Bug ID 502443: After enabling a blade/HA member, pool members are marked down because monitoring starts too soon.

Last Modified: Apr 28, 2025

Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP LTM(all modules)

Known Affected Versions:
11.5.1, 11.5.1 HF1, 11.5.1 HF2, 11.5.1 HF3, 11.5.1 HF4, 11.5.1 HF5, 11.5.1 HF6, 11.5.1 HF7, 11.5.1 HF8, 11.5.1 HF9, 11.5.1 HF10, 11.5.1 HF11, 11.5.2, 11.5.2 HF1, 11.5.3, 11.5.3 HF1, 11.6.0, 11.6.0 HF1, 11.6.0 HF2, 11.6.0 HF3, 11.6.0 HF4, 11.6.0 HF5

Fixed In:
12.0.0, 11.6.0 HF6, 11.5.3 HF2

Opened: Jan 22, 2015

Severity: 2-Critical

Related Article: K16457

Symptoms

The external monitoring daemon (bigd) sends monitoring traffic before tmm is ready to receive those responses. The response traffic is routed to a tmm on another blade/HA member. This tmm responds to the server with an ICMP "Unreachable" message. Meanwhile, the originating tmm on the new blade/HA member marks the pool member "down" because it never received the server's response.

Impact

Some packets are lost for several seconds. It can be longer depending on the total number of pool members.

Conditions

Start with at least 1 blade enabled in a chassis or one HA member configured, and pass traffic constantly through a virtual server with a monitor-enabled pool attached. Then, enable a new blade in the cluster or a new HA member.

Workaround

Before adding a new blade to a chassis or a member to the HA configuration that is actively processing traffic, temporarily remove the monitor(s) from the pool. Once the new blade/HA member is up, manually add the monitor(s) back to the pool.

Fix Information

When a VIPRION blade or BIG-IP HA member comes on-line, the bigd process on the blade/HA member no longer starts health monitors prematurely, which could have caused some monitored objects to be marked down incorrectly.

Behavior Change

The external monitoring daemon (bigd) no longer sends monitoring traffic while the blade (cluster member) is offline or disabled, or while the HA member (chassis or appliance) is offline (including forced offline).

Guides & references

K10134038: F5 Bug Tracker Filter Names and Tips