ACE Load Balancing Configuration For NATed User Traffic

[Sanjay.Tathare]

Hello,

I am currently working on a requirement where the shared application services will be hosted in DC and these services will be accessed by multiple (thousands) users from different corporates/customers. The user traffic will be hidden behind customer's proxy servers or firewalls so the load balancer (ACE modules) services hosted in DC will not be able to see requests coming in from induvidual users IP addresses.

In this scenario what are options of load balancing are available in Lyer3/4 and Layer7 ?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Sanjay

[Kanwaljeet Singh]

Hi Sanjay,

In a set up where all users are coming from behind a proxy, all users will be loadbalanced to same server thus overloading it. This is when you are doing standard L3/L4 LB.

In the situation of proxies, for HTTP applications you shall use L7 LB and use information(cookie) in HTTP client request or server response. The ace will use this information to stick the user to same server for persistence. If a client comes with no cookie it will be loadbalanced according to the predictor method configured. Below is the link for L7 configuration example and other TS steps you can take while configuring L7 policies on ACE. For more informatin i would suggest reading ACE user guide too.

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Cisco_Application_Control_Engine_(ACE)_Troubleshooting_Guide_-_Troubleshooting_Layer_7_Load_Balancing

If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

Regards,

Kanwal