Using iRules to separate applications and components across a large server environment.

Hi Phil,

1.) Our internal F5 team thinks this is quite a bit of work. I think its worth the benefit this gives us. What do you think?

I think the F5 team should support the APP teams as required. If there is a strong enough bussiness case to distribute your applications on independend backend systems then it should be done.

2.) Does this seem like a reasonable thing to do? Or is this not what F5 is designed for?

The F5 is capable to handle multiple independent web sites on a single virtual server and then even spread individual URIs to different backend applications. There is basically no limit involved.

You can route the request as needed via

[switch]

based iRules (good for <50 sites or URIs), via data-group (aka.

[class]

command) driven iRules (good for >50 sites or URIs) or by using the GUI based LTM Policies (less flexible but on the other hand much more performant than iRules for hostname/uri parsings and pool assigments).

Cheers, Kai