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Vee_142890's avatar
Vee_142890
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Feb 27, 2015

F5 3900 appliance in High Availability mode with F5 Virtual Edition - Possible ?

We purchased F5 Virtual Edition - F5-BIG-VE-BT-3G-V13 (BIG-IP Virtual Edition Best Bundle 3 Gbps (11.4.1 - 13.x)).

 

We also have F5 Big-IP 3900 Appliance running in Production. The appliance is running version 11.4.0 and Virtual Edition is running 11.4.1. Can I setup 3900 Appliance and One Virtual Machine in High Availability Mode ? If yes, what needs to be taken into consideration (for ex: same memory, same cpu, same disk space, same OS, etc…). If the appliance fails then the F5 Virtual Edition should become primary F5 and process traffic.

 

Please guide if this is possible or how to make this possible and what else should be taken into consideration.

 

application delivery
ASM Advanced WAF
deployment
design
LTM
security

9 Replies

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  • JoshBecigneul's avatar
    JoshBecigneul
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Feb 27, 2015

    Hello, Unfortunately, connecting these two units in a Device Service Cluster will likely fail to work correctly, due to the mismatch in software version. It is strongly recommended to have matching software versions between the members of a DSC group.

     

    I would upgrade both to use the same base version and hotfix, and then proceed with configuring high-availability.

     

  • Hamish's avatar
    Hamish
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Feb 27, 2015

    And also be aware that SOME stuff just requires identical units still... e.g. connection mirroring (It'll probably work... but isn't supported. even between 2x vCMP guests that have different amounts of memory/CPU).

     

    H

     

  • Vee_142890's avatar
    Vee_142890
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Feb 27, 2015

    Thank you all for response. Which is the most stable F5 version as of today ? 11.5.2 or 11.6.0 ?

     

  • nathe's avatar
    nathe
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Mar 02, 2015
    11.5.2 has all updates from 11.5.1 hf8 and has the new longer term support so I'd go with that one. See https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/5000/900/sol5903.html?sr=44013879
  • JoshBecigneul's avatar
    JoshBecigneul
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Mar 05, 2015

    As a FYI, 11.6.0 HF4 was released on March 3rd. There appears to be a fairly significant number of fixed issues in this release. It may be worthwhile to look at it if you don't mind running into the occasional issue.