What is the best way to move a virtual server from one partition to another?
We use partitions to separate two sets of servers for our application and whenever we do a major software release, we also switch sides (the idea being that if the release was really awful, the failback would be to just switch back to the previous side).
We have virtual servers created on one side that we need duplicated on the other side. The issue is the virtual address. From reading a migration article (from one F5 to another F5, not from one partition to another on the same F5), I thought the solution was to create a virtual address with ARP disabled: create ltm virtual-address arp disabled
But unfortunately, the command gives me an error: 01070734:3: Configuration error: invalid virtual address, the IP address already exists
I was really hoping this would have worked. If it did, we could duplicate the virtual servers before our maintenance window and the cutover would just involve disabling ARP on the partition we're moving from and then enabling the partition we're moving to.
Anyone have ideas?
I was looking at scripting with Ruby and using iControl SOAP (our version doesn't have REST) but I'm not exactly sure how to duplicate all the virtual server settings (what to look for/how to ensure I've created all the settings necessary).