Azure Load Balancer client Session Persistence setting for FIM/MIM

Since Azure is becoming more and more relevant when it comes to deployment solutions I thought I would give a quick overview on the settings to enable FIM/MIM portals to work ok behind an Azure NLB. Most of the settings are straightforward, load balance ports 80,443,5725,5726

Now 80 may or may not be needed if you are using my redirect script they are needed even though no client actually connects on port 80 the redirection needs to occur so the port needs to be open for the initial redirection.

5725 and 5726 are used by the FIM Service now as stated in the very succinct MS article on Load Balancers Here it explains that there needs to be client affinity between these 2 ports:

For password reset client it is important as well to keep session on the same server across the ports 5725 and 5726.
Why is that?
Simply because when password reset client connect to the QA gate and after successful user identification gets token from the Security Token Service on the 5126 port it has to request for password reset thru the Resource Management Service on the same server (but on the port 5725). If it will go to different server password reset will be unsuccessful.

Ok so what is that setting in Azure there is no “Sticky” term? well Azure LB uses tuples to work out which server to load balance the request to its explained well here.

But in essence

None:
5 tuple hash destination is based on Source ip, Source port, Destination ip, Destination port, Protocol
A good distribution so the client will only stay on the same server if all the above remain the same

ClientIP,Protocol:
3 tuple hash Source ip, Destination ip, protocol
Less distribution, connection will remain on same server if source ip and destination ip and protocol remain the same

ClientIP:
2 tuple hash Source IP dest IP
The least distribution affinity will remain as long as source and destination ip don’t change

So for FIM/MIM we need to setup ClientIP will will ensure the connection doesn’t jump between nodes when the protocol changes from 5725 to 5726…..

Make sure you check out my other posts for potential caveats:
Here and here.

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