ACE Load balancing with different source IP

Dear All ,
I am very much new to ACE . We are deploying it on our enterprise infrastructure (10.x.x.x/8) . I have a setup like this, we have 5 Proxy server which is supporting for our enteprise internet needs . Load balancing to this 5 blue coat proxy server is done via ACE module .
My customer is having special requirement based on specfic source subnet , ACE need to redirect the that specific source subnet to a particular proxy server . Is this possible in ACE ?? or we need to have separate Virtual server group for that specific source subnet range . kindly correct me if am worng on my understanding .
Thanks
Santhoshkumar Saravanan

Hi Saravanan,
Please refer the following link :
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/interfaces_modules/services_modules/ace/vA4_2_0/configuration/slb/guide/sticky.pdf
Look at section :
IP Address Stickiness Configuration Quick Start
For example :
8. (Optional) Configure static IP address sticky entries up to a maximum of
65535 static entries per context.
host1/Admin(config-sticky-ip)# static client source 192.168.12.15
destination 172.16.27.3 rserver SERVER1 2000
The above may fulfill your requirement.
regards,
Ajay Kumar

Similar Messages

ACE load balance based on Source IP Address

Hi Cisco Support,
I have question related to Cisco ACE behavior in term to taking a decision based on source address
I currently have two servers sits behind ACE part of one server farm, these servers are load balanced via one VIP on ACE module and every things looks fine.
Now service owners want to replace these old servers with new hardware hence before the migration we need to make sure these new servers are working as required standard hence need to create a testing scenario for new servers along with old server. The problem is that number of third party partners are accessing existing servers by hitting VIP on ace and we can't engage all our partner to participate in this test therefore decided to engage only one partner to carry our test with us.
For that reason can we some how configure the ACE so when packet arrive on ACE from one test partner mentioned above, ACE send only that partner's traffic based on it's source address (define via class/policy map on ACE if possible) towards new servers in the existing server farm and not to the old server in the same server farm.
Thanks for your support

Hi,
Just to put some config sample that might help you to get this done.
First create the new rservers and include them under a new serverfarm (New-APP)/
serverfarm host Webfarm
rserver SVR1
    inservice
rserver SVR2
    inservice
serverfarm host New-APP
rserver New-1
    inservice
rserver New-2
    inservice
- Same VIP already working.
class-map match-all VIP-HTTP
2 match virtual-address 10.10.10.10 tcp eq www
- Create a new class that will include your partner's IP(s).
class-map type http loadbalance match-any 3rd-Party
2 match source-address 200.200.200.1 255.255.255.255
3 match source-address 200.200.200.10 255.255.255.255
Modify your current first-match policy to put the new class on top so that all the traffic matched by the statement above (IP) will be redirected to the new farm with the new APP, any other traffic that does not match the "rule" will be sent to the old serverfam with the old app.
policy-map type loadbalance first-match L7-SLB
class 3rd-Party
    serverfarm New-APP
class class-default
    serverfarm Webfarm
Since you already have LB working then this is it, nothing needs to be added under the multi-match policy nor interface.
HTH
Pablo

Ask the Expert: Configuration and Troubleshooting the Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) load balancer

