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Device Manager Guide, Cisco ACE 4700 Series Application Control Engine Appliance
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Chapter 5 Configuring Virtual Servers
Configuring Virtual Servers
Information About Using Device Manager to Configure Virtual Servers
It is important to understand the following when using the ACE Appliance Device Manager to configure
virtual servers:
• Virtual server configuration screens
The ACE Appliance Device Manager Virtual Server configuration screens are designed to aid you
in configuring virtual servers by presenting configuration options that are relevant to your choices.
For example, the protocols that you select in the Properties configuration subset determine the other
configuration subsets that appear.
• Use the virtual server configuration method that suits you
The ACE Appliance Device Manager Virtual Server configuration screens simplify the process of
creating, modifying, and deploying virtual servers by displaying those options that you are most
likely to use. In addition, as you specify attributes for a virtual server, such as protocols, the
interface refreshes with related configuration options, such as Protocol Inspection or Application
Acceleration and Optimization, thereby speeding virtual server configuration and deployment.
While Virtual Server configuration screens remove some configuration complexities, they have a
few constraints that the Expert configuration options do not. If you are comfortable using the CLI,
you can use the Expert options (such as Config > Virtual Contexts > context > Expert > Class
Maps or Policy or Config > Virtual Contexts > context > Load Balancing > Parameter Map to
configure more complex attributes of virtual servers, traffic policies, and parameter maps.
• Synchronizing virtual server configurations
When you use the CLI to change a virtual context’s configuration on the ACE appliance, the ACE
Appliance Device Manager periodically polls the CLI (approximately once every two minutes) for
configuration changes. When it detects an out-of-band configuration change in a context, the
changes are applied to the configuration maintained by ACE Appliance Device Manager. The status
bar at the bottom of the ACE Appliance Device Manager indicates a summary count of the contexts
in the various synchronization states
If you configure a virtual server using the CLI and then use the CLI Sync option (Config > Virtual
Contexts > CLI Sync) to manually synchronize configurations, the configuration that appears in the
ACE Appliance Device Manager for the virtual server might not display all configuration options
for that virtual server. The configuration that appears in the ACE Appliance Device Manager
depends on a number of items, such as the protocols configured in class maps or the rules defined
for policy maps.
For example, if you configure a virtual server on the CLI that includes a class map that can match
any protocol, you will not see the virtual server Application Acceleration and Optimization
configuration subset in the ACE Appliance Device Manager.
• Modifying shared objects
Modifying an object that is used by multiple virtual servers, such as a server farm, real server, or
parameter map, could impact the other virtual servers. See Shared Objects and Virtual Servers,
page 5-9 for more information about modifying objects used by multiple virtual servers.
Related Topics
• Configuring Virtual Servers, page 5-2
• Understanding Virtual Server Configuration and ACE Appliance Device Manager, page 5-2
• Virtual Server Configuration Procedure, page 5-7
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