We have a Cisco 11503 running 7.40.1.03 (standard feature set) that we are setting up as a load balancer for a new e-mail system. I had two previous threads - thanks to Gilles and the others who responded. The box is now more or less configured to do what we want it to do, but I'm curious about "best practice" suggestions for keepalives.
As I understand it, keepalives are per service. As an example, we have two webmail servers. They are only running SSL, so each server is a service with keepalive type ssl. If webmail1 looses its apache or just dies entirely, the keepalive will not respond, and the CSS will send all traffic to webmail2, which still has its keepalives active.
This is all well and good. But, our IMAP servers are running multiple protocols - 7 of them. I have two services configured; one for each server, with no protocol specification. Then I have a content rule for each seperate protocol, where the port #s are configured.
I am thinking that if I want the most out of the CSS, I need to configure a seperate SERVICE for each protocol for the e-mail servers, with a specific keepalive for each individual protocol. That way if SSH goes away, the CSS will close SSH to email1 and only send that traffice to email2, but will still send IMAP or SIMAP to email1, since those protocols didn't go down.
For me this seems like a configuration disaster. I'd need a seperate service for each server and each protocol, and then a separate content rule as well for every service and every protocol.
Is this correct? Or is there some way of streamlining the configuration to reduce the number of services and/or content rules?
Thank you! And let me know if the configuration would be helpful.
Cheers...
