Description

Symptoms

There are cases where F5 load balancers install status will get set to an inactive state after discovery, even though they are not actually inactive.
If used in Service Mapping, you may see error like "host [IP_ADDRESS_OF_LOAD_BALANCER] ignored since its install status is inactive"

Release

Potentially any version can be impacted.

Cause

This can be due to F5s being in a cluster and being in a standby state.
During horizontal discovery, the 'SNMP - F5 BIG-IP - System' sensor will set the install status of the load balancer based on the value returned from its corresponding probe.
The value it is looking for in the payload is "sysCmFailoverStatusId".
In cases where load balancers are in a stand by state, that value can be something that can get translated to an inactive state in ServiceNow.

Resolution

Find you 'SNMP - F5 BIG-IP - System' Sensor (Sensors > SNMP - F5 BIG-IP - System)
Looks for the following function in the script:

_convertOperStatus : function(deviceOperStatus) {
     if (deviceOperStatus == '1')
          return 2;
     else if (deviceOperStatus == '2')
          return 2;
     else if (deviceOperStatus == '3')
          return 2;
     else if (deviceOperStatus == '4')
          return 1;
     else
          return -1;
}

In order to resolve this issue you will have to modify that function in the sensor to set the operational status to 1 when we retrieve a standby value from the F5 discovery.

Additional Information

See the following documentation from F5: https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K14399
In case the link goes down, the table from that document is below:

Example

Check the payload from the "SNMP - F5 BIG-IP - System" probe after discovery
Look for the following result in the payload:
- ""sysCmFailoverStatusId":"[SOME_NUMBER_WILL_BE_HERE]""
If the value is "3", you can see from the table above that it is a "standby" state
According to the function above, it will return a value of "2" which is one of the install status inactive state choices.
If you modify that script to return "1" instead of "2," upon next discovery of the load balancer it should accurately set the install status to active.

Notifications