With Ajay Kumar and Telmo Pereira
Welcome to the Cisco Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to learn and ask questions about configuration and troubleshooting the Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) load balancer with Cisco expert Ajay Kumar and Telmo Pereira. The Cisco ACE Application Control Engine Module for Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches and Cisco 7600 Series Routers is a next-generation load-balancing and application-delivery solution. A member of the Cisco family of Data Center 3.0 solutions, the module: Helps ensure business continuity by increasing application availability Improves business productivity by accelerating application and server performance Reduces data center power, space, and cooling needs through a virtualized architecture Helps lower operational costs associated with application provisioning and scaling
Ajay Kumar is a customer support engineer in the Cisco Technical Assistance Center in Brussels, covering content delivery network technologies including Cisco Application Control Engine, Cisco Wide Area Application Services, Cisco Content Switching Module, Cisco Content Services Switches, and others. He has been with Cisco for more than four years, working with major customers to help resolve their issues related to content products. He holds DCASI and VCP certifications.
Telmo Pereira is a customer support engineer in the Cisco Technical Assistance Center in Brussels, where he covers all Cisco content delivery network technologies including Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE), Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS), and Digital Media Suite. He has worked with multiple customers around the globe, helping them solve interesting and often highly complex issues. Pereira has worked in the networking field for more than 7 years. He holds a computer science degree as well as multiple certifications including CCNP, DCASI, DCUCI, and VCP
Remember to use the rating system to let Ajay know if you have received an adequate response.
Ajay and Telmo might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the Data Center sub-community discussion forum Application Networking shortly after the event.
This event lasts through July 26, 2013. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other community members.

Hello Krzysztof,
Another set of good/interesting questions posted. Thanks!
I will try to clarify your doubts.
In the output below both resources (proxy-connections and ssl-connections rate) are configured with a min percentage of resources (column Min), while 'Max' is set to equal to the min.
ACE/Context# show resource usage
                                                     Allocation
        Resource         Current       Peak        Min        Max       Denied
-- outputs omitted for brevity --
proxy-connections             0      16358      16358      16358      17872
ssl-connections rate          0        626        626        626      23204
Most columns are self explanatory, 'Current' is current usage, 'Peak' is the maximum value reached, and the most important counter to monitor 'Denied' represents the amount of packets denied/dropped due to exceeding the configured limits.
On the resources themselves, Proxy-connections is simply the amount of proxied connections, in other words all connections handled at layer 7 (SSL connections are proxied, as are any connections with layer 7 load balance policies, or inspection).
So in this particular case for the proxy-connections we see that Peak is equal to the Max allocated, and as we have denies we can conclude that you have surpassed the limits for this resource. We see there were 17872 connections dropped due to that.
ssl-connections rate should be read in the same manner, however all values for this resource are in bytes/s, except for Denied counter, that is simply the amount of packets that were dropped due to exceeding this resource.
For your particular tests you have allocated a min percentage and set max equal to min, this way you make sure that this context will not use any other additional resources.
If you had set the max to unlimited during resource allocation, ACE would be allowed to use additional resources on top of those guaranteed, if those resources were available.
This might sound a great idea, but resource planning on ACE should be done carefully to avoid any sort of oversubscription, specially if you have business critical contexts.
We have a good reference for ACE resource planning that contains also description of all resources (this will help to understand the output better):
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/interfaces_modules/services_modules/ace/v3.00_A2/configuration/virtualization/guide/config.html#wp1008224
1) When a resource is utilized to its maximum limit, the ACE denies additional requests made by any context for that resource. In other words, the action is to Drop. ACE should in theory silently drop (No RST is sent back to the client). So unless we changed something on the code, this is what you should see.
To give more context, seeing resets with SSL connections is not necessarily synonym of drops. As it is usual to see them during normal transactions.
For instance Microsoft servers are usually ungracefully terminating SSL connections with RESET. Also when there is renegotiation during an SSL transaction you may see RESETS, but this will pass unnoticed for end users.
2) ACE will simply drop/ignore new connections when we reach the maximum amount of proxied connections for that context. Exisiting connections will continue there.
As ACE doesn't respond back, client would simply retransmit, and if he is lucky maybe in the next attempt he will be able to establish the connection.
To overcome the denies, you will definitely have to increase the resource allocation. This of course, assuming you are not reaching any physical limit of the box.
As mentioned setting max as unlimited might work for you, assuming there are a lot of unused resources on the box.
3) If a new connection comes in with a sticky value, that matches the sticky entry of a real server, which is already in MAXCONNS state, then both the ACE module/appliance should reject the connection and that sticky entry would be removed.
The client would at that point reestablish a new connection and ACE would associate a new sticky entry with the flow for a new RSERVER after the loadbalancing decision.
I hope this makes things clearer! Uff...
Regards,
Telmo

ACE 4710 and load balancing with sticky cookie

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.

