To Configure the Access Manager Load Balancer (Deployment Example 1: Access Manager 7.1 Load Balancing, Distributed Authentication UI, and Session Failover)

Deployment Example 1: Access Manager 7.1 Load Balancing, Distributed Authentication UI, and Session Failover

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To Configure the Access Manager Load Balancer

Before You Begin

This procedure assumes that you have already installed a load balancer.
The load balancer hardware and software used for this deployment is BIG-IP® manufactured by F5 Networks. If you are using different load balancer software, see the documentation that comes with that product for detailed settings information.
Contact your network administrator to obtain two available virtual IP addresses.
Know the IP address of the load balancer hardware, the URL for the load balancer login page, and a username and password for logging in to the load balancer application.
Get the IP addresses for Access Manager 1 and Access Manager 2 by running the following command on each host machine:
# ifconfig -a

Access https://is-f5.example.com, the BIG-IP load balancer login page, in a web browser.

Log in using the following information:

User name:

username

Password:

password

Click Configure your BIG-IP (R) using the Configuration Utility.

Create a Pool.

A pool contains all the backend server instances.
1. In the left pane, click Pools.
2. On the Pools tab, click Add.
3. In the Add Pool dialog, provide the following information.
  
  Pool Name
  
  AccessManager-Pool
  
  Load Balancing Method
  
  Round Robin
  
  Resources
  
  Add the IP addresses and port numbers for the Access Manager servers: AccessManager-1:1080 and AccessManager-2:1080.
4. Click Done.

Add a Virtual Server for the non-secure port 7070 on the Access Manager Load Balancer 3.

This step defines instances of the load balancer.

Note –
If you encounter JavaScript^TM errors or otherwise cannot proceed to create a virtual server, try using Internet Explorer.
1. In the left frame, click Virtual Servers.
2. On the Virtual Servers tab, click Add.
3. In the Add a Virtual Server dialog box, provide the following information:
  
  Address
  
  Enter the IP address for LoadBalancer-3.example.com
  
  Service
  
  7070
  
  Pool
  
  AccessManager-Pool
4. Continue to click Next until you reach the Pool Selection dialog box.
5. In the Pool Selection dialog box, assign the AccessManager-Pool Pool.
6. Click Done.

Add Monitors.

Access Manager comes with a JSP file named isAlive.jsp that can be contacted to determine if the server is down. In the following steps, you create a custom monitor that periodically accesses the JSP. If a success response can be obtained, it means not only that Access Manager is responding to TCP connection request, but also that free threads exist to process the request.
1. Click the Monitors tab
2. Click Add and provide the following information.
  
  Name:
  
  AccessManager-http
  
  Inherits From:
  
  Choose http.
3. Click Next on the Configure Basic Properties page.
4. Enter the following value in the Send String field of the Configure ECV HTTP Monitor dialog.
  
  GET /amserver/isAlive.jsp
5. On the Destination Address and Service (Alias) page, click Done.
  
  The monitor you entered is now added to the list of monitors.
6. Click the Basic Associations tab.
7. Find the IP address for AccessManager-1:1080 and AccessManager-2:1080.
8. Mark the Add checkbox for AccessManager-1 and AccessManager-2.
9. At the top of the Node column, choose the monitor that you just added, AccessManager-http.
10. Click Apply.

Configure the load balancer for persistence.
1. In the left pane, click Pools.
2. Click the name of the pool you want to configure.
3. Click the Persistence tab.
4. Under Persistence Type, select Cookie Hash and set the following values.
  
  In this type of persistence, the load balancer uses a portion of the cookie as a hash ID.
  
  Cookie Name:
  
  amlbcookie
  
  Offset:
  
  1
  
  Length:
  
  1
5. Click Apply.

Log out of the load balancer console.

Verify that the Access Manager load balancer is configured properly.
1. As a root user, log in to the AccessManager–1 host machine.
2. Run tail to view the access log.
  # cd /opt/SUNWwbsvr/https-AccessManager-1.example.com/logs # tail -f access
  If you see frequent entries similar to the one below, the custom monitor is configured properly.
  IP_address--[12/Oct/2006:13:10:20-0700] "GET /amserver/isAlive.jsp" 200 118
  If you do not see “GET /amserver/isAlive.jsp”, you must troubleshoot the load balancer configuration.
3. As a root user, log in to the AccessManager–2 host machine.
4. Run tail to view the access log.
  # cd /opt/SUNWwbsvr/https-AccessManager-2.example.com/logs # tail -f access
  If you see frequent entries similar to the one below, the custom monitor is configured properly.
  IP_address--[12/Oct/2006:13:10:20-0700] "GET /amserver/isAlive.jsp" 200 118
  If you do not see “GET /amserver/isAlive.jsp”, you must troubleshoot the load balancer configuration.
5. Access http://LoadBalancer-3.example.com:7070/, the internal-facing load balancer, in a web browser.
  
  Caution –
  Do not supply the amserver prefix.
  
  If the browser displays the default Sun Java System Web Server document root page, it is configured properly.
6. Log out of both Access Manager host machines.

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