In a Big-IP LTM system I have http monitors setup for a pool so that system owners can remove a file a node in the pool to remove a node from rotation. But monitors mark a node as disabled, not offline, so cookie-based persistence will still send existing users to the node that should be down. Whats the best way to use monitors to either offline a node instead of disabling it, or forcing users to a new node despite persistence?
Disabling a pool member still allows active connections/persistent connections to function. And depending on how you have persistence defined, that can end up being a LONG time.
Forced Offline still allows active connections to complete their transactions but would move previously persisted traffic to other nodes.
When doing maintenance I would force the node offline and then give sessions 5 to 10 minutes to complete before taking the node down in infrastructure. There's no good way to drop a node with active connections further dependent on what the client is actually doing.
Here's a great response on F5's Community by one of their MVP's to help explain connections.
Pool Member disabled/forced offline behavior @ DevCentral
Let me know if you need more details or if you're seeing different behavior. Also, you can do all of this with REST API so you don't need to use the GUI. Doing a quick Node Offline/Online is super easy and quick.