Configuring BIG-IP^TM Hardware with Clusters

This topic contains the following sections:

• Overview
• About Load Balancing and URL Rewriting
• Configuring Session Persistence with a WebLogic Server Cluster

 

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Overview

This section describes how to configure an F5 BIG-IP controller to operate with a WebLogic Server cluster. It assumes that you have some familiarity with BIG-IP configuration tasks.

This section provides some step-by-step instructions for configuring BIG-IP. However, if you require detailed setup and administration instructions, refer to your F5 product documentation.

 

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About Load Balancing and URL Rewriting

In some cases, you may want to load balance by rewriting a URL. For example, suppose you have an application with a URL http://www.paradiso.com and you want to load balance its traffic to servers named www.paradiso[0].com through www.paradiso[4].com, a total of five servers.

In general, there are many possible solutions to load balancing by URL rewriting. However, you cannot use URL rewriting if you use BIG-IP as a load balancer.

 

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Configuring Session Persistence with a WebLogic Server Cluster

If your cluster uses in-memory replication for client session states, you must configure BIG-IP to use the Insert mode for cookies. Insert mode insures that the original WebLogic Server cookie is not overwritten, and can be used in the event that a client fails to connect to its primary WebLogic Server.

To configure Insert mode for BIG-IP cookies:

1. Open the BIG-IP configuration utility.
2. Select the Pools option from the navigation pane.
3. Select the an available pool to configure.
4. Select the Persistence tab.
5. Select Active HTTP Cookie to begin configuring cookies.
6. Choose Insert mode from the list of methods.
7. Enter the timeout value for the cookie. The timeout value specifies how long the inserted cookie remains on the client before expiring. Note that the timeout value does not affect the WebLogic Server session cookie—it affects only the inserted BIG-IP cookie.
8. Apply your changes and exit the utility.