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S_Timmerman_163's avatar
S_Timmerman_163
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jul 17, 2014

Deployment strategy for daytime deployment

Hi all,

 

I am new to using F5 LTM for load balancing, and have been tasked with setting up a deployment strategy that enables us to do daytime deployment.

 

We have a pool of 100 webservers. We want to disable 10%, update the application running on them, re-enable them and then redirect 10% of our users to the new code. Then continue this in a loop until all servers have been updated to the new code.

 

What should I be looking at to get this working?

 

Thanks.

 

application delivery
deployment
LTM
microsoft

2 Replies

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  • MVA's avatar
    MVA
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jul 17, 2014

    I'd suggest looking at one of the connection based load balancing methods available on the LTM, such as Least Connections. You'll also need to decide how to "disable" the 10%; long or quicker connection drain - see node State, either Disabled or Forced Offline for details. The drain process will also depend on your application, so test.

     

    We've done similar on Exchange CAS servers; disable them at the node level so they are disabled in pools, maintenance, re-enable, move onto next batch.

     

    Hope this helps.

     

  • Lucas_Thompson_'s avatar
    Lucas_Thompson_
    Historic F5 Account
    Jul 20, 2014

    It really depends on how much automation you'd like and how comfortable you are with advanced configuration / irule development / scripting. irules could be put together with data groups to define pool membership and do all of this automatically. You could do as Mel suggested and use the existing UI to configure groups of pools. Or you could develop some scripts with tmsh. Or you could use iControl to integrate your existing CM system with LTM.