GEO 2.3.53.0 Release Notes
GEO Version 2.3.53 is a feature and bug-fix release made available in March 2021. Please read the sections below before installing or upgrading.
These notes list the features, changes, and fixes related directly to GEO product functionality. For a list of the new features, changes, and fixes in the base LMOS system on which GEO is running, please see the the LoadMaster Release Notes for LMOS 7.2.53.
Upgrade Notes
Please see the LoadMaster Release Notes for LMOS 7.2.53 for a list of supported models for this release as well as for other upgrade notes, including information on validating the update image's digital signature.
New Features
The following new features have been added to this release of GEO.
GEO: Additional Record Types Supported
GEO Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) has been enhanced to support additional record types for domains, as follows:
- Multiple TXT and CNAME records per Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN).
- One MX record per FQDN.
These record types allow you to communicate domain resources to clients:
- A TXT (text) record is essentially unformatted data that can be used for almost any purpose, but typically contains information to be consumed by clients to classify a domain in some way, provide details about a domain, or specify resources available within a domain.
- A CNAME (canonical name) record points a DNS name (such as www.example.com) to another DNS name (such as lb.example.com). This is typically used to define a website alias.
- An MX (mail exchanger) record specifies the mail server responsible for accepting email messages on behalf of a domain.
To configure records for a specific FQDN, a new Additional Records section has been added to the FQDN configuration page of the UI. Click Global Balancing > Manage FQDNs and then click Modify on the relevant FQDN.
GEO: Layer 7 HTTP/HTTPS Site Health Checks
Support was added to perform Layer7 (L7) HTTP and HTTPS health checks on back-end servers within GEO "sites" that are not handled from the LoadMaster for application delivery. In other words, site health determination can be enhanced directly from GEO by checking the health of back-end servers that are not being health-checked by LoadMaster (or another Application Delivery Controller (ADC)).
Only HTTP/1.1 is supported for these health checks.
To configure Layer 7 Health Checks for GEO FQDNs, open Global Balancing > Manage FQDNs, click Modify on the relevant FQDN, select the relevant Cluster, click Add Address, select HTTP or HTTPS as the Checker, and then choose from among the available options.
The status of the health check displays in the Availability column.
GEO: Option to Prevent a Disabled GEO Cluster from Responding
By default in previous releases, when a GEO cluster is marked as disabled it will still respond to client queries. A new parameter named Disabled clusters are unavailable has been introduced. Disabled by default, this parameter when enabled causes requests to the cluster to be dropped if a GEO cluster is disabled. The cluster name on the Global Balancing > Manage FQDNs page of the UI will also be displayed in red text.
Issues Resolved
The following issues from previous LMOS releases have been addressed in this release.
| PD-16032 | GEO: Fixed an issue in the HA Partner code that could cause Partners in a cloud deployment to not synchronize properly. |
| PD-15709 | GEO: When using IP Range Selection Criteria scheduling, it was seen in previous releases that the DNS response can be incorrect when one IP range is a subset of another IP range. This bug was due to an internal issue has has been fixed. |
New Known Issues
The following issues appear for the first time in this release of GEO.
| PD-16113 | GEO: The DNS response for TXT Records inserts the global TTL when the local setting is enabled on the FQDN. |
Existing Known Issues
| PD-15633 | GEO: If you add a Zone Name to GEO after you have created working FQDNs, GEO may no longer respond to queries for one or more of the FQDNs after the Zone Name is added. The workaround is to remove and then re-add the FQDNs that are no longer working. |
| PD-15396 | GEO: LM sends a spurious "KEMP GEO" TXT record in DNS responses if the TXT record field is empty and the queried FQDN is not a sub-domain of the ZoneName. |
| PD-10586 | GEO: If a GEO FQDN is configured with All Available as the Selection Criteria, IP addresses are returned even if the cluster is disabled. |
| PD-9765 | GEO: DNS TCP requests from unknown sources are not supported. |