Nimbostratus
AltostratusThanks Chris. (In step 2) when you say that the f5 is adding a cookie to persist to a particular pool member, which pool are you referring to - Apache or WebLogic ? I am assuming you mean Apache ; so this is what I did - I setup the pool with only one member. Now with the f5 cookie setup, the requests always go to the same WebLogic server. Without the f5 cookie setup, there is no real guarantee as to which WebLogic server the request will go to. And this is why I am confused - I dont see how f5 can maintain persistence all the way to the WebLogic servers - when the WebLogic servers are not even managed by f5 !
Regarding your question about what would happen if the request is sent to a different Apache instance - well the Apache instance will route it to the WebLogic cluster (which is just like a pool), the cluster will know which member is currently serving the session and will route the request to that member. So even this will work, but will make the cluster work a bit harder.
A pool member is the servers to which you're sending traffic. In this case, the apache boxes. So, by inserting cookies, the F5 keeps you going to the same apache boxes. If your apache boxes both send traffic to the same group of WL servers, you really don't need persistence. as WL persistence is handled by WL.