persistence issue

[Norberto Salgado]

Hi,

we have an issue in our CSM, even that we have persistence configured, we are not able to mantain it.

We are using a version 4.2(3) with supervisor with a version 12.2(18)SXF1.

Here it's the configuration of the vserver that we are not able to mantain the persistence:

vserver TESTE_V_80
  virtual A.B.C.D tcp www
  serverfarm TESTE_80

  persistent rebalance
  slb-policy TESTE-80
  inservice

policy TESTE-80
  sticky-group 10
  serverfarm TESTE_80

sticky 10 cookie test

serverfarm TESTE_80
  nat server
  no nat client
  predictor leastconns
  real name REAL01 80
   health probe PROBE_TESTEHTTP

     inservice
  real name REAL02 80
   health probe PROBE_TESTEHTTP
   inservice
  real name REAL01
   no inservice

We also tryed this config:

sticky 15 cookie teste timeout 3600

policy TESTE-80
  sticky-group 15
  serverfarm TESTE_80

serverfarm TESTE_80
  nat server
  no nat client
  predictor leastconns
  real name REAL01 80
   health probe PROBE_TESTEHTTP
   inservice
  real name REAL02 80
   health probe PROBE_TESTEHTTP
   inservice
  real name REAL01
   no inservice

vserver TESTE_V_80
  virtual A.B.C.D tcp www
  serverfarm TESTE_80
  persistent rebalance
  slb-policy TESTE-80
  inservice

but we still are facing the same problem.

Thank you.

Best regards,

[Sean Merrow]

Hello Norberto,

When you use sticky configuration such as one of the lines below:

sticky 10 cookie test

sticky 15 cookie teste timeout 3600

The above configurations would depend on the entire value of the cookie remaining static. If only a portion of the cookie remains constant, but the remainder may change, and you want to base sticky on the static portion, then you would need to set the offset and length of the static portion of the cookie as follows:

sticky 30 cookie test timeout 5 cookie offset 0 length 8

The above line would tell the CSM to perform sticky based only on the first 8 characters of the test cookie value.  If you still can't get it to work, then you would need to get a capture of front and backside of CSM to see what is happening and/or going wrong.

You may also want to try using cookie-insert or source-IP sticky, just to see if you can get sticky to work at all.  Keep in mind that on the version of software you are running, the default expiration date of cookies inserted by the ACE is in the past so you would need to set an expiration date in the future using an environment variable.

I should also note that the software you are running is very old now and has a lot of bugs.  Specifically, the 4.2(3) release was pulled from Cisco.com a long time ago and replaced with 4.2(3a).  If possible, I would recommend upgrading your CSM to 4.2(13) or 4.3(3).

Hope this helps,

Sean