Rule Status - Field Help

Current Statistics

Name
The name you chose for the rule. This name can contain any alphanumeric character, underscore, hyphen, or period. It may be from 1 to 20 characters and cannot contain any blanks.

Rule type
The type of the rule. Possible types are:
  • IP address
    Based on the client's IP address. Use this type of rule if you want to screen the customers and allocate resources based on where they are coming from.
  • Time of day
    Based on the time of day. Utilized for capacity planning reasons. Example, if your Web site gets hit most during the same period of time every day, you might want to dedicate more servers to HTTP during peak times as opposed to slower times.
  • Total connections (per second)
    Based on the number of connections per second for the port. You may want to use rules based on total connections per second if you need to share some of your servers with other applications.
  • Active connections (total)
    Based on the total number of active connections for the port. You may want to use rules based on the total active connections on a port if your servers get overloaded and start throwing packets away. Certain Web servers will continue to accept connections even though they do not have enough threads to respond to the request. As a result, the client requests time out and the customer going to your Web site is not served. Use rules based on active connections to balance capacity within a pool of servers.
  • Client port
    Based on the client's port. You may want to use this type of rule if your clients are using some kind of software that asks for a specific port from TCP/IP when making requests.
  • Type of service
    This rule allows you to route client requests based on content of the Type of Service (TOS) field in the client's IP header. For example, if a client request comes in with one TOS value that indicates normal service, it can be routed to one set of servers. If a different client request comes in with a different TOS value that indicates a higher priority of service, it can be routed to a different set of servers.
  • Reserved bandwidth
    The reserved bandwidth rule allows you to load balance based on the number of kilobytes per second are being delivered by a set of servers. By setting a threshold (allocating a specified bandwidth range) for each set of servers throughout the configuration, you can control and guarantee the amount of bandwidth being used by each cluster-port combination.
  • Shared bandwidth
    If the amount of data transferred exceeds the limit for the reserved bandwidth rule, the shared bandwidth rule provides you the ability to recruit unused bandwidth available at the site. Based on the amount of bandwidth to share at either the cluster or executor level. If the value is zero, bandwidth cannot be shared.
    Note: Prior to configuring the shared bandwidth rule, you must specify the maximum amount of bandwidth (kilobytes per second) that can be shared at the executor or cluster level. If the value is zero, bandwidth can not be shared.

    Sharing bandwidth at the cluster level allows a maximum bandwidth specified to be consumed by the cluster.

    Sharing bandwidth at the executor level allows the entire Dispatcher configuration to share a maximum amount of bandwidth.

    Specify a maximum shared bandwidth value that does not exceed the total bandwidth (total server capacity) available.

  • Content (Applies only to those ports with cbr forwarding method protocol.)
    Based on the content of the HTTP headers in the client request. You will want to use content type rules to send requests to sets of servers specifically set up to handle some subset of your site's traffic.
  • Always True
    An always true rule will always be selected, unless all the servers associated with it are down. For this reason, it should typically be set at a lower priority than other rules. (Think of it as an else statement in programming logic.)

For more information on rules-based load-balancing, please refer to the Load Balancer Administration Guide.

Times fired
The number of times this rule has fired either since it was added or since the last time the executor was restarted.

Pattern
Only applicable if you selected Content for the rule type. This is the search string you want to use, on the rule, with the following restrictions:
  • no spaces
  • special characters: (unless you precede the character with a "\")
    '*' : wildcard (matches 0 to x of any character)
    '(' : used for logic grouping
    ')' : used for logic grouping
    '&' : logical AND
    '|' : logical OR
    '!' : logical NOT
    
  • reserved keywords (always followed by '='):
    Method   : used by the HTTP protocol, in a translation, 
               to retrieve a request. For example, GET, POST and 
               so forth.
    URI      : path of the URL request
    Version  : specific version of the request, either 
               HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1
    Host     : value from the host: header
               Note:optional in HTTP/1.0 protocols
    [key]    : any valid HTTP header name that Dispatcher
               can search for.  For example, User-Agent,
               Connection, referer, and so forth.
    

Examples: A browser targeting http://www.company.com/path/webpage.htm might result in values such as the following:

 
   Method=GET
   URI=/path/webpage.htm
   Version=HTTP/1.1
   Host=www.company.com
   Connection=Keep-Alive

For more information regarding pattern syntax, as well as scenarios, please see the "Configure rules-based load balancing" and the "Content rule (pattern) syntax" sections of the Load Balancer Administration Guide.

Total active connections
The current total number of active connections for this port. Applicable to the total connections, active connections and reserved bandwidth rules only.

Connections per second
The current number of connections per second for this port. Applicable to the total connections, active connections and reserved bandwidth rules only.

To refresh the current statistics, at any time, click refresh.



Configuration Settings

If applicable, edit any of the values on the Rule Status panel and click Update Configuration.

Begin range
The lower value in the range used to determine whether or not the rule is true. The kind of value and its default depends on the type of rule:
  • ip address - the address of the client as either a symbolic name or in dotted-decimal format. The default value is 0.0.0.0.
  • time of day - an integer. The default value is 0, representing midnight.
  • total connections - an integer. The default value is 0.
  • active connections - an integer. The default value is 0.
  • client port - an integer. The default value is 0.
  • reserved bandwidth - an integer. The default value is 0.

End range
The higher value in the range used to determine whether or not the rule is true. The kind of value and its default depends on the type of rule:
  • ip address - the address of the client as either a symbolic name or in dotted-decimal format. The default value is 255.255.255.254
  • time of day - an integer. The default value is 24, representing midnight.
  • total connections - an integer. The default value is 2 to the 32nd power minus 1.
  • active connections - an integer. The default value is 2 to the 32nd power minus 1.
  • client port - an integer. The default value is 65535.
  • reserved bandwidth - an integer. The default value is 2 to the 32nd power minus 1.

Priority (optional)
An integer representing the order in which rules are reviewed. If no priority is given to the first rule you set, by default it will be given a priority value of 1 and evaluated first. The next rule will then be given a priority value of 11 and evaluated second, (last priority value + 10, in this case 1 + 10), third rule = 21, fourth rule = 31, and so forth. The rules are evaluated in numerical order, lower numbers taking precedence over higher ones.

Affinity type (Applies only to ports with content-based routing enabled.
Rule-based affinity is valid only for ports with content-based routing enabled. If the port already has affinity, such as client IP or SSL ID specified, then affinity can not be set at the rule level and vice versa. Choose the type of affinity you want on this rule. Choices are:
  • No rule affinity - default option, means there is no affinity associated with this rule.
  • Passive cookie affinity - allows you to load-balance web traffic with affinity to the same server, based on self-identifying cookies generated by the servers. This is used in conjunction with the "Cookie Name" on the rule along with the "Cookie Value" on the server.
  • URI affinity - allows you to load-balance Web traffic to caching proxy servers which allow unique content to be cached on each individual server. This is intended for scenarios where CBR is balancing caching proxies, in order to minimize the amount of necessary caching.
  • WAS affinity -

Level to evaluate
Valid only for Total Connections, Active Connections and Reserved Bandwidth. Choose between evaluating all of the servers on the port or only the servers on the rule. The Total Connections (Per Second) rule also allows the evaluation to be based on the current servers on the rule with a positive weight.

Cookie name
An arbitrary name set by the administrator, that acts as an identifier to Load Balancer. The cookie name, along with the cookie value, acts as an identifier to Load Balancer allowing Load Balancer to send subsequent requests of a Web Site to the same server machine.


Lists

List of Servers
Shows the addresses of servers currently associated with the rule.
To remove a server, highlight the server in the list and click remove.