Using an F5 Load Balancer to Monitor the Health Servlet
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Using an F5 Load Balancer to Monitor the Health Servlet

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Article ID: 44785

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Updated On:

Products

CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager CA Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

When using a F5 load balancer with CA Service Desk Manager, is it possible to get an error page when the application service is down (i.e. 400) or to get OK page (200) when the application service is up?

Environment

CA Service Desk Manager 17.x

F5 Load Balancer Device

Resolution

To use the F5 Load Balancer device to monitor the CA Service Desk Manager Health Servlet, you would need to create "Monitors" on the F5 device.  These monitors will monitor a certain server, however by default, when you create these monitors on the F5 device, they will monitor port "80" which may not be the correct port CA Service Desk Manager is using.  

However, you can set the value on the Alias Service Port field on the monitor to the port that you are using for CA Service Desk Manager.

For example, if you are using port 8180 as your Tomcat port for CA Service Desk Manager, you would set up a monitor on the F5 Load Balancer as follows:

Virtual: SDMvs (ip:80, SDMpool, ...) 
Pool: SDMpool (member1:80, member2:80, SDMmonitor, ...) 
Monitor: SDMmonitor 
Type: HTTP 
Send String: GET /HealthServlet/GetHealth\r\n 
Receive String: AA-Server-Status: All OK! 
Receive Disable String: Quiesce time remaining 
Alias Service Port: 8180

IMPORTANT NOTE: If the monitor is already created on the F5 device, you will have to delete it and create a new one as you cannot change the Alias Service Port once created, but rather can only set that port at creation.

Please work with the F5 Administrator to setup the appropriate monitors as this is outside the scope of Broadcom Support.

Additional Information