ACE : Stickyness with static cookies problem

Question

Hi Gilles
I restart a conversatoion as a question to clarify the situation :
I followed your recommendation to configure static cookie entries in each sticky group, but I still experience the problem of sessions getting re-load balanced to the second server when returning from HTTPS to HTTP :
It seems that the ACE ignores the static entries !
To make my question clear, I repeat hereafter the setup and the encountered problem :
Here is the setup :
An ACE load balance user requests on two Apache servers
cookie-insert is used to stick a user on one Apache server
The home page is accessed via http on port 80
On the Home page, there is a link to allowing the user to login
The login process uses SSL
During the login, backend SSL is required between the ACE and the selected Apache server
The login is a POST request to the Apache server
After a successful login, the home page is reloaded on port 80 and the name of the user should appear on the top of the page
The ACE configuration :
Two sticky groups are configured : one for HTTP acess and another for HTTPS access
Two server farms are defined, both using the same real servers, but with different ports (80 and 443)
In the ECOM_STICKY_TEST_HTTP stick group the two following cookies are automatically generated :
R105816849   for the server HQCHECOM01
R105852786   for the server HQCHECOM02
In the ECOM_STICKY_TEST_HTTPS stick group the two following cookies are automatically generated :
R355972695   for the server HQCHECOM01
R357158616   for the server HQCHECOM02
I statically configured in the each sticky group the cookies used by the other sticky group, to allow stickiness when the browser switches from HTTP to HTTPS and vice versa :
sticky http-cookie STICKED-TO ECOM_STICKY_TEST_HTTP
  cookie insert browser-expire
  timeout 240
  replicate sticky
  serverfarm ECOM_FARM_TEST_HTTP backup WEB_REDIRECT_001
  56 static cookie-value "R355972695" rserver HQCHECOM01
  64 static cookie-value "R357158616" rserver HQCHECOM02
sticky http-cookie STICKED-TO ECOM_STICKY_TEST_HTTPS
  cookie insert browser-expire
  timeout 240
  replicate sticky
  serverfarm ECOM_FARM_TEST_HTTPS backup WEB_REDIRECT_001
  72 static cookie-value "R105816849" rserver HQCHECOM01
  80 static cookie-value "R105852786" rserver HQCHECOM02
serverfarm host ECOM_FARM_TEST_HTTP
  description *** e-Commerce Test Server Farm ***
  probe ECOM_PROBE_TEST
  rserver HQCHECOM01 80
   inservice
  rserver HQCHECOM02 80
   inservice
serverfarm host ECOM_FARM_TEST_HTTPS
  description *** e-Commerce Test Server Farm ***
  probe ECOM_PROBE_TEST
  rserver HQCHECOM01 443
   inservice
  rserver HQCHECOM02 443
   inservice
The problem :
Let analyse the sequence of events and the value of the http cookie for each of them :
When the the home page is originally loaded, the ACE selects SERVER-1
The ACE inserts the cookie "A" in the server responses
The user is sticked to SERVER-1
Then, the user tries to login and an SSL session is established with the ACE
The user sends a POST request containing the cookie "A"
A backend SSL session is established with SERVER-1
The POST request is forwarded to SERVER-1
SERVER-1 responds with a 200 OK and the ACE generates another cookie "B" as it belongs to the sticky group ECOM_STICKY_TEST_HTTPS
The client browser reloads the page on port 80 and provides the cookie "B" (the last received)
The ACE sees the cookie "B" and should use the static cookie entry to select the SERVER-1
But instead, the ACE perform another load balancing decision and selects SERVER-2 !
The page is reloaded, but the name of the user does not appear on it
LiveHTTP Trace on Firefox :
GET /ecom/medias/sys_master/8800775602206/Home-page-main-banners-video.jpg HTTP/1.1
Host: ecom.test.toto.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100202 (CK-IBM) Firefox/3.5.8
Accept: image/png,image/*;q=0.8,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://ecom.test.toto.com/uk/en/home
Cookie: STICKED-TO=R105816849;
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Set-Cookie: STICKED-TO=R105816849; path=/
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:31:37 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.13 (Red Hat)
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Here we switch on HTTPS :
https://ecom.test.toto.com/uk/en/j_spring_security_check
POST /uk/en/j_spring_security_check HTTP/1.1
Host: ecom.test.toto.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100202 (CK-IBM) Firefox/3.5.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://ecom.test.toto.com/uk/en/home
Cookie: STICKED-TO=R105816849; JSESSIONID=089DCF987DC03CAE0F516298EB886DAB.node1;
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 75
spring-security-redirect=&j_username=yves144%40yahoo.com&j_password=junon01
Here we see cookie for the same server but for the HTTPS sticky group :
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Set-Cookie: STICKED-TO=R355972695; path=/
Set-Cookie: _hybris.tenantID_=""; Expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:10 GMT; Path=/; HttpOnly
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:31:39 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.13 (Red Hat)
Location: http://ecom.test.toto.com/uk/en/home
Content-Length: 0
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Here we switch back to HTTP :
http://ecom.test.toto.com/uk/en/home
GET /uk/en/home HTTP/1.1
Host: ecom.test.toto.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100202 (CK-IBM) Firefox/3.5.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://ecom.test.toto.com/uk/en/home
Cookie: STICKED-TO=R355972695; JSESSIONID=089DCF987DC03CAE0F516298EB886DAB.node1;
Here we see that the second server has been wrongly selected !
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Set-Cookie: STICKED-TO=R105852786; path=/
Set-Cookie: _hybris.tenantID_=""; Expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:10 GMT; Path=/; HttpOnly
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=5A0F6EB8FBF63D5D0590FECEC62A302E.node2; Path=/; HttpOnly
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:31:40 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.13 (Red Hat)
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store
Content-Language: en-GB
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
http://ecom.test.toto.com/ecom/medias/sys_master/8796174057502/uk.gif
GET /ecom/medias/sys_master/8796174057502/uk.gif HTTP/1.1
Host: ecom.test.toto.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100202 (CK-IBM) Firefox/3.5.8
Accept: image/png,image/*;q=0.8,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://ecom.test.toto.com/uk/en/home
Cookie: STICKED-TO=R105852786; JSESSIONID=5A0F6EB8FBF63D5D0590FECEC62A302E.node2;
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Set-Cookie: STICKED-TO=R105852786; path=/
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:31:40 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.13 (Red Hat)
Content-Length: 382
Connection: close
Content-Type: image/gif
Hypothesis :
It seems that the static entries are not considered by the ACE...

Answer 1

Yves,
you have to specify the destination port
56 static cookie-value "R355972695" rserver HQCHECOM01 80
64 static cookie-value "R357158616" rserver HQCHECOM02 80
serverfarm host  ECOM_FARM_TEST_HTTP
  description *** e-Commerce Test Server Farm ***
   probe ECOM_PROBE_TEST
  rserver HQCHECOM01 80
   inservice
   rserver HQCHECOM02 80
   inservice
Gilles.