In researching my tech tip last week (Replacing the WebSphere Apache Plugin with iRules), I ran across another interesting tidbit about monitoring WebSphere with LTM that apparently is not documented in the Deployment Guide (Deploying the BIG-IP LTM system and IBM WebSphere Servers.
The Deployment Guide was written for WebSphere ver. 6.0, and demonstrates creating an HTTP monitor with a simple GET request over HTTP 1.0. We've had recent reports from the field that at least for version 6.1, you actually have to use an HTTP monitor that sends the GET request over HTTP 1.1 with the required hostname specified as * (asterisk), which seems to allow the servers to respond to the request. (Using the VS hostname or any other string doesn't seem to work.)
Here's a solution that details how to construct a proper Send string for an HTTP 1.1 monitor:
SOL2167: Writing full HTTP commands for Extended Content Verification (ECV) or Extended Application Verification (EAV) health monitors
