Unique visitors list from BIGIP ?

Hi Santosh,

 

 

Can you clarify exactly what you'd like to log? Do you want to keep track of every new client IP address for a specific virtual server? Or just a count of unique IP addresses? Or something else?

 

 

Is there any reason that you want to do this on the LC instead of the servers behind LC?

 

 

Aaron

Hi Aaron,

 

 

Thanks for your reply. I have following requirement.

 

 

Can you clarify exactly what you'd like to log? Do you want to keep track of every new client IP address for a specific virtual server? Or just a count of unique IP addresses? Or something else?

 

Yes, I would like to log the time stamp, client IP address and the URL the user is trying to access. Once I have the details from the log, I would like to create a report daily on, if there is any returning visitors and unique visitors.

 

 

Is there any reason that you want to do this on the LC instead of the servers behind LC?

 

As any connection must pass through the LC and the LB, I would like to collect the details from the LC. Also there are many servers load balancing the urls. I guess collecting the data from each server and consolidating data would be a tedious task.

 

If you only have an LC license, I don't think you'll be able to parse anything at layer7 like the HTTP URI. If you could, it would still be expensive in terms of CPU and memory resources to log an entry for every HTTP request or TCP connection. If you did want to do this, the most efficient way to do this would be an iRule using the High Speed Logging commands to send messages to a remote logging server. See the HSL wiki page for details:

 

 

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

 

 

It might be more tedious to collect and collate the logs from individual servers, but it would be a lot more efficient from the BIG-IP perspective.

 

 

Aaron

Posted By hoolio on 07/06/2010 08:34 AM

 

If you only have an LC license, I don't think you'll be able to parse anything at layer7 like the HTTP URI. If you could, it would still be expensive in terms of CPU and memory resources to log an entry for every HTTP request or TCP connection. If you did want to do this, the most efficient way to do this would be an iRule using the High Speed Logging commands to send messages to a remote logging server. See the HSL wiki page for details:

 

 

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

 

 

It might be more tedious to collect and collate the logs from individual servers, but it would be a lot more efficient from the BIG-IP perspective.

 

 

Aaron

 

 

I assume he's got LTM too - at least when I got LC, it included LTM as well. My understanding of LC is that it takes a bit from LTM and a bit from LC. Very interesting request nonetheless....seems like using the table command and adding addresses whenever they were unique would be the way to go (albeit not cpu-friendly)

Hi Aaron,

 

 

Thanks for your guidance, I will try the HSL commands.

 

 

Santosh.

 

 

There is a standalone LC license which wouldn't allow any layer 7 iRule functionality as well as a combined LC+LTM product which would. Either way, I'd be leery of trying to log all connections or HTTP requests on a production unit. Maybe the HSL functionality would be efficient enough to do this. But if you already have this logged on the web servers, it seems like it would be worth the extra effort to collect the logs from those units.

 

 

Aaron