HTTP Redirect with Global Load Balancing

Question

I've seen a lot of documentation about redirects and what I am trying to do seems simple enough yet I can't get it to work. Here is a summary:
We have two CSSs in different data centers with load balancing in a roundrobin fashion.
User types www.test.com:9086/test.html
User hits one of the CSSes configured to respond to www.test.com, CSS1 and CSS2.
If CSS1 gets the request, it should redirect request to server1:9086/test.html
If CSS2 gets the request, it should redirect request to server2:9086/test.html
Here is a sample of one of the CSSes:
content vTEST
dnsbalance roundrobin
add dns www.test.com
url "/*"
protocol tcp
port 9086
vip address 192.168.3.135
add service rTEST
active
service rTEST
protocol tcp
port 9086
type redirect
keepalive type none
ip address 2.2.2.2
redirect-string "server1:9086/test.html"
active
I've seen a lot of example of using HTTP Redirects, but none of them touch on using global load balancing as we are trying to accomplish.
Now, if I type in a browser:
http://www.test.com:9086/test.html
it fails. Why? because the CSS returns back an IP of 2.2.2.2 for www.test.com, which isn't a real IP address (this is by design). If I type:
http://192.168.3.135:9086/test.html
it works because it successfully redirects to:
http://server1:9086/test.html
because it is going directly against the VIP and redirecting as it should.
So the redirect function we know is working on the CSS as expected. However, the problem is this:
When I ping www.test.com I should get back the VIP address of the content rule (192.168.3.135) and I do UNTIL I ADD THE REDIRECT TYPE to the service. Once I do that if I ping www.test.com I will get back 2.2.2.2. Somehow once the redirect is added the IP address of the service (2.2.2.2) is returned instead of the content VIP (192.168.3.135). That shouldn't happen.
I hope this makes sense and any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

Answer 1

I think what you want to do is explained at :
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/contnetw/ps789/products_configuration_example09186a0080094068.shtml
For your information, you should also look at this solution :
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/contnetw/ps789/products_configuration_example09186a00801dcd75.shtml
Regards,
Gilles.