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

Need help with ACE Load Balancing Base on URL pattern

This is the first time for me trying to configure something like this on the ACE load balancer. I need help configuring a load balancing policy base on URL pattern. URL https://ineedhelp.com base on /willuhelpme and /imlost
Key: ineedhelp_key
cert: ineedhelp_cert
serverfarmA
serverA 10.1.1.1 443
serverfarmB
serverB 10.1.1.2 443
ineedhelp.com/willuhelpme-------serverfarmA
ineedhelp.ocm/imlost---------------serverfarmB

This is the first time for me trying to configure something like this on the ACE load balancer. I need help configuring a load balancing policy base on URL pattern. URL https://ineedhelp.com base on /willuhelpme and /imlost
Key: ineedhelp_key
cert: ineedhelp_cert
serverfarmA
serverA 10.1.1.1 443
serverfarmB
serverB 10.1.1.2 443
ineedhelp.com/willuhelpme-------serverfarmA
ineedhelp.ocm/imlost---------------serverfarmB

Is it possible to use UCS Blade Servers in ACE Load Balancing

Hi all ,
Is it possible to use UCS Blade Servers in ACE Load Balancing ?? Please note that UCS Blade Servers are not connected directly to 6500 Switch where ACE Module installed .i am expecting a good suggestion from whether ACE or Switching Expert
Thanks in advance
Sanjeevi

There is nothing that would prevent you from loadbalancing the applications that run on UCS servers. ACE can loadbalance applications that are directly L2 attached (bridged or routed mode) or even servers that are multiple hops L3 hops away using one-armed mode with source nat. The key to this is that the return traffic from the server needs to make it back to the ACE.

ACE load balancing and testing using soapUI

Hey, I am trying to crowd source a solution for this problem.
A client is testing using soapUI to an application that is being load balanced via ACE. There are two webservers behind the VIP servicing the client request. When client tests, requests are timing out per the soapUI log. A packet capture was taken and it clearly shows that ACE is not forwarding the HTTP data back to the client. When client tests by bypassing the ACE load balancer, it works fine. But, there are other clients from other applications that are making successful connection to the load balanced application via the VIP.
Question, is there any thing unique with making HTTP/XML based requests using soapUI? LB configuration is shown below:
class-map match-all EAI_PWS_9083
2 match virtual-address 10.5.68.29 tcp eq 9083
serverfarm host EAI_PWS_9083
description WebSphere Porduction
failaction purge
probe tcp9083
rserver ESSWSPAPP01 9083
    inservice
rserver ESSWSPAPP02 9083
    inservice
policy-map type loadbalance first-match L7_POLICY_EAI_PWS_9083
class class-default
    serverfarm EAI_PWS_9083
policy-map multi-match L4SLBPOLICY
class EAI_PWS_9083
    loadbalance vip inservice
    loadbalance policy L7_POLICY_EAI_PWS_9083
    loadbalance vip icmp-reply active
    appl-parameter http advanced-options CASE_PARAM
parameter-map type http CASE_PARAM
case-insensitive

Hi,
Your configuration looks fine. I am not familiar with soapUI but if it is like a normal TCP connection followed by HTTP requests, i don't see why this shouldn't work.
Do you know if there is a difference while using soapUI and normal request using browser?
Regards,
Kanwal

Load balancing with JSP

Anyone and everyone,
When configuring load balancing with Weblogic clusters, does load
balancing take effect for all services or just EJB and RMI? Or another
way of saying the same thing, can I setup weighted load balancing for
the JSP engines across 2 weblogic servers.
Thanks in advance,
Mike

