Features

Election Hash Load Balancing

DevCentral TV — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:51:01 GMT

F5 Solutions Architect Nathan McMahon explains Election Hash Load Balancing And Persistence (find the iRule in the codeshare here). He developed this Election Hash solution to address the limitations of the Cache Array Routing Protocol, and it provides a nice alternative to any typical hash solution that are vulnerable to re-factoring on changes to the server pool. The complete solution is written up here: Hash Load Balancing and Persistence on BIG-IP LTM

This solution was brought to you by the iRules commands: md5, HTTP::uri, and active_members

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, iRules, Election Hash, Load Balancing, Nathan McMahon

Universal Persistence with SSL Offload

DevCentral TV — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:25:25 GMT

F5 Field Systems Engineer Christopher Schaefer sits down with Colin & Deb to explore an interesting iRules solution: Persistence for mobile devices running a proprietary stateful TCP application while roaming across cell towers mid-session. In the absence of a consistent IP address or any identifying header information, Chris discovered the client mobile ID embedded in the binary data of the traffic stream, and built a custom Universal Persistence solution. This solution was only possible because of the SSL offload capability of LTM, which allows LTM to decrypt the traffic before examining and acting upon it.

This solution was brought to you by the iRule commands: persist , TCP::collect, and TCP::payload, and the Tcl command binary

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, Persistence, SSL, LTM, Christopher Schaefer

Active-Active Database Load Balancing

DevCentral TV — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:16:43 GMT

F5 Field Systems Engineer Patrick Chang explains an iRules solution that supports 2 active database instances in different data centers behind a web application. The goal is to provide the optimal user experience by load balancing requests for both the web/application tier and the database tier to a local data center whenever possible. Since cross-data center database replication takes approximately 20 seconds, one instance is preferred for database writes, and an iRule that reads and inserts time-stamped cookies reliably directs traffic to the closest database instance when possible, and to the remote instance only when necessary to maintain session integrity.

This solution was brought to you by the iRule commands: HTTP::cookie, HTTP::uri, and HTTP::method

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, iRules, Database, Patrick Chang

Message Broker Resiliency

DevCentral TV — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:37:50 GMT

F5 Field Systems Engineer Rob Eberhardt talks us through an iRules-based solution that records in-flight transactions and replays them to a new server instance if a server fails mid-session. This solution could be applied to any applications whose clients are sensitive to disruption and may not reliably or gracefully restart partially completed transactions.

This solution was brought to you by the iRules commands: TCP::collect, TCP::release, and TCP::payload

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, Resiliency, Rob Eberhardt

Configuring BIG-IP WebAccelerator

DevCentral TV — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:32:12 GMT


	In this Video Tutorial Dawn Parzych, F5 Acceleration System Architect, demonstrates how to configure BIG-IP WebAccelerator v 9.4.3. Items covered include creating a WebAccelerator enabled class, configuring the virtual server, defining application host maps and selecting a policy. The information covered requires an understanding of how to configure virtual severs and pools.

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, WebAccelerator, Dawn Parzych

Talking pyControl with Matt Cauthorn

DevCentral TV — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:52:46 GMT

The DevCentral Labs pyControl project has received overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from the DevCentral community. DevCentral's Deb Allen and Colin Walker get together with FSE and pyControl co-developer Matt Cauthorn to talk about what it is and why you need it.

And if you haven't already seen them, make sure to check out the following pyControl video tutorials by Matt:

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, pyControl, Matt Cauthorn

Configuring WebAccelerator for SharePoint 2007

DevCentral TV — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:35:12 GMT


	In this Video Tutorial, F5's Dawn Parzych gives a demonstration on how to configure and test BIG-IP WebAccelerator for Sharepoint 2007. Items covered include defining the application host, running a test with TrueSpeed, and measuring document downloads with HttpWatch.

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, WebAccelerator, SharePoint, TrueSpeed, HttpWatch, Dawn Parzych

DC Post of the Week - VIP Bounceback/Server Callback

DevCentral TV — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:00:24 GMT

VIP bounceback / Server callback

Our Post of the Week this week, “Loadbalanced loopbacks” was recommended by DevCentral user aherrman (again! We’re going to have to send him a life-sized replica of Jeff for his office or something…)

He says: " I'm running into a weird issue with our F5. I have a feeling there's just a checkbox I need to toggle somewhere in the config, but I can't for the life of me figure out what/where it might be. Occasionally one of the nodes will need to make a load balanced request back to the other nodes. For some reason these requests are failing."

This week Deb & Colin talk about the excellent LTM configuration recommendations from posters dennypayne and hoolio to support servers on the same subnet accessing each others’ services through a load balancing virtual server.

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, Post of the Week, Virtual Server, Loopback

VIPRION - Unboxed ...Again

DevCentral TV — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:53:03 GMT

A couple months after the filming of the popular "Viprion - Unboxed" video, we got a call from some of the engineers here at F5 saying they had a real, live Viprion, shipped straight from manufacturing, and still in the package. They wanted to know if we wanted to come film them opening it up. Did we ever!
Our last Viprion - Unboxed video was shot pre-release with a development unit. So while you got to see what the box was all about, how it came apart, how it worked, etc., you didn't really get to see how it would show up on your door. Well, here you go. In this second take at Unboxing a Viprion you'll get to see exactly how these are being shipped from manufacturing, what's included inside (manuals, static straps and all), and you'll even get some great commentary from the engineers in the know.

VIPRION - Unboxed

DevCentral TV — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:00:43 GMT

DevCentral's own Colin Walker (with Joe behind the camera) gets a first hand look at unboxing an "almost" brand spanking new VIPRION. In case you hadn't heard, VIPRION is F5's newly announced chassis-based application delivery controller.
With the help of F5's Product Marketing Manager Mike Krasnow, the two haul this chassis out of the packing materials and gives us the scoop on the components and what makes this product so incredibly unique.