CSM : cookie expiration date

[pkovilic]

Hi,

I use the cookie insertion feature of the CSM. Whatever the value of the timeout (2 minutes in the example

below), the expired date (of the cookie file) which the CSM returns is always the same one : Fri, 1 Jan 2010 01:01:50 GMT

Any idea ?

Regards,

Pascal

sticky 10 cookie mycookie insert timeout 2

!

vserver TEST-HTTP

virtual 158.167.242.9 tcp www

vlan 240

serverfarm TEST-HTTP

advertise active

sticky 2 group 10

persistent rebalance

inservice

!

Frame 94 (680 bytes on wire, 680 bytes captured)

Ethernet II, Src: 00:04:9b:7a:4b:fc, Dst: 00:02:a5:bf:01:5a

Internet Protocol, Src Addr: 158.167.242.9 (158.167.242.9), Dst Addr: 158.166.1.35 (158.166.1.35)

Transmission Control Protocol, Src Port: http (80), Dst Port: 3220 (3220), Seq: 1, Ack: 396, Len: 626

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n

Response Code: 200

Set-Cookie: mycookie=r1127814086; path=/; expires=Fri, 1 Jan 2010 01:01:50 GMT\r\n

Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 13:10:38 GMT\r\n

Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) PHP/4.3.0-dev\r\n

Last-Modified: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 09:48:14 GMT\r\n

ETag: "7ca8-f9-38d9e85e"\r\n

Accept-Ranges: bytes\r\n

Content-Length: 249\r\n

Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100\r\n

Connection: Keep-Alive\r\n

Content-Type: text/html\r\n

\r\n

Line-based text data: text/html

[Gilles Dufour]

Pascal,

the CSM uses a static value for the expiration date.

You can set this value yourself with the following variable

gdufour-cat6k-2(config-module-csm)#do sho mod csm 3 vari

variable value

----------------------------------------------------------------

<...>

COOKIE_INSERT_EXPIRATION_DATE Fri, 1 Jan 2010 01:01:50 GMT

Regards,

Gilles.

[pkovilic]

Gilles,

Thank you for your quick answer.

I must say that I do not understand the use of such a fixed date. It implies a problem for us.

In my serverfarm, I have 2 servers. If the server 1 falls, all the requests are sent towards the server 2. Thus, the clients will have the cookie of the server 2. When the server 1 is again available, all the clients who have a cookie of the server 2 will not go any more on the server 1. That can imply thus an imbalance of charge/session between the servers. Without manual intervention, we could even have all the requests on a server and none on the other.

Regards,

Pascal

[Gilles Dufour]

Pascal,

I can't comment the reason why product managers decided to implement the function this way.

I'm sure you know you can contact your Cisco account team to have a feature request introduced.

If you need a workaround, all I can suggest is a script running on a Unix/Linux platform to change the CSM variable every day, or every week, ... whatever time period you believe would be appropriate.

Regards,

Gilles.