The load-balancing documentation you read describing the different algorithms only applies to RMI stubs (e.g., EJB clients). Please see http://www.weblogic.com/docs51/cluster/concepts.html#1026091 for a description of how load-balancing/clustering works with servlets/JSPs.
The short answer is that in using servlet clustering, most people want/need/use in-memory replication for HttpSession objects. In WLS 5.1 (and before), in-memory replication requires one or more proxy servers be set-up in front of the cluster. Typically, most people use something like BigIP to load-balance
across the proxy servers and let the weblogic plug-in for the proxy server handle the routing to the cluster. The plug-in uses round-robin until an HttpSession is established for a user, then it always tries to route to the server where the user's session is located.
Hope this helps,
Robert
Brian Lin wrote:
All,
I have a quesiton here regarding load balancing with DNS round robin. As of Chapter Adminstration of Clustering Weblogic server, Weblogic can be configured to balance by weight. How about Weblogic handle weight based balancing after DNS round robin ip response? or just can choose one way instead of both?
What's the big difference between choosing BigIP and software balancing (WL)?
Brian
"Wei Guan" <[email protected]> wrote:
I don't think you can configure this load balancing in weblogic in current
release. However, if you have Big-IP or LocalDireoctr, you can set up
weighted load-balancing there. Otherwise, weblogic proxy will use DNS round
robin to do the load-balancing between JSP engins.
My 2 cents.
Cheers - Wei
Michael Yakimisky <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
Anyone and everyone,
When configuring load balancing with Weblogic clusters, does load
balancing take effect for all services or just EJB and RMI? Or another
way of saying the same thing, can I setup weighted load balancing for
the JSP engines across 2 weblogic servers.
Thanks in advance,
Mike

Load Balancing with BigIP / SSL question

I have an oddball question. We're load balancing ColdFusion
MX7 across 3 servers using a BigIP load balancing server. We
decided to go the hardware approach and it has been great except
for one small configuration issue.
We use a mix of SSL and non SSL pages, prior to the switch
from a single server to a load balanced setup I used to script that
would determine if a page that was supposed to be SSL had the
variable CGI.HTTPS turned on or off. If it was off, the page would
redirect back to itself with the SSL turned on.
The problem we have is that we followed BigIP's instruction
to secure the load balancing hardware instead of the three servers
running behind it. So what happens is that the traffic goes to the
load balancer port 441, but then the calls from the load balancer
to the individual servers is port 80. So even if a page is called
as HTTPS://... the coldfusion server says that CGI.HTTPS is "off"
since the traffic is port 80.
This isn't much of a problem, our SSL pages are linked as
HTTPS:// and the only problem would actually arise if someone was
to type in the URL and call it as HTTP rather than HTTPS.
My questions is this, does anyone know of a way that I can
detect if the page should be HTTPS and is not without changing our
configuration and putting SSL certificates on each individual
server?

Hey,
Well the load balancing with the BigIP device is really very
amazing. I think
what i liked most was swapping out servers when their lease
was up, through the
BigIP manager I just stopped all traffic to a server, shut it
down, plugged in
the new one and turned traffic back on. It was really very
easy.
The SSL stuff still gives me a headache to think about. but
I should mention I
no longer work where I was, plus now I'm all .net C# but
that's a different
story.
I think if I was going to do this all again I would not have
secured the bigIP
unit. It was nice to buy one SSL cert for all the servers I
attached rather
than one per server, but getting the SSL sites to work
properly was a headache.
We also use windows file replication where now I would go
with like a pair of
Dell MD1000's mirrored for storage and just have tons of ram
and cpu on the
front end units. Depends what you want to spend I guess. I
think the bigIP unit
we bought was like 20 grand, i think they are cheaper now
though.
Hope I helped.

Regarding ACE load balancing

Hi,
I have one server application with two physical servers clustered with one virtual IP address . I have total six ip addresses for one server : details are given below
Cluster IP’s :
Node 1 :
NIC 1 : 10.10.x.x : physical IP address
NIC 2 : 172.16.x.x : heartbeat address used in between server
Node 2 :
NIC 1 : 10.10.x.x : physical ip address
NIC 2 : 172.16.x.x : heartbeat address used in between server
Cluster IP : 10.10.x.x : clustered IP address used to access server
SQL IP : 10.10.x.x : clustered IP address used to access SQL application .
now i want to achieve server load-balancing using ACE module. Please suggest to me fulfil this requirement. how to do this ?
whether i need to remove the virtual IP and directly bind two physical ip to ace virtual ip add.
How do i check ace server load-balancing configuration with live server .... do we have any tool to check the packet behaviour to confirm that load-balancing is happening properly in between two physical servers :
Please guide me and share the knowledge .....................

