Load Balancing, Sticky Session and Session Management

Question

_{Friday, July 22, 2011 5:21 PM}

If you have physical load balancers (F5) configured to use sticky sessions in a three-tiered (web server, app server and database) or two-tied archtecture (web server/app server and database, what session management solution do you use?

1.InProcess on each app server in the web farm;
2.A seperate StateServer (outProcess) on a separate server; or
3.SQLServer (database based)

All replies (2)

_{Sunday, July 24, 2011 1:39 PM ✅Answered}

Hi,

I don't know specifically for F5 load balancers but all (infrastructure) architectures I've seen the last years which included sticky sessions kept using InProc session state management as it was the load balancer who decided that every recurring postback/page request of an identified user was redirected to that same server.

Grz, Kris.

_{Monday, July 25, 2011 6:47 AM ✅Answered}

Hi

To avoid losing session you can enable the client affinity feature. It will ensure all TCP connection to be directed to the same cluster host. I think below articles are worth reading related to your query.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/LoadBalancingAndASPNET.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/77cb4318-75f8-4310-a05f-3605b5768007.mspx?mfr=true

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648960.aspx

Hope this helps