How to preserve data in a HTTP 302 redirect of a POST
Hi, We are trying to implement the following scenario and would like to know if the LTM can do the following: An application execute an HTTP POST request with parameters inside the HTML body LTM sends back a 302 redirect request back to the client to another local url How can LTM sends back in the 302 redirect with the same parameters that were availble in the initial packet (see 1))? Can LTM look into HTML body and use them in packet 2) with an iRule? In initial packet 1) these parameters can be a small text or a large file that is being posted to the servers behind LTM Thanks, Giulio.
f5 versus SAP Web Dispatcher
My organization is looking to load balance a number of SAP Enterprise Portal instances and a schism has developed between using f5 versus the SAP Web Dispatcher for this purpose. I've read through the other threads here and found *some* information that aids this discussion but I am looking for a more critical way to differentiate when to use the Web Dispatcher versus using f5. Does some sort of analysis exist out there that draws out the details between these two options?
F5 Load Balancing with SAP PI
Hi all, I have an issue that I could use some assistance with. First off, I'll start by saying that I'm a Basis Admin and not a F5 Admin, so I hope the lingo comes across okay. We are moving from using the SAP Web Dispatcher to load balancing with our internal F5 devices. We've converted our ECC system over, and things seem to be working. Now, I'm attempting to do the same for our SAP PI systems. Our Network Admin in charge of the F5s created a virtual server for us that takes HTTP traffic on port 80 and redirects to the SAP port 5$$00, which in our case is 50000. I then changed the Exchange Profile in SAP PI to use the new virtual server for our Integration Server, Repository, and Directory. Restarted the SAP PI system, and all seems to work except for one thing. When you navigate to http:///rep, and try to access either the Integration Repository or the Integration Directory, the Java web app downloads and prompts for authentication, but then fails to authenticate because, and this is what I'm thinking, the virtual server is configured to only talk on a specific port (our case 50000), and the application is trying to authenticate on the SAP P4 port, which in our case is 50004. This is defined as the "rmiport" setting in the Exchange Profile of a PI system, and will be in the format 5$$04 where $$ is the system number. Is there a way that my F5 Admin can configure the virtual server, so that the virtual server will listen on port 80, redirect to port 50000, and also redirect to port 50004 when a user tries to download / run the application? Thanks for any and all help! Jason
Comparing BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager and SAP Web Dispatcher
Analyze acquisition costs, maintenance costs, stability, performance, range of functions, high availability, security, configuration complexity, integration into your existing landscape and content caching when deciding between software and hardware load balancing. F5 and SAP have a close and important partnership that involves engineers and business folks working to deliver the best customer experience for any given SAP landscape. One of the questions that comes up over and over is how a company can make the decision between software load balancing and hardware high availability. We recently published a document (that's available by emailing me ) about the logistics and considerations of making the choice or making the switch. I will provide a summary of the document here, but please contact me if you need the document itself. In the most basic SAP Landscape SAP clients (either SAP GUI or web browser) make direct connections to SAP instances. For example, a user wishing to file her travel expenses might click on the link from her company's portal, log into SAP (or be signed on automatically using single sign-on) and then she would fill out her expenses and submit them. You can probably tell by the above scenario alone that this isn't a very reliable or scalable architecture. Connecting directly to the instance means there's no load balancing. All the users will end up at the same link. What if our hypothetical user was part of a convention and there were thousands of users just like her trying to file the expenses on Monday morning? The system would probably fail or come to a halt because of the load of traffic. SAP with Web Dispatcher is the software load balancing solution to this problem. In a software load balanced SAP Landscape, high availability is achieved when SAP clients connect directly to Web Dispatcher and then are load balanced to the back-end SAP servers. Web Dispatchers can be installed either on the Central Instance or on its own server. Web Dispatcher communicates with SAP Message Server to get health information about the SAP instances and Web Dispatcher also analyzes web browser cookies to create persistent connections (sending users to the same instances). This is a big improvement over scenario one. However, in a software load balanced SAP Landscape, high availability is achieved only as long as the SAP Message Server is aware of a failure in the Dialogue Instance (Portal, for example) or if there is a graceful shutdown. Many failures are, unfortunately, not detected by SAP Message Server today, creating a potential for Web Dispatcher to send traffic to Dialogue Instances that are down. There is also the issue of Web Dispatcher as a single point of failure itself. There are no out-of-the-box solutions for making software load balancers highly available. To summarize, web Dispatcher supports HTTP, cookie load balancing and persistence as well as static round robin. Web Dispatcher can also make decisions on routing based on the client's IP Address and finally, it can offload SSL. SAP with BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is the hardware high availability and performance enhancing solution to the SAP scaling problem. In a hardware load balanced SAP Landscape, high availability, security, acceleration, health monitoring and intelligent session persistence can be achieved. When an SAP client makes a direct connection with F5's BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager, the user is intelligently load balanced to only the back-end services that are available at that very moment through a health monitor that passively tests login and database. BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager, out of the box, can also be configured to optimize the transport protocol between the client and the server, it can make intelligent persistence decisions based on cookies, it can off-load SSL, and most importantly, using web application server health monitoring, traffic can be guaranteed to be delivered. With advanced scripting abilities, for e-commerce or other "five nines" environments, requests can even be re-submitted if a server crashes mid-transaction, without causing the user to re-submit their data or to lose any work. BIG-IP also has a variety of out-of-the-box high availability solutions that remove it as a single point of failure. Both software and hardware solutions provide significant enhancements in contrast to a direct deployment with no load balancing or high availability. When making the decision between hardware and software, SAP and F5 recommend that you frame the decision in the following way. Ask about acquisition costs, maintenance costs, stability, performance, range of functions, high availability, security, configuration complexity, integration into your existing landscape and content caching.
