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.