CSS11105 - Availability of DFP agent

[wong.kenneth]

We have CSS11105s running but having some problems getting the load balancing to work as we wanted. We are looking into activating DFP but unable to locate DFP agents for Solaris. Cisco's recommended "SiteAssure" software doesn't seem to be available any more.

Is there any other developers providing such agents?

[Gilles Dufour]

Are you sure DFP is the only solution to your problem ?

What is exactly the problem ?

Thanks,

Gilles.

[wong.kenneth]

Hi Gilles,

the CSS is actually CSS11501 - sorry for the typo.

We have a few servers load balanced in a one-armed configuration. These servers provide multiple services and we are using "balance aca" on the content VIP with src-ip stickyness enabled.

Now, when we have high traffic load and the stickness hits a particular server, the SUN server goes to very high CPU load. Interestingly enough, when we go a socket connect to this server during high CPU, we still get a very good response. (SUN server I/O processing is low)

Therefore, we still see the CSS sending requests to this server. The application guys says even though the socket connect may be fast but the application processing would be slow. Thus, they want the CSS not to load balance to high CPU usage servers.

I tried looking up ACA but unable to locate more documentation for fine tuning ACA. Alternatively, is there some sort of script I can use to determine the exact "response time" from a specified service?

Thanks.

[Gilles Dufour]

The CSS has a scripting language so you can write your own probes. I have seen customer opening a connection to the server on a specific port and receiving a value from the server - like ON | OFF or 0 | 1 and shutting down the service based on this value.

On the server side, another script is measuring the CPU and updating the value to send to the CSS.

Another solution for you is the use of the command 'maxconnection'. You could like this limit the number of connections going to 1 server.

Finally, if you are loadbalancing HTTP traffic, you could try to avoid sticky srcip since a lot of clients are behind mega proxy, so they all stick to the same server.

By using arrowpoint cookies as a sticky method you avoid this problem of mega proxy.

Regards,

Gilles.