F5 load balancer in front of proxy - health check options

[JS_2022]

We want to put an F5 in front of our proxy pair (instead of using VIP on proxy itself) and want to know what the health check options are between the F5 and the Proxy.

On the F5 we can use TCP (it checks tcp to the proxy itself) or ping I believe.

Based on experience, when we reboot a proxy it takes a while for the '8080/80 service' to be back up and available (ie: access out to the internet through the proxy).

Is there a way on the proxy to have an http page available after reboot for the F5 to check? Or perhaps something outside (Internet facing)?

[Klaus Klinge]

Hi Jeff,

try to access this URL: https://proxy-ip:8082/Failover/config

Grep for "Current State          : MASTER" (with the F5) - then the Proxy should be up and running.

[Klaus Klinge]

Additional: 

Just in case - you want to get deeper: 
Go to: https://proxy-ip:8082/statistics -> click on "0"
Then: https://proxy-ip:8082/Diagnostics/CPU/Statistics (after clicking on "0" this page has turned from html to text-only
Configure your F5 to check https://proxy-ip:8082/Diagnostics/CPU/Statistics an make the decision which proxy should be used based on this Watermark-information. So the F5 can route new sessions to the proxy with the lowest load.

[Jacob Miles]

Hi JS,

Take a look at this KB and see if it would work in your situation. In SGOS 7.3.10.1, we introduced a health check URL on the proxy that can be used by external services. It needs to be configured first, but once configured, you would specify https://<IP_address>:<port>/healthcheck/status as the target on your external device.