F5 - Redirect users to a maintenance page

When we have a load balancer where lots of websites going through, it’s a best practice to redirect users to a maintenance page containing text and images when pool’s members are down. Configuring this feature is really easy and useful. I think, this configuration should be mandatory for most companies in all production virtual servers because users should see a maintenance page when the website is down. This is the best way for users to know something is wrong with the website and they are going to wait accordingly for a while.

One of the most used configuration is with an iRule. Firstly, we have to upload images and logos to the F5 device. Secondly, we have to create an iRule with the HTML maintenance page. Finally, we have to add the iRule to the Virtual Server. I think, this is the best configuration to send a maintenance page, hosted into the load balancer, to users when there are no members online. You will watch in the next video it's really easy to develop a basic maintenance page in a iRule.

There is another useful configuration for redirecting users to a maintenance page. The Fallback Host feature send an HTTP 302 response to users when all nodes are down. Therefore, users are redirected to another website or maintenance page when pool’s members are down. This is easier to configure than the iRule because we only have to insert an URL where users are redirected. Therefore, this is the easier and the faster configuration to have a maintenance page.

HTTP 302 response

Regards my friends! Do you have maintenance pages in your virtual servers?