Hi Vinod,
You are correct. In order to achieve load-balancing with an ACE blade, you need to configure the addresses of the two severs separately. If you look at the documentation page on cisco.com for ACE (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6906/tsd_products_support_model_home.html) you will find sample configuration for the most commont topologies.
As for how to verify if the load-balancing is working correctly, you can use the command "show serverfarm ", which will list you all the servers in a serverfarm, along with the current and total connection numbers for each of them.

Ace load balancing, inservice/no inservice serverfarms

I've started working with an ACE load balancer and came across something that just didn't add up to me. I can pull and put servers in and out of rotation without a problem however when working with a serverfarm or a group of servers I have to pull each one individually and can't find a way to remove say the entire serverfarm via one command. Does anyone know of a way to put a serverfarm 'inservice' or set it to 'no inservice' that would make it easier for large groups of servers needing to be adjusted.
Sorry if this isn't the write forum for this kind of question. Please feel free to move it if needed.

Hello Chris,
There is no toggle to set every rserver under a serverfarm out of service. You can only take a single rserver out of service at a global level, or under a serverfarm inividually.
One thing to think about - bringing down all of the servers would be the same as removing the serverfarm from under the policy map type loadbalance since it would effectively bring the vip down.
Regards,
Chris Higgins

BEx Integration with different source systems

Hi All
I know we can create BEx querys on top of an infoprovider. But instead of storing data into BW and creating reports using BEx tools can we integrate BEx with the other source systems. Like Business Objects tool which can be integrated with different sources. My client wants to know whether we can integrate with BEx for the following
Support data source -- SAP BW
Support data source -- Oracle
Support data source -- MS SQL Server
Support data source -- MS Access
Support data source -- MS Excel
Support data source -- ASCII Text files
Support data source -- XML/XSD
Support data source -- Web Services
Support data source -- SAP R/3
Support data source -- BO Universe
Thanks for letting me know your opinions

Hi,
in theory you can. You will still have a virtual provider on top of your Infosource which will be connected to your datasource; thus you'll have to create the structures; you'll have to load master data as well... so not so nice solution if you think that at this stage, the storage will be the less of your costs....
How are you going to deal with R/3 data?? I mean a great advantage of BW is really when you have an R/3 behind...
I'd rather consolidate all these disparate datasources using the Visual compsoer which can get this data out of nearly an datasource and merge them in one single report; in theory again you could implement all BEx functionalities but at which cost and effort??
Weird that a customer is asking such a question because it is usually the other way around: use SAP BW data in another front-end... by the way SAP is going to acquire BO soon....
hope this helps...
Olivier.

ACE - Load Balance SMB?

Can the ACE load balance SMB?
Server 1 DNS is msserver1
Server 2 DNS is msserver2
VIP DNS is msserver
Can the ACE replace the server name (or IP address) in a tree connect query with the actual real server name that is chosen for the request?

Hi , If I understood you correctly and you're looking for intelligent way to loadbalance NetBios/Samba - I'm afraid there is no such functionality on ACE, we can only do simple L4 loadbalancing for such sessions and can't change anything.

