Send and Receive String Explanation in a Http Monitor

The receive string being blank means the big-ip won't look for any response. Basically as long as there's no TCP error, it should pass the check. Ideally you'd put something there such as "200 OK" or something that is in the page you're looking at.

If you don't put the index.html in the GET request, you're right, the pool member will probably respond with the index.html. Technically it will respond back with whatever the web server's configured default page is, such as in apache whatever the DirectoryIndex value is.

Health monitors will often work even though they're not configured properly, it's best to deliberately configure it rather than have it work and not know why. I'd recommend putting a file on the server and actually checking the content of the file. If it dynamically generates content such as pulling data from a database, a file that actually grabs something from the database would even be better!

I'm sure others will chime in with suggestions or other tips for health monitors.

HTH,

--D