ACE 4710 Can not confirm http cookie sticky connections

Question

We are using a ACE 4710 with A3(2.6) software release.
I had to change our sticky load balancing method for HTTPS to cookie based.
However while connections appear to work if I look at the sho sticky database table I can not see or confirm sticky entries for the cookie based connections.
Here or config snippets to show the config
sticky http-cookie ghh-www scook-ghh
  cookie insert browser-expire
  serverfarm ghh-www-443
class-map match-all ghh-www-443_CLASS
  2 match virtual-address 172.16.1.21 tcp eq https
class-map type http loadbalance match-any ghh-www-443_CLASSURL
  2 match http url [.]*
policy-map type loadbalance first-match ghh-sticky-443_POLICY
  class class-default
    sticky-serverfarm scook-ghh
policy-map multi-match POLICY
class ghh-www-443_CLASS
      loadbalance vip inservice
      loadbalance policy ghh-sticky-443_POLICY
      loadbalance vip icmp-reply active
      appl-parameter http advanced-options CASE_PARAM

Answer 1

Another point: please check whether your servers are listening only for HTTPS traffic or also for HTTP traffic:
in the first case the ACE will have to: decrypt the traffic from the client, inspect the http header to take the loadbalance decision and then re-encrypt it and send it to the server
in the second case the ACE would have to: decrypt the traffic from the client, inspect the http header to take the loadbalance decision and send it out as it is unencrypted to the server
the second solution would have the benefit of being easier to configure and to require less resoucerces both on the ACE (only decryption to be performed) and on the servers (no need for SSL operations at all there) but it might be that your company or business sector have requirements for which this traffic should never flow unencrypted, in which case you would have to go for the first solution.
Here you have a config example for the first solution:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/modules/ps2706/products_configuration_example09186a00809c6f37.shtml
I would not expect you to have to pay extra for importing the cert and kepair into the ace, it would be just a copy, however as Alex said that may still depend on the license agreement with the CA.
Cheers,
Francesco