CF 10 Load-Balancing with Remote Instances

I was reading an article on Clustering/LB/HA using CF8, but have not found any updates for CF10.
Using VM VirtualBox to setup a few virtual servers, I am looking to setup a load balancing of ColdFusion 10 on 2 remote instances. The goal would be have ColdFusion Cluster Manager be able to point http request to one of the two servers based on load/availability. Not really having a hardware cluster/failover setup, just managing resources on two CF instances instead of a standalone.
The servers are Windows Server 2008 R2 with IIS7.5 and ColdFusion 10 Enterprise on installed on 3 of these machines. Let's call them CF-LBManager, CF-Web1, and CF-Web 2. In the CF Docs, they show the Cluster Manager adding the local CF instance and "if you want" a remote instance. However, this scenario would require the main instance to be running and not fail for it to direct to the other instance.
I am trying to set this up now with CF-LBManager as just a manager of the requests coming in. In the Enterprise Manager >> Instance Manager, the local instance is shown and I add the two remote instances with the correct Remote Port, JVM Route, etc. I also made sure the <Cluster>...</Cluster> block was added to the two remote instances (CF-Web1 and CF-Web2) \runtime\conf\server.xml file too, Jetty Services also is running. Now under the Enterprise Manager >> Cluster Manager I add the two remote instances to the cluster, not the local instance on CF-LBManager with Multicast Port and Sticky Sessions enabled. On Submit, I get a green message "You must restart all the server instances and any configured webservers for these changes to take effect.". I go ahead and reboot the servers and come back.
I now browse to the ColdFusion page as a test on CF-Web1 and CF-Web2 to make sure CF is running properly, they do. I then browse the IP of the CF-LBManager, however it only returns the local IIS web site and not redirect to one of the two cluster members. I am not seeing any message on the coldfusion-out.log on the remote instances. Am I not setting this up correctly or not enabling the Cluster Manager to take over and pass along the requests to those in the cluster?

Unfortunatley I don't have a lot of experience with CF10 on Windows, but if you are running CF behind IIS I think you will need to update the Tomcat connector configuraiton to do load balancing. I'm not sure if re-running the wsconfig tool on all of the servers will do this or not, but that is what I would suggest trying first. If that doesn't work you will need to update the Tomcat connector configuraiton manually. You can find more information on load balancing with the Tomcat connector here: http://tomcat.apache.org/connectors-doc/generic_howto/loadbalancers.html.

CSS Load Balancing with Cookies

We are trying to load balance 2 backend servers hosted on Websphere with advance balance cookies method.
Restrictions
ServerA is unable to accept cookies generated from ServerB.
ServerA and ServerB are generating random cookies
Unable to modify cookie string with a constant.
How can we load balance based on cookies considering the above restrictions?
We have attempted to do hash based load balancing with cookies but the problem we run into is the servers do not accept cookies generated from another server.
The configuration we tried is written below:
service ServerA
ip address 192.168.10.2
keepalive type tcp
keepalive port 80
active
service ServerB
ip address 192.168.20.2
keepalive type tcp
keepalive port 80
active
content ABC
url "/*"
add service ServerA
string prefix "JSESSIONID="
advanced-balance cookies
port 80
add service ServerB
string skip-length 5
string process-length 16
string operation hash-xor
protocol tcp
vip address 172.16.32.1
active
Can we change the string prefix to JSESSION instead of JSESSIONID= ?
The only place the app guys can add a constant string to match on is before the = sign.
Is it possible for CSS to match on a constant string before = sign e.g below:
service ServerA
ip address 192.168.10.2
keepalive type tcp
keepalive port 80
string id567=
active
service ServerB
ip address 192.168.20.2
keepalive type tcp
keepalive port 80
string id123=
active
content ABC
url "/*"
add service ServerA
string prefix "JSESSION"
advanced-balance cookies
port 80
add service ServerB
string skip-length 0
string process-length 6
protocol tcp
vip address 172.16.32.1
active

It should work.
There is no reason for it not to work...
This is the best method you can have on the CSS for stickyness.
Get a sniffer trace on the client and server with arrowpoint cookie configured on the CSS and capture a failure so we can see what is going on.
also send me the config so I can verify everything is ok.
If you have a service request open with the TAC, you can also give the SR # so I can review what has been done.
Gilles.

ACE Load balancing with different source IP

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for