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Jason_Andres_40's avatar
Jason_Andres_40
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Nov 27, 2007

Changing Pool for multiple virtual servers

We currently have 300 Virtual Servers all assigned to 1 pool. We need to move these to 3 seperate pools. I am using the web interface to click edit on each individual VS and change the pool then I have to click the VS tab to get back to edit another one. So far 2 hours.

 

 

I have seen in the forum an iControl to change the pool for 1 Virtual Server, does anyone have an application that you can select from a list of all your virtual servers and change the pool they are associated with?

 

 

Is this a feature that will be added into the web interface?

 

 

Also I have never used iControl before, does anyone have some quick tips to get an app to run.

 

 

Thanks

 

 

Jason
dev
devops
iControl
  • Joe_Pruitt's avatar
    Joe_Pruitt
    Nov 27, 2007
    That's no fun...

     

     

    You've got a couple of options, none of which is using the GUI.

     

     

    1. Make changes directly to the /config/bigip.conf file.

     

     

    The format of the virtual server definition is something like this:

     

     

    virtual _virtual_name_ {

     

    pool _pool_name_

     

    ...

     

    }

     

     

     

    You can go through this file in vi and make all the changes to the "_pool_name_" values for the virtuals you are concerned with. When this is done, issue a "b load" from the BIG-IP command line. This will be WAY quicker than the GUI.

     

     

    2. Build an iControl app. It's just one API method that you can pass in all your virtuals and all the default pools, but you'll have to get over the hurdle of getting your client framework setup (perl, .Net, Java). For perl, you can just run it directly on your BIG-IP as we have the full client framework setup for the SOAP::Lite perl module.

     

     

    It's really up to you how much time you want to invest in learning iControl. If it's just for this task, I'd suggest just editing the configuration file directly. But, if you want to start some coding, then it's really not that hard to get something up and running. Perl is the hardest to start with because you have to package up all the method call parameters manually. For Java and .Net that's done for you with the iControl Assemblies we've published on the Labs section of DevCentral.

     

     

    Good luck and let us know how it goes...

     

     

    -Joe
  • Joe_Pruitt's avatar
    Joe_Pruitt
    Nov 27, 2007
    Oh, by the way, if you go tweaking your bigip.conf file manually, I'd highly recommend that you make a backup before hand in case you make a typo and break the configuration.

     

     

    -Joe