Pool members hostname

Are the IP's resolvable to host names via the hosts file or DNS? If so, you could set a DB key to have LTM resolve them:

 

 

db bigpipe.displayhostnames true

 

 

However, this can add significant latency to the GUI as LTM will be doing lookups to display the host names.

 

 

Do you want to do this regularly or just once? If the latter, you might try doing it off of LTM.

 

 

Aaron

Posted By hoolio on 10/14/2010 10:20 AM

 

Are the IP's resolvable to host names via the hosts file or DNS? If so, you could set a DB key to have LTM resolve them:

 

 

db bigpipe.displayhostnames true

 

 

However, this can add significant latency to the GUI as LTM will be doing lookups to display the host names.

 

 

Do you want to do this regularly or just once? If the latter, you might try doing it off of LTM.

 

 

Aaron

 

If they're resolved, or manually named, the names show up through the config uitlity > pool members. I couldn't find a way to have it display names via the "bigpipe pool" commands though.

 

 

Thanks Aaron for your reply.

 

 

I found this F5 Solution doc http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/8000/700/sol8719.html

 

 

As mentioned therein, "bigpipe cli hostname lookup enable" command would help besides setting system preference using GUI. I see the lookup is disabled on my F5. The consequences of enabling this lookup is given in the doc. However for day today management, I think this lookup is helpful. Otherwise one needs to resolve it externally.

 

 

 

 

 

An alternate option I learned is to use screen names for the nodes in the conf file. With this I can use the hostname instead of IP address with the commands.

 

 

Using a little script, I could use the screen name facility to reference the IP address to hostname wherever command output shows only IP addresses.

 

 

Since I manage the LB mostly using CLI, this is useful. I like the output of the virtual show command as it gives the logical hierarchy of VIP -> VS - > Pool -> Members.

 

 

With the script, I can get the status of all of the above in one shot.

 

I didn't know about the cli hostname lookup option. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

 

Aaron