Configuration

Locations are listed and modified from the Catalog > Locations page. You can also find them through the System > Virtual Traffic Managers page, by clicking on the Manage Locations link. Your defined locations are listed here, with the opportunity to add to, and remove from, the list.

Each location is simply defined by its name. Clicking on the location name or associated Edit link allows you to modify its settings or delete the location altogether.

Adding a new location can be achieved using the “Add new Location” section under the main list. All new locations are created using an existing location as a template (excluding the case where there are no existing locations).

ATTENTION This “Based on” mechanism copies any location-specific configuration for the template location to your new location.

Locations can be deleted from the section at the bottom of the associated Edit page. Note however that locations in use by one or more Virtual Traffic Managers cannot be renamed or deleted. You must first disassociate your Virtual Traffic Managers with this location before such operations can be performed.

On the System > Virtual Traffic Managers page, each Virtual Traffic Manager listed in your cluster has two new configurable settings:

Any changes to these settings must first be confirmed by clicking the checkbox next to the Update button.

A significant change to the way the Virtual Traffic Manager handles configuration settings while in multi-site mode can be seen by the addition of a new icon next to each individual setting.

The Location icon

Clicking this icon separates out the setting into multiple instances, one for each configuration location. Clicking the icon again will revert the setting back to being a singular instance - which is used by all locations.

This mechanism allows you to specify individual configuration settings on a per-location basis, while maintaining some global settings that apply to all cluster members.

In addition to using the Location icon, you can configure location-specific settings programmatically through the Traffic Manager REST API. To do this, append a location query parameter to a PUT request and specify the name of an existing configuration location:

The value provided in the request body is stored as a location-specific override for the specified location. The global (base) value and any overrides defined for other locations remain unchanged.

The location parameter is ignored for GET requests. A GET request always returns the effective configuration value for the Traffic Manager location that handles the request. It is not possible to retrieve the value that applies to a different location remotely.

Not all configuration settings support location-specific overrides. Some settings, such as a pool's Notes field and Service Discovery configuration, are always global and cannot be configured on a per-location basis.

When multi-site cluster functionality is enabled, a modified admin UI home page is presented. The new style is more suited to the environment within which the Virtual Traffic Manager is expected to operate. It now shows a number of distinct sections as listed below:

Each of the locations and services are displayed with a suitable status indicator:

Warnings are non-critical problems that mean the location or service is still running, but with impaired performance. Errors require action to rectify a problem that is preventing your locations or services from operating. The status applet will reflect these conditions. In the case of warnings or errors, clicking on the location/service name takes you to the Diagnose page, where you will see a full explanation of the problem.

Click Activity > Map to show a world map for enhanced visualization of your locations and services. You can also view the map via the View traffic on World Map link from the Services > Virtual Servers > Edit page. This provides a global overview of the locations defined on your system.

The map is designed to be interactive and tools are provided to move around and zoom into a level of detail required for your infrastructure. You can center the map on a geographic location of your choice by holding down the left-hand mouse button and dragging the map to your required destination. You can show traffic for a specific virtual server using the drop-down control at the bottom. The default is for all virtual servers.

Each colored target represents a location, and each small dot that appears on the map represents a user who has issued a request for a particular service. Each user is colored according to the location at which the requested service is hosted. In order to show meaningful information, you will need to enable “Connection Archiving” (also required for viewing advanced connection analytics). If this is currently disabled, you can click the connection archiving is disabled link at the bottom to enable it. This link takes you to the System > Global Settings page where you will need to provide a suitable value (for example, 500) for the recent_conns setting (the default of 0 disables connection archiving).

As with Global Load Balancing, activating multi-cluster management functionality on your system automatically enables additional options into the Virtual Traffic Manager’s existing diagnostic and visualization tools. For more details, refer to Traffic Visualization.