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Brandon_Seymour's avatar
Brandon_Seymour
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Aug 24, 2015

Setup of Virtual Appliance F5

Everyone,

 

I need some help. I have license for 2 virtual F5 BigIPs with LTM. We are setting up for VDI with VMware.

 

I want to setup for HA with the second box.

 

Walking through the setup wizard for internal network configuration asks for the following: 1. Self IP - I assume this is a unique IP address assigned to the box for internal connections. 2. Floating IP - this is used by both boxes and vdi will point to this address. 3. VLAN Interface - not sure what to pick here, 1.1. 1.2 or 1.3

 

External is the same? 1. Self IP - Another internal IP address used for external connections. 2. Floating IP - Another IP to be used by both boxes. The external IP will point to this for all external connections coming in? 3. VLAN Interface - not sure what to choose here.

 

High Availability Network 1. Self IP - another IP used for HA purposes I take it? 2. VLAN interface??

 

HA I have a MgMT VLAN setup, a DMX VLAN setup for external connections, and VLAN Traffic setup inside of vcenter and during the install (initial) I associated the networks with these.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

I need help understanding the initial configuration of the external and internal.

 

application delivery
cloud
deployment
LTM
virtualization
vmware

1 Reply

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  • Patrik_Jonsson's avatar
    Patrik_Jonsson
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Aug 24, 2015

    I'd advice for you to read the guides provided by F5.

    https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/bigip_getting_started_guide_10_1_0.html

    That said, starting with the questions one by one hoping it will clear at least some things up:

    The internal VLAN is normally used to host the servers you want to load balancer.

1. Self IP - I assume this is a unique IP address assigned to the box for internal connections. 
    The self IP is the IP each machine uses to communicate with each other and for monitoring.
2. Floating IP - this is used by both boxes and vdi will point to this address. 
    The floating IP is the one used ie. for for initiating traffic to pool members later on. Basically it can be owned by either box, depending on which one is active.
3. VLAN Interface - not sure what to pick here, 1.1. 1.2 or 1.3
    This depends on which interface you've configured as the internal VLAN in VMware. You can check what's what by comparing the Mac addresses (Network -> Interfaces) with the ones you have in VMware.
The external VLAN is used for incoming traffic that will be load balanced. The answers to the other questions are basically the same.

High Availability Network 
1. Self IP - another IP used for HA purposes I take it? 
Yes. In this case you don't need a floating IP.
2. VLAN interface?
 This depends on which interface you've configured as the HA VLAN in VMware. You can check what's what by comparing the Mac addresses (Network -> Interfaces) with the ones you have in VMware.

    Hope that helps some.

    /Patrik