GTM/LTM Active Active 3400s

I have never ran a GTM and LTM feature set on a single redundant unit. My reasons were unique to my situation because the GTM served not only as a relay but a lookup for other servers outside LTM. Thus I didn't want them to be mutually exclusive for the sake of redundancy and scalability.

 

 

That being said I can only speak about the LTM. Active/Active was not recommended by my local F5 enginee sand I chose to run active/passive for 2 main reasons.

 

 

- on the LTM side you lose the ability to run in redundancy. It may not be apparent now, but over time if both units can become busy enough it can mean that one unit cannot take the load from another in the event of a failure.

 

- Decrease stability of a upgrade path. When you upgrade you are affecting production and thus in your case half you servers. if there is a catastrophe where you can't roll back you are faced with single unit. If you are running at high load levels for both LBs then the single active LB is going to be under strain.

 

 

Of course you may not run into this as your business may accept those risks but hopefully my reasons may help you decide which way you want to go.

 

 

Thanks,

 

CB