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RPM2000_252324's avatar
RPM2000_252324
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Mar 29, 2016

How is the best way to balance web apps between 2 data centers each with their own internet?

We have 2 data centers each with F5 Big-IP units and each have their own internet and they are also connected together by fiber. We want to find a way to setup the F5's to monitor the internet connections so that when one internet is down, the applications will use the internet at the other data center. I'm just not seeing a good way to set this up. Anyone have any recommendations to set this up?

 

4 Replies

    • RPM2000_252324's avatar
      RPM2000_252324
      Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
      Isn't failsafe just for an HA pair? I am taking about 2 HA pairs at different data centers each with different internet.
    • Josiah_39459's avatar
      Josiah_39459
      Historic F5 Account
      Well, that changes things :) ----------------------- I think you should talk through it. In short: you have to put something in front of the pairs, if you want to load balance between them. ------------------------- If traffic goes to one pair, and it's down, then that traffic is going to be lost. If you expect traffic will go to one pair and that pair will be working, but a VLAN it provides access to is down, then you could set up some sort of redirect. On the BIG-IP everything comes down to LISTENERS. So you'd have to find the LISTENER that gets the traffic (likely a vip, but could be a snat or a nat) and apply the redirect there (in this case snat or nat could be used). And what type of redirect are we talking about? A HTTP redirect is only layer 7. Your lower level options are...less exciting. ICMP message? Reject the packet? All possible, but your solution will depend on how your network and clients handle such things --------------------- Again, everything points to having a device in front of them, monitoring them, and intelligently selecting which one to send the traffic to, is the best solution.