C11501 Load-balancing MS Terminal Services servers

[jarose]

I've read on these forums that load-balancing on port 3389 is being done on C11501 content switches, but no info here or in the doco about the impact of timed out TCP sessions on actual Terminal Services sessions.

e.g. if a Terminal Services client times out to the C11501 (16 second default timeout I believe)... the client may end up load-balanced onto a different Terminal Services server (thus they can't resume their disconnected, but not ended, Terminal Services session).

I guess my question is... does the C11501 cache source/destination/port for a configurable amount of time, so that a client re-connecting (after a timeout) will connect to the same server and thus be able to resume it's Terminal Services session.

Any comments appreciated.

[Gilles Dufour]

First, be aware you can increase the timeout with the command 'flow-timeout-mulitplier'.

Then a flow marked idle is not brought down immediately. The time it takes vary based on your traffic.

Should the connection be disconnected, you can use sitcky source-ip so that the next connection is fowarded to the same server.

The sticky entry is also linked to a timeout value configurable with the command 'sticky-timeout'.

Regards,

Gilles.

[jarose]

Thanks Giles.

I note that the commands for src ip stickiness (and timeouts) are under Owner->Content part of the config guides for anybody who might have this requirement in future.