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fat_138651's avatar
fat_138651
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Nov 20, 2014

Design for two Datacenters

Hi all,

 

I am currently designing a network for two new datacenters, that should run Active/Active but also be backup for each other.

 

I have very little knowledge in the GTM, but I would usually put the GTMs on "top" of the datacenter to direct the traffic to DC1 or DC2. I would use LTMs to balance the traffic inside each Datacenter and would put the LTM right in front of the servers.

 

Right?

 

My problem is, that not all of the incoming traffic is addressing hostnames...some is just using IPs. For all I know about GTM it is totally based on DNS and should not solve my problems for that reason.

 

So, what else can I do?

 

Use LTMs to direct traffic to the two DCs as well?

 

Put the Server-LTMs on top of the DCs and balance to the servers through the whole DC? Through firewalls, routers and stuff? Having the LTMs far away from the servers doesn't sound good to me, because the other devices (especially the firewalls) might affect my health monitors and delay my traffic (closed ports on fw, latency).

 

Did i make myself clear?

 

Does anyone have a rough design-idea for me?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Regards,

 

Thorsten

 

application delivery
BIG-IP DNS
design
LTM

1 Reply

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  • Matt_Dierick's avatar
    Matt_Dierick
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Nov 20, 2014

    Hi Thorsten,

     

    Make sense. You do right, GTM is DNS based only (dynamic DNS bind). The first solution is to use IP Anycast (expensive) --> one unique IP on two DC.

     

    If you have 2 different VIP on 2 DC without DNS resolution, there is no miracle. You need to create an irule to redirect the user to the other DC if LB is down (all member down).

     

    Or, you could try "Priority Activation Group" in your Pool. But that means LTM can join all the servers on both DC.