Reporting a WCF application's status to F5's Big IP products

Question

In a Windows Server 2003 environment with a self hosted .Net 3.5/WCF application, how can an application report its status to a BigIP Local Traffic Manager?

Example: One of my services errors. My custom WCF application hosting software (written because Windows Server 2008 is not yet available and I'm using WCF TCP bindings) detects this and wants to report itself as down until it can recover the errant service. It needs to report itself as down to the BigIP LTM so that it is no longer sent client originated requests.

Answer 1

For the scenario you describe I would use iControl (SOAP/XML based management API) to have the application tell BIG-IP it is down. Basically you'll just be setting up a SOAP call to BIG-IP and invoking a web service with the appropriate information so BIG-IP knows the application is down.

You can find the documentation and download the SDK as well as .NET assemblies at DevCentral (devcentral.f5.com). There are also other folks out there that can help you if you need it in the forums.

Though I will also say that BIG-IP will notice the application is down and should automatically remove it from service until it notices it is back in service. That can be configured through the use of monitors attached to nodes.