Brocade Loadbalancers

Now lets consider the following scenario. The client has multiple domains. Traffic is going to all domains on HTTP. However, these domains are under a single virtual server and each domain requires a separate health-check. In order to achieve this configuration port-aliasing is used. What is port-aliasing, you may ask ? Within the ADX various … Read more

Introduction Within this article we will show you the steps needed to configure cookie persistence (insert) based on URI. i.e cookie persistence is only performed for a single URI. Cookie Insert When cookie insert persistence is configured the loadbalancer selects a server to the send the traffic to. The server id of the server is … Read more

In order to mitigate the Poodle vulnerability on the Brocade ADX SSLv3 must be disabled. However this can only be achieved via the code release 12.4s, which disables SSLv3 completely. All code versions prior to this do not have any method or option to disable the SSLv3 protocol. HealthChecks On the ADX there are 2 … Read more

What are the Timeout threasholds for Healthchecks on a Brocade ADX ? Check  Timeout Details  L3 (ICMP) 2 sec interval / 4 retries None L4 5 sec interval / 3 retries L4 periodric healtchecks are not enabled by default. L7 5 sec interval / 3 retries None      

Issues When exporting a capture from the ADX from a debug filter. The wrong timestamps are written. This results in both the time and date being incorrect when viewing them within a 3rd Party tool (such as Wireshark). However when viewing the packets via an ASCII dump within the debug filter the correct timestamps are … Read more

Introduction There are 2 main methods for configuring the TCP stack on an ADX, globally or via a tcp profile. Within this article we will look at the main configuration settings available, such as how to configure Nagle, SACK and Window Scaling. TCP Profiles TCP profiles allow you to modify the TCP parameters on a … Read more

Purpose The purpose of this document is to explain the role and functions of the CSW Pseudo Stack. Summary Within the Brocade ADX feature set is the ability to forward traffic based on layer 7 attributes (such as host header, URI etc.). This is achieved by enabling content switching (CSW). In order for the the … Read more

Question How do I show the CPU usage for the management processor ? Answer To see the CPU usage on the MP (Management Processor) the following command is used, SSH@adx# show cpu-utilization peak: 41.4 percent busy at 5520 seconds ago 7243 sec avg: 10.3 percent busy    1 sec avg:  1.0 percent busy    5 … Read more

Background The Brocade ADX offers 3 main types of layer 7 healthchecks. These are, Server Healthcheck – Server healthchecks are configured on the real server itself. Once configured it issues a healtcheck to the real server based on the port/protocol configured. Port-Policy – A port-policy is a policy that contains all of your parameters for … Read more

The Brocade ADX offers two methods for binding multiple ports to a single healthcheck ; via the use of a port profile or by using healthcheck element groups. The main caveat when using a port profile is that you can only bind a non well-known port to the healthcheck of a well known port. And … Read more

The ADX provides a number of loadbalancing methods (also known as predictors) such as round robin and least connections.Within this article we will look at the Dynamic Weighted loadbalancing method. Summary The Dynamic Weighted balancing method is a dynamic predictor that allows you to distribute traffic based upon the resource usage of your server (such … Read more

Within this article we will look into the ‘keepalive’ command. As this command isn’t greatly documented I thought this would be a good opportunity to explain in a little more detail how it works. Keepalive vs Keep-alive First of all it is worth noting that the ‘keepalive’ command (which is configured under the real server) … Read more

Symptoms You may find that when enabling SSL (termination) and a CSW policy your SSL session fails due to the ADX issuing a RST back to the client. When running a url debug via rcon you see the following : URL: process client packet return error CSW_PARSE_ERROR_MAX_MEMORY[80] ??? Free multiple stored packets. HTTP Split State: … Read more

Symptoms When enabling CSW and running HTTP pipelining you may experience a breakdown in your HTTP session. Issue When enabling CSW on a Virtual Server pipelining is enabled on the designated port by default. The issue occurs when a second GET request comes in before the first GET/POST answer is fully received from the server (this … Read more

The Brocade ADX offers 2 ways to configure SSL. These are, SSL (Termination) – Allows for SSL termination at the loadbalancer so that unencrypted traffic can be sent onto the backend servers. This is also known as client side encryption/decryption. SSL Proxy – Allows for the Brocade ADX to decrypt and then re-encrypt the traffic … Read more

Policy-Based Server Load Balancing (PB-SLB) provides the ability to distribute traffic based on the source IP address of the client. There are 2 ways in which to configure PB-SLB. You can either pull a list of IP`s from a TFTP server or define the IP`s directly on the ADX.This example is based on defining the … Read more

The Brocade ADX provides the ability to capture network traffic which can then be viewed later for further analysis. This is achieved via the  debug filter.Within this article we will provide the necessary steps required to configure, run, save and then export a debug filter. Debug Filter Mode First of all we enter the debug … Read more

The Brocade ADX offers 3 types of HA. There are : Sym Active-Standby – Sym Active-Standby is only available on Router code. Both devices receive traffic but only the VIP with the highest sym-priority processes the traffic.Sym Active-Active – Sym Active-Active is only available on Router code. Both devices receive traffic, traffic for each VIP … Read more

Within this article we will look at the commands required to clear the debug-filter buffer on an ADX Loadbalancer.The command that is used to clear the buffer is “no buffer-size <buffer size>”. Below shows the necessary steps. First of all we place ourselves into the debug filter prompt. We check the amount that we have … Read more

The Brocade ADX offers a range of options for troubleshooting CSW (Content Switching) policies.Within this article we will look the main troubleshooting feature URL Debug and also provide the various show commands available when troubleshooting CSW. URL Debug The URL debug option allows you to debug the CSW policy flows based on a given IP. … Read more