TCP port Inheritance Question - Different URL to same VIP, same ServerFarm, different TCP port

[RAMAN AZIZIAN]

Good Day All,

My customer would like to have several different https URL with the same IP VIP address to be load-balanced to the same real servers listening to different TCP ports.

I think cisco calls this option Port Inheritance.

I am able to make the connection successful if the real server under the same Serverfarm is listening to specific TCP port.

Client makes connection via port 443, but under the serverfarm I set the desired TCP port, which in this case it would be 8443. This works fine.

Now they want the client to come on 443, but under the same Serverfarm that currently has the same real server listening to 8443, to listen to 8445 as well. This method is not working.

They are basically trying to split the load between two different instances of TCP port on the same real server.

I suggested as a possible fix to create another VIP IP address and split the incoming URL to different VIP, and I am not sure if they can do that.

Has anyone come across something like this? Any suggestion would greatly be appreciated.

Here's a sample config.

rserver host SERVER-1
  description SERVER-1 192.168.1.10
  ip address 192.168.1.10
  inservice

rserver host SERVER-2
  description SERVER-2 192.168.1.20
  ip address 192.168.1.20
  inservice

serverfarm host VIPTEST-HTTPS
  description VIPTEST-HTTPS
  predictor leastconns slowstart 3600
  rserver SERVER-1 8443
    inservice
  rserver SERVER-1 8445
    inservice
  rserver SERVER-2 8443
    inservice
  rserver SERVER-2 8445
    inservice

sticky ip-netmask 255.255.255.255 address both VIPTEST-HTTPS-STICKY
  serverfarm VIPTEST-HTTPS
  timeout 60

class-map match-all VIPTEST-HTTPS-VIP
  description VIPTEST-HTTPS-VIP 192.168.1.50
  2 match virtual-address 192.168.1.50 tcp eq https

policy-map type loadbalance first-match VIPTEST-HTTPS-PM
  class class-default
    sticky-serverfarm VIPTEST-HTTPS-STICKY

policy-map multi-match VIPTEST-PM
  class VIPTEST-HTTPS-VIP
    loadbalance vip inservice
    loadbalance policy VIPTEST-HTTPS-HTTPS-PM
    loadbalance vip icmp-reply
    loadbalance vip advertise active
 

[Kanwaljeet Singh · Accepted solution]

Hi Raman,

You will need to create a different serverfarm as you suggested. You can have different servers listening on different ports in same serverfarm but you cannot have same server listening on different TCP ports. I see what customer is asking but i am pretty sure this will not work.  I see same server part of different serverfarms listening on different ports and it works fine but haven't seen same server in same serverfarm listening on different ports. Will check internally if i see something similar faced by another customer but yeah they can do URL based loadbalancing or tell clients to come on different ports so that they loadbalanced to different serverfarms.

Regards,

Kanwal

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