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bipshoft_10124's avatar
bipshoft_10124
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jul 06, 2007

Windows media service / Persistence issue

All,

 

 

Glad I found this Forum.

 

 

Here is my question, In a previous position I utilized F5 Big IP HA's and had a issue with live windows media content streaming from a pool of servers. I had to enable persistence to keep the clients from hopping server to server (especially when utilizing UDP delivery, as the client periodically sent a TCP request for status to the server and would hop to another server causing noticeable video issues during this process) The issue I had was that whenever I got clients behind a megaproxy I would get 1 server loaded up with a majority of the connectins.

 

 

Now that I am in a different position I am thinking of deploying F5 again but wondeed if anyone had ideas on how to more evenly spread the load while still enabling persistence.

 

 

thanks
microsoft
partner

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  • Tech_Imp_40243's avatar
    Tech_Imp_40243
    Historic F5 Account
    Jul 06, 2007
    Welcome

     

     

    For streaming content the typical configuration is like out outlined above. One thing we typically suggest is to use least connections as a load balancing method vs. fastest or round robin. Because the connection can be kind of long you can see some ‘stick’ to a server for a while. By using least connections we will look for the server that has the least sessions and balance to it.

     

     

    We have a solution for LCS 2005 (we are working on one for OCS) that may be helpful. You can find it at:

     

     

    http://www.f5.com/solutions/deployment/lcs_bigip9_dg.html1065287

     

     

    Cheers

     

     

     

  • JRahm's avatar
    JRahm
    Icon for Admin rankAdmin
    Jul 06, 2007
    Is there a session ID within windows media services that you could persist on instead of source IP? I'm unfamiliar with the application.
  • Tech_Imp_40243's avatar
    Tech_Imp_40243
    Historic F5 Account
    Jul 06, 2007
    I would concur with citizen_elah if there is a session ID that is unique to the user then we could persist off that vs. source IP.

     

     

    As for LCS OCS that's Microsoft speak for Live Communication Server and Office Communication Server.

     

  • bipshoft_10124's avatar
    bipshoft_10124
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jul 06, 2007
    Thanks,

     

     

    Let me do a bit of research and see what I can come up with

     

     

    I am assuming this would have to be information included in the packet header for the F5 to be able to persist off.
  • JRahm's avatar
    JRahm
    Icon for Admin rankAdmin
    Jul 06, 2007
    It can be in the payload as well as long as it is not encrypted, and even then if you have the keys to the lock...