NAT Clients issue with Load Balancer

[beyondgoodandevil]

Hi All

i need your help to understand something about Cisco CSS load balancer, here is the situation,we have a cisco CSS which load balance the traffic between 3 apache servers,the issue is that the clients are using NAT feature, which means that they are using one single IP, so the load balanacer is balancing based on that IP that the clients  use which mean that all the traffic is routed to one server, since the load balancer thought they are all the same user.

Is there any way to make the load balancer makes the difference between clients even although they use the same ip?

Thanks

Zakaria

[Daniel Arrondo Ostiz]

Hi Zakaria,

I guess that, when you say that the CSS is balancing based on the source IP address, you mean that it's using source-ip stickiness? Or is it using source-ip hash as load-balancing algorithm?

Either way, you can use other methods for both load-balancing and stickiness that are not based on the source IP. See the links below

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/data_center_app_services/css11500series/v8.20/configuration/content_lb/guide/ContRule.html#wp1038118 --> Load-balancing

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/app_ntwk_services/data_center_app_services/css11500series/v8.20/configuration/content_lb/guide/Sticky.html#wp1076281 --> Stickyness

I hope this helps

Daniel

[beyondgoodandevil]

Thanks Daniel for your prompt answer, honestly i have some lake of knowledge about load balancing,so i just know how to balance the traffic based on IP source, is there anyway to change that to balance based on other things?

the links that you gave me will take me a while to read them, can you point me directly to needed command line or knowldge?

Thanks

Zakaria

[Daniel Arrondo Ostiz]

Hi Zakaria,

It seems you didn't even open the links, because they are pointing directly to the section describing the different algorithms available and the command needed to configure each of them.

Please, read them. You need to choose the algorith that best applies to your setup.

Regards

Daniel

[beyondgoodandevil]

Thanks Daniel, i have just finished reading the documents, so if you can confirm what i understood,you believe if we change the stickyness method not based on source ip address it is going to resolve the issue? can you please advice me  what this the best stickyness way to implement?

[Daniel Arrondo Ostiz]

Hi Zakaria,

Yes, I believe changing the sticky method should fix your issue.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you which other method to use because it depends on your setup and the kind of traffic you have. However, in general, using "arrowpoint cookie" is the easiest L7 method available.

Regards

Daniel