Message server load balancing not supporting stateful application?

Hi there,

After setup Root Cause Analysis on our Solution Manager system, we found a very interesting issue.

For example, in Workload Analysis, you click one tab, the page works, then you click the next tab, it gives you page cannot displayed error, then the next tab, it works again, but the next tab, it gives you page cannot display error again. The pattern is very clear and can be reproduced constantly.

We have 2 instances (1 CI and 1 dialog instance) running in our Solman system, we found if we just leave the CI running, the problem goes away. After some HTTP tracing, we found out that every time you click on the next tab, it actully goes to the message server first, and then the message server re-direct your http request to the other ICM running on the other instance. But the Root cause analysis application is a stateful one, it uses a cookie to store a session number. Since the request now being routed to a different instance, the session doesn't really exist there, hence the error page cannot be displayed shows up.

Also in the ICM trace file, we found entries like this which also seems to confirm that our understanding of what has caused the issue is correct :

[Thr 1083189568] *** WARNING => DpExtractContextId: received cookie for foreign server >SID:ANON:cls022_SMD_02:7lr_venjczcySoIJ6

We are wondering if anyone else has run into this issue? or maybe there is some other explaination for what causes the problem?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Thanks and have a wonderful day!

-- Jerry.