Insight into GTM Preferred vs. Alternate
I have a configuration under the GTM > Topology section in which I have two topologies each to one DC. I have DC1 weighted higher than DC2 as it is our primary datacenter. Under the GTM Pool, the load balancing algorithm for preferred is set to Topology based so I would expect, when using nslookup, to always see myself getting sent to DC1. The alternate is set to Round Robin and Fallback is return to DNS. Under statistics and using nslookup i see myself sporadically being sent to DC2 and under statistics I do see that the Alternate method is being triggered. My question is why? What does preferred actually mean? Is it a definite? If I set both preferred and alternate to Topology I get the desired behavior of always being sent to DC1 (Unless it is down in a worst case scenario). If someone could give me some insight into this, that would be great! Thanks, WWTBIGIP