why VLAN's required

Hi warmachinerocks

Primarily vlans + self-ip are created so F5 does not need to push load balanced traffic to a layer3 device(router). this reduces any form of latency.

Use-case of not creating a vlan + self-ip on F5 I see common in production is say for instance you want to send logs to a logging server and F5 does have a leg in the logging server vlan, you can create a static host route to the logging server or use the default route on the box to get to the logging server. you do not need to create a vlan in this scenario.

Secondly, say you want to load balance a test application and f5 does not have a leg in the test application vlan, the solution above will suffice too.

HTH Regards Eben.

Hi warmachinerocks

Primarily vlans + self-ip are created so F5 does not need to push load balanced traffic to a layer3 device(router). this reduces any form of latency.

Use-case of not creating a vlan + self-ip on F5 I see common in production is say for instance you want to send logs to a logging server and F5 does have a leg in the logging server vlan, you can create a static host route to the logging server or use the default route on the box to get to the logging server. you do not need to create a vlan in this scenario.

Secondly, say you want to load balance a test application and f5 does not have a leg in the test application vlan, the solution above will suffice too.

HTH Regards Eben.

Hello warmachinerocks,

In my opinion absolutely yes.

You need them for every step in configuration for the network part. You can associate physical interfaces on the BIG-IP system directly with VLANs. In this way, you can associate multiple interfaces with a single VLAN, or you can associate a single interface with multiple VLANs.

In a typical config if you assign IP addresses, you can do it on VLANs and use them for communication between VS-s and Pool Members.

I hope this will help.

For more explanatory info please see the link below:

https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/tmos_management_guide_10_1/tmos_vlans.html

Regards,

Preslav

To the best of my knowledge I believe for an effective performance of your LTM, it is highly advice that you create VLAN on your LTM, this make it easy for entities on LTM to have better communication.