Configuring active/standby pair - they wont talk

Can you tell us what you've done so far in a bit more detail please and we'll take it from there.

Posted By Anthony on 01/30/2013 03:07 AM

 

Hi all,

 

I'm trying to get a new pair of LTMs together in a HA Pair (Active/Standby config). 11.2.1 hf3 installed on both.

 

I've run through the utility set up, but only 1 LTM gets the traffic group and infomation about the other one. Even then it says its offline and generally wont have any communiction with it.

 

Any pointers to what I'm missing here?

 

 

Many thanks

 

Anthony

 

 

 

Anthony,

 

I'm a beginner/intermediate with the LTM's and ran into the same issue when I deployed our current deployments.

 

Can you confirm that you have the blue serial cable connected to both the devices? What sort of failover are you looking for? For the moment we are using failover as the device is next to each other (seperate power).

 

If you can give more detail about your situation I'm sure we can help.

 

Thanks,

 

Hi

 

 

I've installed 11.2.1 hf3 on them both, run through the set up wizard, added them as peers to each other, created the same Device group on each. They now report the correct status for each other, but the remote LTM always has a disconnected status. I can't for the life of me figure out what I'm missing or what is not configured, because as far as I can see everything is as it should be.

 

 

The log message that is streaming out every couple of seconds on each LTM is:

 

Jan 30 16:18:19 device2 notice mcpd[5578]: 01071431:5: Attempting to connect to CMI peer 192.168.10.170 port 6699

 

Jan 30 16:18:20 device2 err mcpd[5578]: 0107142f:3: Can't connect to CMI peer 192.168.10.170, port:6699, Transport endpoint is not connected

 

 

I tried Solution 13887 earlier today, but to no joy.

 

I tried the big3d notes from above,

 

[root@device2:Active:Disconnected] config /usr/sbin/big3d -v

 

/usr/sbin/big3d version big3d Version 11.2.1.1042.0 for linux

 

 

[root@device1:Standby:Disconnected] config /usr/sbin/big3d -v

 

/usr/sbin/big3d version big3d Version 11.2.1.1042.0 for linux

 

 

Both have been rebooted, but just wont communicate with each other for config sync.

 

 

Its Network failover that we are using. There is no blue cable that I'm aware of as these are housed in 2 separate datacentres.

 

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Anthony

 

Hello Anthony...

 

 

May be a silly question, but just to be sure, have you definitely patched the interfaces used for the HA vLAN and are they showing as "UP" in the Network -> Interfaces on both devices?

 

Also, have you definitely got the HA vLAN configured to look at the correct network interface on each device?

 

HI nash, I've had a look in Network > Interfaces.

 

 

On Device1, 1.1 & 1.2 are showing UP, only 1.1 has a VLAN count

 

On Device2 1.1 DOWN & 1.2 UP, again only 1.1 has a VLAN count

 

 

I'm not overly sure how this is controlled.

 

 

Thanks

 

Anthony

This is where the problem was. I've just changes the untagged interfaces in the vLAN and its fixed it. I'd be interested to understand why Device1 had 1.1/1.2 UP and Device2 only had 1.2 UP.

 

 

Thanks for your help!

 

Anthony

Hey Anthony... No problem. Good show that it is sorted out.

 

 

For Device 2, the reasons why 1.1 isn't showing as UP could be that either there is no network cable plugged into the device on port 1.1, or the cable plugged into that interface is not plugged correctly into the switch. If it is all plugged in correctly (and there is no fault with the cable), the other issue could be the configuration on the switch itself.

 

 

It sounds as though you only have 1 vLAN for your setup? With a HA setup like this, I would expect there to be a total of 3:

 

1 for internal traffic (used to connect to internal resources)

 

1 for external traffic (used to connect to the internet)

 

1 for your HA (used for your high availability sync)

 

 

Not sure if you have seen it or not, but this article explains it really well:

 

http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/tmos-implementations-11-2-0/2.html

 

 

Thanks for the info and link nash, I will have a read. I believe there is a cable unplugged at the moment. Can't check physically though as they are housed offsite in a datacenter. A future phase will investigate/resolve this though.

 

 

Thanks for you help with this.

 

Anthony