ACE - Sorry Server

[larryferrara]

Here is a description of the problem I am having:

I have a VIP configured  using 2 serverfarms. ServerFarm-A as the primary and ServerFarm-B as the backup.

Serverfarm-A (Primary) contains 2 webservers hosting the website

Serverfarm-B (BackUp) contains 1 server simply hosting a sorry page

When  Serverfarm-A (Primary) fails, I recieve the sorry page hosted on Serverfarm-B (Backup)

This action works fine with no issues. I simply click the refresh button on my browser and get the sorry page.

When Serverfarm-A (Primary) comes back on-line I still recieve the sorry page hosted on Serverfarm-B (Backup)

The only way I do not recieve the sorry page is if the client deletes its cache from the browser. (This issue occurs in both IE and FireFox)

I am assuming that since this action does not occur when ServerFarm-A goes down why would it happen the opposite way.

I have tried several differnt configs recommended by TAC and still no luck.

I am hoping someone has come across this issue and can help.

[Surya ARBY]

Do you have stickiness configured ?

Flushing the web browser cache seems to be related to a cookie present somewhere.

[larryferrara]

Sticky is not configured on the box. And we see the requests from the clients hitting the primary server but the brower continues to show the sorry page until the cache is flushed.

[Surya ARBY]

Can you give us some network traces when the user hits the sorry server for th first time ? I suspect the sorry page and its components being marked as cachable at the HTTP level, you can change the code on the server farm, or create a rewrite rule on the ACE to mark all objects on the sorry server as non cachable.

[larryferrara]

Would anyone knows the commands I would use to stop caching?

[jsirstin]

Larry,

Have you compared the headers that are being sent by the servers in the primary farm with those of the sorry serverfarm? If the sorry servers are marking the content as cacheable but the primary servers are not then you could perhaps configure the sorry servers with the same settings.

Is the sorry server giving actual application content or just a sorry page telling the user the site is unavailable?

Also when you refresh is the browser making a new tcp connection to the vip or is it just sending a get on the existing tcp conversation? A wireshark trace on the client would show if it is a new connection or a continuation of the existing one. If the connection is still established and you are just sending another get on the same tcp stream you may want to try and disable connection keepalive on the web server. When the primary farm comes back up only new tcp connections should be sent there. The existing connection will stay on the server they were initially sent to.