SMARTIT Timeout (Session Expired) Issues when accessed via Load Balancer

Knowledge Article

Article Number

000334941

Old Article Number

000114657

Article Type

Solutions to a Product Problem

Title

SMARTIT Timeout (Session Expired) Issues when accessed via Load Balancer

Summary

Timeout or refresh issues occuring when SmartIT is accessed via Load Balancer.

Product

Remedy with Smart IT

Component

Applies to

Problem

SmartIT timeout setting is using the default value of 30 minutes and RSSO timeout is set to the maximum of 10 hours.

MyIT/SmartIT is in a load balanced environment. Users are getting refresh issues after 5 minutes of inactivity on the SmartIT client. They are specifically seeing it on the Smart Recorder and 'Create New' but not limited to these areas. When the 'refresh' occurs, the page is reloaded, making the users start from scratch (the user remains logged into SmartIT, however). Any information they have previously entered into Smart Recorder or Create New is wiped out. When looking at Fiddler and browser logging, I see that the user session has expired.

Cause

Load Balancer F5 timeout settings is causing the refresh

Solution

This knowledge article may contain information that does not apply to version 21.05 or later which runs in a container environment. Please refer to Article Number 000385088 for more information about troubleshooting BMC products in containers.

After investigating further, it was determined that the issue only occurs when SmartIT is accessed via the F5 Load Balancer. Customer needs to update F5 timeout settings as per documented in F5 Support documentation:

1) There are four BIG-IP objects that have idle time-out values:
Note: Please see https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/7000/600/sol7606.html and ensure that all the timeout settings for each object is configured correctly.

Protocol profiles
OneConnect profile
SNATs
NATs

Each of these objects have profiles that have default timeout values. For example, Protocol Profiles have 5 profiles: Fast L4 profile, Fast HTTP profile, SCTP profile, TCP profile, and UDP profile. The default timeout values for these profiles are 300 seconds which is 5 minutes.

Also, for the UDP or IP SNAT, when set to Indefinite, UDP or IP SNAT translation idle time-out periods are internally limited to a maximum of 300 seconds. So this could be why we are seeing the 5 minutes timeout when these settings were set to 'indefinite'.

2) Verify that Sticky sessions are in place. This is important so that sessions are preserved.
https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/ltm_configuration_guide_10_0_0/ltm_persist_profiles.html
https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/lc_9_x/manuals/product/lc_config_guide_10_1/lc_persist_profiles.html

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