Well it looks like Microsoft have indeed silently dropped support for mstshash cookies for load balancing as suspected in my last post.
As detailed in the last post we had a call open with Microsoft and have just received the following response that confirms our suspicions that they have in fact dropped support for mstshash silently in favour of their Session Directory/Broker solutions.
Mathew
Hope this email finds you well. I regret to state that, I’ve a negative news for you.
Based on the triage of code with product group, they suggest you to devise some alternate way to achieve load balancing.
According to them, the dependency you took on the optional cookie field is not recommended or supported.
The protocol documentation does not specify what is passed in that field and the value can change based on the scenario.
Unfortunately, there are no plans on updating the documentation as it does not call out what is being passed in this field and is already marked as optional.
Please let me know if you wish to have a conference call with us on this matter.
I would attempt to bring the PM on call.
Thank you for your understanding and patience. I again, is truly regretful.
Subheet Rastogi | Support Lead
Enterprise Platforms | Microsoft Corporation | Office:
Unfortunately it seems they have decided to change the documentation to fit their product changes rather then fix their product to work as the original documentation detailed that has since been updated.
Oh well guess you win some and you lose some.
You Can Learn More About the LoadBalancer.org’s Product Line By Going to www.LoadBalancerSolutions.com/LoadBalancer-org
The original article/video can be found at Microsoft drops support for mstshash cookies confirmed