Timeout settings
Hello, We have notices that it seems that http sessions appear to timeout more quickly when using the f5 than when using a direct connection to the server. I have done my own testing and have seen that side by side, a connection utilizing the alias that passes through the f5 did in fact timeout before another browser session that I had where I logged in directly using the server hostname (and with a different userID to make sure that the sessions were completely separate). Here is the error: 500 Internal Server Error SAP J2EE Engine/7.00 The Web Dynpro Application 'WebUI' has expired. Restart the application using the Refresh button or via the following link WebUI. Details: No details available Again I tested this side by side with and without the f5, so I do not believe it is an application setting. I am sure there is a simple setting on the f5 that can address this, but not being an f5 administrator, I will need your help to know what to ask for. Along the same lines, we have also seen that when making a large number (50 to 100) of web service calls through the f5 at the same time, some of them will not execute successfully, as opposed to executing the calls using the hostname of an application server where all of the calls are successful. I was thinking this may be some kind of timeout on the f5 side as well. These are two completely separate issues, but I would appreciate any advice on either. Thanks, Brian
ABAP webdynpro in EP url are HTTP vs. HTTPs - popup errors - need to adapt F5 config
We've been live with F5 load balancing our SAP EP java traffic for 3 years now - We introduced ABAP web dynpro to our customer EP and they now receive pop-ups; HTTP watch trace files show that the themes url built are HTTP vs. HTTPS. With that said, we've gotten recommendation from SAP to change our "Ports" and "ProxyMappings" configuration settings thru Visual administrator in the Dispatcher for the HTTP provider. We need to 1) Configure the Ports parameter in the following way: (Port:54100,Type:http)(Port:54101,Type:ssl)(Port:54102,Type:http) 2) Configure the ProxyMappings in the following way: 54100=(Host:hostname.com,Port:80,Scheme:http, Override:true),54101=(Host:hostname.com,Port:443, Scheme:http,Override:true),54102=(Host:hostname.com, Port:443,Override:true) With this configuration, all the HTTP requests sent to port 54102 will be mapped on the Java dispatcher to the proxy server's host (hostname.com) and HTTPS port (443). OK - so being a Basis admin techie --- we KNOW how and what to do on the SAP/EP side to make these changes - GOT IT SAP has said "you need to adapt the F5 configuration" -- this is where we fall short and do not have the skill set to define what / how needs to be done to our F5 configuration; we've always contracted out our F5 configuration which to date has been basic enough that it didn't warrant a resource with both SAP and F5 skills Any F5 / SAP guru's out there willing to talk this thru with us and perhaps get us to where we need to go? Thank you in advance Doreenf5 and Kerberos SSO sap BI
Hi We are using F5 load balancer and we enable kerberos sso . Its works like a charm with direct link . However its not working with f5 Dns name bi.temp.com Full url is https://bi.temp.com Service user. Sapuser Direct url. Domain. Xyz.com Spn Setspn -a http/biserver sapuser Setspn -a http/biserver.xyz.com sapuser Setspn -a http/biserver2 sapuser Setspn -a http/biserver2.xyz.com sapuser Setspn -a http/bi.temp.com Its prompting for username and password Any inputsiRule for HTTPS Virtual Server without applying http profile
Hi, We have create the Virtual server for redirection of http to https traffic and https traffic for BMC application and almost successful in achieving the desired result; but since end result was not upto requirement, we have revert back the VIP configuration for BMC to http traffic. below is details :- Pool of BMC Server :- 192.168.220.205 and 192.168.220.206 (working on port 8443) Virtual Server IP Address for BMC server :- 192.168.199.71 (working on port 443) Virtual Server IP Address for BMC server :- 192.168.199.71 (working on port http for redirection of http to https) When we created the virtual server in F5 with 10.3.199.71 on 443 service port; https://xyz/arsys website link was working; as same URL website has been hosted on webserver and redirection of http to https also happening without any issue. we are facing issue with accessing https://xyz/ link while trying to access website through F5; as web server don't have any website link for below site.We tried to redirect the traffic on F5 for https://xyz/ to https://xyz/arsys ; but unable to achieve the desired result. Please help. Any help is welcome to create irule.
