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arthury_6363's avatar
arthury_6363
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Nov 03, 2009

Mirroring to two Dbs

We are constructing a new instance of SQL Server DBMS on a separate machine with some changes in terms of schema and architecture. Before we go live in production (after the complete QA cycle), we want to use BIGIP do some mirroring so that we can characterize the Db instance's perf with live workload.

 

 

Here's the chain we have in mind:

 

 

ApplServers --> BIGIP --> (Db1 and Db2)

 

 

If BIGIP is used to mirror db calls, whose returnCodes are the ApplServers getting back from --- Db1 or Db2 or both?

 

We don't really care about the retCode from Db2 (the new instance).

 

We just want a live workload to hit it.

 

 

Questions:

 

1) Is this possible?

 

2) Any bad side-effects which we should be aware of? Please note the rate at which calls are passing thru BIGIP (in the above scheme) is about 20-30 per sec.

 

3) Any other advice would be appreciated.

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

Arthur

 

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  • The_Bhattman's avatar
    The_Bhattman
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    Nov 03, 2009
    Hi Arthur,

     

     

    I think it's possible considering you don't want any return code. You might want to read up on something called port mirroring or clone pooling. Here is solution link to the Ask.f5.com site that talks about it.

     

    https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/8000/500/sol8573.html

     

     

    The technique they talk about is more less meant to for dedicated intrusion detection system (IDS) or sniffer device for troubleshooting purposes, but I suppose in theory your database can pick up the packets but never really process the return traffic.

     

     

    I hope this helps

     

    CB