

    http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/default.aspx/iRules/proxypassv10

     

     

    Aaron