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Peter_Lowdon's avatar
Peter_Lowdon
Icon for Altocumulus rankAltocumulus
Nov 04, 2022

After big-IP v16 firmware upgrade ILX Node.js process restarts after 5 minutes

hi f5'ers,

We have just upgrade an f5 Big-IP VE instance from v14 to v16.1.3.1 and have noticed something VERY strange.  We have some ILX plugins which stream data to node.js processes, there are 3 pluings, one to validate JSON requests, one to transform JSONtoXML and one to transform XMLtoJSON. 

These ILX plugins have been working fine in Big-IP v13 and v14.  

When we upgrade to v16 however if we send a request to a node.js process via ILX plugin then the node.js process which handles that request will terminate exactly 5 minutes after it handled the first request.  The process is restarted, presumably by the sdmd daemon, and then continues to handle requests for another 5 minutes before terminating/restarting and so on...

If we run a performance test over several hours we see a pattern of a significant number of failes requests every 5 minutes whilst the Node.js processes are restarted.

We do have a couple of Big-IP VE appliances deployed in a device group but even if we try this on a single f5 Big-IP VE in standalone mode we observe the same results.

We are streaming data to the Node.js instance as opposed to RPC call as the payload is larger than 64KB.

Its very frustrating as this has been working like a dream until our upgrade but now its too unstable for a production environment.

Has anyone else come across this node.js restarting pattern with v16 firmware?

 

application delivery
BIG-IP
ILX plugin
node.js
Restart
v16.1.3.1

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  • Mohamed_Ahmed_Kansoh's avatar
    Mohamed_Ahmed_Kansoh
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Nov 04, 2022

    Hello Peter_Lowdon , 
            Check this Article , it may help : 
    https://cdn.f5.com/product/bugtracker/ID624805.html

    > I think you may need to open a case with F5 they may support you with an Engineering Hot Fix for version 161.3.1. 
    > some times I faced issues when performing major upgrade , most of these issues were relating to restarting services,  and when openning a Case with F5 they solve it by applaying EHF covers my issue. 

    Regards
    Mohamed Kansoh

    • Peter_Lowdon's avatar
      Peter_Lowdon
      Icon for Altocumulus rankAltocumulus
      Nov 04, 2022

      Thanks for your swift reply Mohamed!

      yes we're going to raise a support request with f5 to look into this for us.  I also tried upgrading to v16.1.3.2 and it did the same thing there too.

      Its good to know that f5 can turn around hot fixes for specific user issues though, theres hope for us yet 🙂

      • Mohamed_Ahmed_Kansoh's avatar
        Mohamed_Ahmed_Kansoh
        Icon for MVP rankMVP
        Nov 04, 2022

        I hope you get ride of this issue soon. 
        But I think it is not recommended to perform a major upgrades without a clear reason , the most stable versions V14 and V15 as well I intend the latest release in each one , and as a employee in an integrator Company almost all of our customers appliances running on V14 or V16. 

        GoodLuck