Using SoftPro Select with F5 load balancer

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toddsou
Posts: 75
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2012 9:39 am

Using SoftPro Select with F5 load balancer

Post by toddsou »

Hi-

It is my understanding that the SPS Client requires any load balancer which sits between the client and an SPS server farm to allow for session stickiness/affinity.

Our F5 vendor is suggesting that we use their cookie feature to do this. That is, new sessions are issued new cookies, and thus traffic can be appropriately routed based on the presence of the returned cookie in subsequent requests.

So my question is: The SPS client uses the http protocol to communicate to the SPS servers, but will it respect the load balancer's request that an issued session cookie be stored on the client and returned with all further traffic coming from that SPS session ?

Thank you.

-Todd
John Morris
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Re: Using SoftPro Select with F5 load balancer

Post by John Morris »

The SPS client will not store the load balancer's cookie. The SPS application sends an url query params hint called "cid". This value is mantained by the SPS app. The load balancer needs to provide stickiness based on this value. The value itself doesn't have meaning, other than to signal that if the load balancer sees the same value twice, it should route the request to an already routed server.

Upon the load balancer seeing the first unique CID value, it should pick a server to route to and remember the answer. If the load balancer doesn't see the CID value for more than 15 mins, it should be safe for the load balancer to drop the cache entry.
John Morris
Sr. Software Architect
SoftPro
toddsou
Posts: 75
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2012 9:39 am

Re: Using SoftPro Select with F5 load balancer

Post by toddsou »

Thanks, John.

And if I restart the SPS client, will it generate a new cid value ?
John Morris
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Re: Using SoftPro Select with F5 load balancer

Post by John Morris »

Yes.
John Morris
Sr. Software Architect
SoftPro
toddsou
Posts: 75
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2012 9:39 am

Re: Using SoftPro Select with F5 load balancer

Post by toddsou »

Hi,

You previously mentioned:
The SPS application sends an url query params hint called "cid". This value is mantained by the SPS app.
Does this also hold true for custom applications which are built using the SDK ?
If not, how can these types of applications manage the desired cid for their session?

Thanks.
BobRichards
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Re: Using SoftPro Select with F5 load balancer

Post by BobRichards »

Custom applications use the same Select DLLs for providing network operations as the Select applications. The behavior is the same.
Bob Richards, Senior Software Developer, SoftPro
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