ACE 4710 and load balancing with sticky cookie

Question

Configuring load balancing with SSL termination and stickiness for a couple of citrix xenapp servers.  I'm doing a source-NAT as the ACE resides in the DMZ and these particular servers reside on the inside arm of the firewall.  The ACE is in bridged mode to load balance web servers that reside in the DMZ.  Everything seems to work just fine, but the cookie stickiness does not seem to be working.

Answer 1

Hi David,
As you may know, using Wireshark to look at an HTTPS capture is only useful if you've installed the server SSL key.This is why I find it easier to use something like LiveHTTPHeaders or HTTPWatch.
When using cookie-insert, the ACE will not create any dynamic cookie entries.  It will simply create one static entry for each rserver with a cookie value, such as R3911631338, and any client that gets load balanced to that rserver will receive a cookie with that value.  So what you see there is what is expected.
You are correct in that when using location cookies that the server supplies, the ACE will create a dynamic entry when it sees the server response with the cookie.   The cookie is included in the server's response, and the ACE will look for the value as configured.  The cookie will also be sent to the client.  If the cookie is not in the server's first response, you will need enable persistence-rebalance so that it will look in subsequent server responses.  If the browser opens new connections with that cookie, then the ACE will stick to the same server.
My suggestion would be to get sticky working with cookie-insert first.  Then if that meets your needs, go with that permanently.  If you need to use server cookies, then once cookie insert is working, migrate your sticky to cookie location.
Sean