Error: 401 Unauthorized or missing automations when using a load balancer - ConnectAll

Products

• ConnectAll On-Prem
• ConnectALL

Issue/Introduction

Introduction 

Users are unable to view automations on the ConnectAll UI dashboard. Icons for integrated tools (e.g., Jira, Rally) may be missing, and a "server is not running" message appears intermittently. Navigating from page to This behavior is observed when accessing the application through a load balancer.

Symptoms

• Automations are missing from the ConnectAll UI Dashboard.
• Intermittent "Server is not running" or "401 Unauthorized" errors.
• Users may be logged out of the application unexpectedly.
• Login attempts may intermittently fail with "invalid password" despite correct credentials.
• failed_attempts in the database are not incremented during failed login attempts.

Environment

• ConnectAll On-Prem
• High Availability (HA) environments with multiple nodes
• Load Balancer (e.g., F5, Citrix Netscaler)

Cause

The issue is caused by ineffective persistence on the load balancer. When multiple environments (primary and secondary) are active, the load balancer may switch the session between nodes. If the second node does not recognize the session token or cookie from the first node, it returns an HTTP 401 Unauthorized error, causing the UI to fail to load the user context and automations.

Resolution

1. Verify if a secondary or standby environment is unexpectedly active and receiving traffic.
2. Decommission or bring down the secondary environment if it should not be active.
3. Configuring the Load Balancer to use "Sticky Sessions" or "Cookie Persistence" (e.g., COOKIEINSERT) may ensure a user's session remains on the same node.
4. Restart ConnectAll services to stabilize the connection. Refer to ConnectALL Core Services Start & Stop Order for instructions.

Additional Information

For more details on startup and shutdown, see the ConnectALL Startup & Shutdown Instructions.

1. Broadcom does not support the use of multiple nodes with ConnectALL and this article is not provided as an indication of such support.
2. Broadcom support is unable to provide specific guidance on the use of load balancer persistence and you should contact your network team on further instructions.