An extension to the CISCO-SLB-EXT-MIB for SLB
health monitoring probes.
SLB: Server Load Balancing. Server load balancing
provides for the balancing of packets and connections
arriving at the SLB device across a number of other
devices, such as real servers, firewalls, or caches.
A system containing an SLB device typically exhibits
higher performance, scalability, and reliability than
any of the devices being load balanced. An SLB device
determines how to handle incoming frames and
connections according to the contents of incoming data
and various configuration options. In determining how
to handle incoming data, an SLB device may examine the
data at any OSI layer, including Layer 7.
This MIB includes information on the health monitoring
probes that can be used for monitoring the health of
real servers. Health checking provides the ability of
the content switch to detect if a server is available
for load balancing. Health probes used for health
checking allow testing various application level
functionality. The active probes are sent at regular
intervals and the lack of a response can lead to a
specific server or and entire group of servers being
declared as not available.
Following probes are based on TCP:
http, https, smtp, telnet, ftp, tcp,
script, ldap, tacacs, sip, echo, finger.
Following probes are based on UDP:
tftp, udp, sip, echo,.
Acronyms and terms:
SLB Server Load Balancing
VIP Virtual Server IP address
NAT Network Address Translation
SF Serverfarm
FT Fault Tolerance
SSL Secure Sockets Layer
TLS Transport Layer Security
Server Farm : Contains cluster of Real Server
Real Server : Real Servers are physical devices
assigned to a server farm.
Real servers provide services that
are load balanced.
Health Probe : The mechanisms to monitor the health
of real servers or rservers.
Virtual IP : The IP through which the real server is
reached during load balancing.
Probe Instance : An instance of the probe identified by
cslbxProbeName. A probe instance is created
for every probe association.
For example: When a probe is associated with
a real server a probe instance is created
for that probe.
Probe Port : This mechanism introduces the capability
Inheritance for the probe instance to inherit the
virtual ip address port or the
the real server port (identified by
cshMonServerfarmRealServerPort) when the
probe port (identified by cslbxProbePort)
is not configured.
The precedence of inheritance is as follows
1. Probe's configured port
2. Real server port
3. Virtual ip address port
4. Probes default port identified by
cslbxProbePort.
Examples:
Scenario 1:
Probe's configured port = 100
Real server port = 200
Virtual ip address port = 300
Probe's default port = 80
Inherited port of the probe instance = 100
Scenario 2:
Probe's configured port = not configured
Real server port = 200
Virtual ip address port = 300
Probe's default port = 80
Inherited port of the probe instance = 200
Scenario 3:
Probe's configured port = not configured
Real server port = not configured
Virtual ip address port = 300
Probe's default port = 80
Inherited port of the probe instance = 300
Scenario 4:
Probe's configured port = not configured
Real server port = not configured
Virtual ip address port = not configured
Probe's default port = 80
Inherited port of the probe instance = 80
Scenario 5:
There can be scenarios wherein there may
be multiple inherited ports for a probe
instance.
There are configurations where multiple virtual
ip addresses with different ports share the
same probe instance and the probe has no
configured port or real server port attached.
In that case the shared probe instance has
multiple inherited ports. A typical scenario
might be
Probe's configured port = not configured
Real server port = not configured
Ports of the virtual ip addresses which
shares the probe instance = 300,400
Probe's default port = 80
Inherited port of the probe instance =
300,400