How To Check Session Persistence On BigIP F5, Cisco Ace, Citrix Netscaler or Radware AppDirector Load Balancer Appliances [ID 601694.1]

***Checked for relevance 19-MAY-2010***

This document aims to help the customer verify their persistence settings on F5 BigIP and Cisco ACE load balancer appliances. It provides instructions on checking specific persistence settings on the hardware device to ensure correct eBusiness suite functioning. 

Maintaining session persistence is essential to ensuring a users session remains on the same middle tier throughout the duration of their session. When the session is not maintained on the one middle tier users may experience the 'Transaction context is lost' message See Note 456906.1.

Session Persistence is the act of keeping a specific user's traffic going to the same server that was initially hit when the site was contacted for the first HTTP transaction. This is especially important for E-Business Suite as various modules bundled with the suite need to maintain session state. Session persistence is sometimes referred to as "server stickiness."

Section 1: F5   BigIp Section 2: Cisco Application Control Engine Module (ACE)

Solution

Section 1: F5 BigIp

Step 1: Check the load balancing method being used. This controls how requests are balanced by BigIp between your web nodes

From the BigIp home screen select Local Traffic - Pools

Choose the Oracle pool you created for the eBusiness Suite configuration. Now select the members tab. You will see something similar to the following.

It is important here to make sure the 'Load Balancing Method' is set to Predictive (member)

 

Step 2: Check which persistence profile is being used by your Virtual Server handling the eBusiness Suite requests

From the BigIp home screen select Local Traffic - Virtual Servers. Choose the Oracle virtual server being used by selecting 'edit'. Make a note of the 'default persistence profile' used by the virtual server. e.g see below

 

Step 3: Confirm persistence settings are correct

From the BigIp home screen select Local Traffic - Virtual Servers - Profiles. Now select the Persistence tab. You will then see a screen similar to below.

Select the default persistence profile that you made note of in step 2. In this case we choose 'cookie'

You will now see a screen 'similar' to the following:

The cookie method setting must be 'HTTP Cookie Insert'.

Depending on your version of the BigIp appliance you will have either an option to select an expiration of session cookie (earlier BigIp models) or you have the option to select an expire duration (newer models)

On earlier models please tick the session cookie expiration box as per the above picture. If you have a newer appliance which offers a time based expiration choose 12 hours as per the picture below

If you are implementing BigIp for the 1st time please see the referenced deployment guides for step by step instructions for the setup of BigIp. Use the correct deployment guide along with the referenced 11i or R12 official Oracle notes for guidance. For more information see Note 727171.1

 

Section 2: Cisco Application Control Engine Module (ACE)

Session persistence sometimes referred as “stickiness†is an ACE feature that allows the same client to maintain multiple simultaneous or subsequent TCP or IP connections with the same server for the duration of a session. A session is defined as a series of transactions between a client and a server over some finite period of time (from several minutes to several hours). This is especially important for EBS to maintain session state.

Depending on the configured SLB policy, the ACE "sticks" a client to an appropriate server after the ACE has determined which load-balancing method to use. If the ACE determines that a client is already stuck to a particular server, then the ACE sends that client request to that server, regardless of the load-balancing criteria specified by the matched policy. If the ACE determines that the client is not stuck to a particular server, it applies the normal load balancing rules to the content request.

Step 1: Validate the load balancing method being used.

This controls how the client requests are balanced by ACE between Application nodes

From Cisco ANM (Application Networking Manager) screen, select Config-> Devices ->Load Balancing ->Server Farms Select Server Farm defined for Oracle Application hosts. In this example: Select ORACLE_APPHOSTS Select Predictor Tab and ensure proper SLB Type is selected. In this example SLB is set to “Round Robinâ€

Step 2: Confirm persistence/Stickiness settings are correct

From Cisco ANM (Application Networking Manager) screen, select Config-> Devices ->Load Balancing ->Stickiness Select cookie method type “Http_cookie†and check “Enable Insert†and “Browser Expireâ€. Custom name is provided for Cookie name. In this example it was defined “ACE_COOKIEâ€. Select Sticky Server Farm that you want stickiness to be enabled. In this example : ORACLE_APPSHOSTS has been chosen. Make sure the expiration time is set to 12 hours.

Section 3: Radware AppDirector

See Radware's AppDirector and Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Integration GuideSpecifically, see section "Configure L7 Persistency for the web farm"

Section 4: Citrix Netscaler

References

NOTE:380489.1 - Using Load-Balancers with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12NOTE:456906.1 - 11i/R12 How to Debug "Transaction Context Is Lost" or "You are trying to access a page that is no longer active"NOTE:727171.1 - Implementing Load Balancing On Oracle E-Business Suite - Documentation For Specific Load Balancer Hardwarehttp://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/f5-oracle-ebusiness-suite-dg.pdfhttp://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/oracle11i-bigip9-dg.pdfhttp://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/oracle11i-bigip45-dg.pdfhttp://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/netsol/ns50/c649/ccmigration_09186a00807688ce.pdf