smp_86112
Jan 06, 2010Cirrostratus
"Your Site Is Unavailable" HTTP Response Code
We typically apply an iRule to our VIPs which sends a HTTP::redirect to a friendly "your site is not available" page when the LB_FAILED event is triggered. And I haven't actually verified this but according to the doc, the HTTP::fallback statement and the Fallback Host field in the HTTP profile both return a 302 response code. In all of these cases when the browser asks for the site unavailable page, the web server responds with a 200 error code when it returns the site unavailable content.
We have a Google Search Appliance crawling one of our VIPs, and it follows the 302 redirect and indexes the site unavailable content when the LB_FAILED event is triggered.
To work around this, we obviously could return a 404 with some content. However the counter-argument is that this behavior does not comply with HTTP standards.
I'm interested in getting your thoughts.