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Prince's avatar
Prince
Icon for Altostratus rankAltostratus
Apr 12, 2016

SMB Monitor Not working

Hi All,

 

I am trying to configure SMB monitor on F5 in order to test out load balancing between 2 Windows File Server. We couldn't get the smb monitor to work. The status is always shown as down. I am using BIG-IP 9.4.8 Build 407.0 Hotfix HF4.

 

Please advise the best possible way to start with troubleshooting this issue.

 

What command can i Use to manually test the monitor?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

application delivery
BIG-IP
  • Domai's avatar
    Domai
    Icon for Altostratus rankAltostratus
    Apr 12, 2016

    SMB port is 445. So I would say check to see if the port is open from your ltm to the file server...telnet test perhaps and see if you get a response back.

     

  • Christopher_Noy's avatar
    Christopher_Noy
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 23, 2016

    I'm not sure if you ever got the SMB monitor to work or not, but I've been having issues as well. For testing outside of that pre-defined monitor, I logged into the CLI (bash shell) and configured /etc/samba/smb.conf to use my network's WINS servers for netbios resolution; (the other option, if you don't have WINS servers, is to create an LMHOSTS file). I then used this command to perform a simple browse of the root of the CIFS share: 

    smbclient /// -U % -W  -c "ls;"
    .

    I'm on vacation now, but when I get back, I'm going to re-try the SMB monitor to see if it works. F5's documentation is severely lacking for this monitor and their engineers don't seem to know much about it either.