Cisco CSS 11501 question

[rtcary4523]

[It was suggested that I re-post my question here]

We have obtained Web hosting from a provider that uses the Cisco CSS 11501 as a load balancer. The configuration is two page/Web servers and one database server. Since their support has not been adequate, I have several questions about the load balancer; what to expect.

The first question whether it is normal behavior to have traffic from one IP to always be directed to the same Web server.

The second question involves the response to our load testing. When we run a load test (16,000 requests), all but a dozen are directed to the same page server. Is this proper? Thank you for any light you can cast on these questions.

Todd Cary

Software Developer

[Gilles Dufour]

Todd,

you most probably have stickyness configured.

Something like 'advanced-balance sticky-srcip'.

Stickyness guarantees that the same host always goes to the same server.

This is useful if your site as something like a 'shopping basket'. Since the information of the basket is not shared between servers [most of the time], then you don't want to be loadbalanced between multiple servers.

Gilles.