On top of my list though is a F5 BIG-IP LTM related event (of course!) being hosted by Nexum.  The “Nexum LTM Workshop”, which will be November 4 from 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM, is free for all who register for the SecureWorld Expo.  Registration for the Expo is also free, so go register before it fills up!  You certainly can’t beat the price!

The agenda for this particular event shows that they will first give an Intro and Overview of Nexum.  Then move on to Load Balancing, Monitors, Profiles (Persistence and SSL Termination), iRules, Maintaining and Mastering the BIG-IP, discuss version 10.x and then wrap it all up with a Q&A session.  I am really looking forward to meeting some local F5′ers and will of course be doing a write up on my blog about the event.  The “Maintaining and Mastering the BIG-IP” part certainly sounds interesting.

I will also be attending a number of the other events at SecureWorld and will be posting a few blog entries regarding those.  The main purpose is not really to provide ALL of the information gleaned from each event, but to give a few highlights from each and share my overall thoughts on the value of the SecureWorld Expo Conference as a whole.

Go here to check out the SecureWorld Expo Dallas Conference Agenda.

Bearing in mind that I have the “Default Persistence Profile” set to use a profile other than cookie, here is the iRule that I wrote:

 when HTTP_REQUEST {
 set header_uri [string tolower [HTTP::uri]]
 if { [matchclass $header_uri starts_with $::aaa_uri] } {
 	pool aaa_Pool
 } elseif { [matchclass $header_uri starts_with $::bbb_uri] } {
 	HTTP::redirect "https://bbb.companyname.com/bbb/main/Main.jsp"
 } elseif { [matchclass $header_uri starts_with $::CITRIX_uri] } {
 	persist cookie insert "CITRIX_Cookie" "0d 03:00:00"
 	pool CITRIX_Pool
 } else {
   pool ccc_Pool
  }
 } 

The command persist cookie insert “CITRIX_Cookie” “0d 03:00:00″, tells the BIG-IP® to create a cookie named CITRIX_Cookie, give it a duration of 3 hours and insert it into the header of traffic going to the CITRIX_Pool.  If traffic going to that pool already has the CITRIX_Cookie in its header then persist the connection to the same pool member that it used last time.

Traffic going to the rest of the pools will use whatever persistence method is set in the “Default Persistence Profile”.  It is also possible to disable persistence to pools by using the persist none command.