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Antony2015's avatar
Antony2015
Icon for Altostratus rankAltostratus
Jan 08, 2015

Migration to F5 LTM 11.5.1

Hi All,

 

My firm is in a process of migrating Cisco ACE to F5 LTM. We have loaded the ACE configuration successfully into LTM (standby).

 

The VIPs are up and running in F5 since both load balancer platforms (ACE/F5) participate in the same vlans.

 

Currently,We are using same VIP address range in both ACE & F5 ( for VIP/Baceknd servers).

 

What is the safeguard to prevent URL service duplication ?

 

Customers are concerned about service interruptions since both load balancer platforms participate in the same vlans.

 

Do I need to create new VLANs with the new VIP range in F5/ L3 Switch or if I use the same vlans, how I can make the safe and successful URL cutover. ?

 

Any help or advise would be highly appreciated !

 

Thanks

 

APM
availability
design
security
TMOS
TMSH

2 Replies

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  • cdougall_14195's avatar
    cdougall_14195
    Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
    Jan 08, 2015

    Since the F5 and the ACE can't share information, if you bring the VIPs online in the F5 before you disable them in the ACE, you will have a service interruption and IP address conflicts...

     

    When we migrated from ACE30s to F5s, we used two methods depending on the tolerance of the particular user base.

     

    1. DNS. Using new network for the VIPs on the F5, we cut the vips by changing the DNS answers.
    2. Network. Using the same addresses we simply removed the vlans from the ACE, cleared the MAC and ARP caches, then trunked the vlans into the F5.

    There are issues with both.

     

    With 1) you have a period of time depending on your DNS ttls, where traffic will be split between the F5 and the ACE. You also have issues as there are some systems that will not honor the ttls etc.

     

    With 2) you will interrupt service. No question about it. It your customer has redundant Data Centers, this isn't a big deal as you can bleed traffic away. If not and they can't tolerate any impact, you're pretty much stuck using alternate address space.

     

    I'm sure there are other options, but our scope didn't leave much room for further creativity.

     

  • weblead_151334's avatar
    weblead_151334
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jun 18, 2015

    I have the same requirement to migrate the 200 VIP from 10.2.4 to Viprion 11.5.1 (2400).Currently Viprion is installed with few partitions like Dev,QA,prod ...we would like to retain the same VLAN ....the test site has been migrated successfully ...but I would like to know the steps how to migrate the remaining virtual servers,pools,profiles from F5 to Viprion in phases & have them in ARP disabled till GO live .During GO live I can disable over F5 & enable over Viprion...could you please list out the migration check list & share the steps for migration & what are the significant changes over Viprion...There are 10 I rules which are data group based ....