Basically, just replace your current sticky config with something like this:
sticky http-cookie [cookie-name] [sticky-group-id]
cookie insert browser expire
timeout [seconds]
replicate sticky
serverfarm [name]
The 'browser expire' is optional, but simply allows for the browser to determine the expiration of the cookie.
ACE assign a unique cookie-value for each of your rservers by calculating a hashed value based on the rserver ip.addr and port and inserts that value into the database. You can display the content of the database with 'sh sticky cookie-insert group sticky-group-id. The result would be something like this:
Cookie | HashKey | rserver-instance
------------+----------------------+-------------------+------------------------------------------------------+
R3055599550 | 7033142962938655715 | serverfarm/realserver:port
This value is inserted into the http-header of the clients request and used for stickyness. However, unless you configure 'persistence rebalance', the ACE will only loadbalance based on the first request. Any subsequent requests will simply be packet-switched to the same rserver, until the end-of-flow or the rserver is taken out of rotation/fails. If you need to inspect your http-header at each request, you need to configure an http-parameter-map with persistence-rebalance.
Additionally, you can assign your own cookie values, rather than using a hashed value. Simply configure the following under your sticky-config:
static cookie-value value rserver rserver-name.
hth
/Ulrich
