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Gurdip_Sira_160's avatar
Gurdip_Sira_160
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Oct 09, 2014

Some deployment questions in a virtualised environment

Hi,

 

I have the F5 LTM lab deployed as a VM on my single Hyper-V 2012 R2 server.

 

I want to now configure this and the initial steps ask for vlans. At the moment, the environment does not use VLANs at all.

 

This brings a few questions:

 

1) Can I use F5 without VLANs or are VLANs a requirement? 2) The web gui setup utility shows "vlan interfaces". Are these the NICs on the F5? If so, is this in the same order as NICs shown in Hyper-V settings? So I see 1.1 and 1.2, which NICs are these? 3) Also, what is a "self ip" and in the gateway box, what's the implication if I have no gateway?

 

Thanks

 

application delivery
deployment
LTM
microsoft
virtualization

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  • mikeshimkus_111's avatar
    mikeshimkus_111
    Historic F5 Account
    Oct 09, 2014

    Hi, check out the networking section that starts on page 137 of this document:

     

    http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/f5-tmos-operations-guide-1-0.html

     

    It explains the relationship between interfaces, VLANs, and self-IPs.

     

  • Gurdip_Sira_160's avatar
    Gurdip_Sira_160
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Oct 09, 2014

    That's a really helpful link!

     

    It's explained some of the things.

     

    However, I still need to know, what a floating ip is?

     

    So my self IP should be an IP outside of the subnet of the servers I want to load balance it seems. And the vlan and its settings in the same subnet as the load balanced servers.

     

    Looks like I did that the wrong way around!

     

    • nathe's avatar
      nathe
      Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
      Oct 09, 2014
      A floating self IP is an IP address shared across two devices in an Active/Standby setup. It floats between the two and is "logically" located on the one that is currently Active. Re Self IPs, you would configure a self IP on a configured VLAN (and associated interface). You can, of course, have your load balanced servers on a different subnet (although you'll need to configure a route) but a familiar practice is the load balanced servers (pool members) are in a particular subnet which is in the same subnet as the self IP.