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Torijori_Yamamada's avatar
Torijori_Yamamada
Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
Jun 12, 2023
Solved

Can APM Licenses on Two Separate Boxes Be Combined?

Hello all, Looks like people that used another VPN solution before F5 APM a bit confused about licenses. Couple of times they asked below question to me. Apperantly, they don't seem to believe my an...
application delivery
BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
CCU License
licensing
  • whisperer's avatar
    whisperer
    Jun 12, 2023

    In an HA configuration, the CCU limit is based on the limit of the current active box. So if both BIGIP units have a 500 CCU limit, then at any given time, depending which unit is active, the limit will be 500 CCU. There is no such thing as combining  2 units to give you the licensed performance of BOTH units with only one active. The issue here is... over provisioning!

    You have two options..

    - Buy more CCU license add on for both units.

    - Load balance before both units, keeping them as standalone. Perhaps DNS based load balancing with an iRule to redirect to the other unit of the CCU limit is reached.

    - This should not be your problem. Incredulous executives or managers can be dealt by having F5 sales engineers and executives being involved. Sometimes you can't reason with stupid.

    Hope this helps.

     

whisperer's avatar
whisperer
Icon for MVP rankMVP
Jun 12, 2023

In an HA configuration, the CCU limit is based on the limit of the current active box. So if both BIGIP units have a 500 CCU limit, then at any given time, depending which unit is active, the limit will be 500 CCU. There is no such thing as combining  2 units to give you the licensed performance of BOTH units with only one active. The issue here is... over provisioning!

You have two options..

- Buy more CCU license add on for both units.

- Load balance before both units, keeping them as standalone. Perhaps DNS based load balancing with an iRule to redirect to the other unit of the CCU limit is reached.

- This should not be your problem. Incredulous executives or managers can be dealt by having F5 sales engineers and executives being involved. Sometimes you can't reason with stupid.

Hope this helps.

 

  • Torijori_Yamamada's avatar
    Torijori_Yamamada
    Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
    Jun 12, 2023

    Thank Whisperer

    I totally agree with you. During last couple of days, i was looking for an article which related with this matter and could not find any. I guess that i have to ask them to talk to F5 sales represantatives.

    • whisperer's avatar
      whisperer
      Icon for MVP rankMVP
      Jun 12, 2023

      Agreed that guidance on this has always been black magic with F5. Here are some excellent resources, but none are a smoking gun answer concerning CCU license consumption in HA:

      - https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K09115252

      - https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K72971039

      In particular, look at the last item. There are many cases where CCU is not consumed, even if you are using certain APM features. In the past 15 years or so, I have taken a look at many customer APM implementations when asked about guidance on future proofing and ensuring no issues with CCU limits. I always refer to the 2nd article link. At the busiest time period, run the TMSH command to view current CCU consumption. In many cases, I have seen a big fat ZERO returned. So it depends on configuration and usage, but definitely something to check to if this is even a current concern.