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BDunbar_8799's avatar
BDunbar_8799
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Dec 01, 2009

What server am I on?

We rolled our own shop floor application.

 

Written in .net.

 

Four IIS servers.

 

Big-IP LTM on a 1600 chassis.

 

 

 

Scenario

 

 

* User A has issues.

 

* Developer suspects it might be one of the IIS servers.

 

* The user can't tell which one he is on.

 

* Neither can the developer without diving into log files.

 

 

What the developer thinks would be keen is a page or a widget or 'something' the user could glance at and tell the developer 'oh, I'm currently on server foo'.

 

 

I told him to go pester the IIS admin.

 

 

But while he's doing that I'm sneaking over here and asking if there is something the F5 LTM could do to help them out.

 

 

So. Can the F5 work with IIS to tell the end user 'you are on server foo'?

 

 

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  • The_Bhattman's avatar
    The_Bhattman
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    Dec 01, 2009
    Why not develop a single page that tells you what server you are on? You don't need irules for that and all you need is the user to go to a page. That's what we ended up doing. Besides knowing which server you are on they extended so that they can put other elements on the page to generally get the status and info about the server w/o having to log in.

     

     

    Bhattman
  • hoolio's avatar
    hoolio
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Dec 01, 2009

     

    ...I told him to go pester the IIS admin.

     

     

    But while he's doing that I'm sneaking over here and asking if there is something the F5 LTM could do to help them out.

     

     

     

     

    I agree, a simple page on the web app would do this well. But you could do it with an iRule as well. The added benefit of an iRule is that it would tell you which server would be selected even if that server wasn't responding but hadn't been marked down by a monitor yet.

     

     

    Aaron
  • BDunbar_8799's avatar
    BDunbar_8799
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 02, 2009
    Aaron, thank you for the rule. I'll fiddle around with that.

     

     

    Bhattman

     

     

    Why not develop a single page that tells you what server you are on?

     

     

    The IIS guy and myself did kick that idea around: he's not against the idea but feels that it might not give them up to-date information:

     

     

    User is on Server1. He clicks the 'show me what page I'm on' link and _might_ hop to Server2 to serve the page, then back again to Server3 when he clicks 'back'.