Exchange CAS - internal load balance

First thing to know about your config is which version are you using (10.x or 11.x). For version 10, you can use template to deploy your environment. For version 11, you can use iApp to deploy Exchange with the latest iApp template for exchange (v1.2). Basically, on 11.x you will have two combined vs for http and https with an irule to switch between your pools and a smtp vs for internal users. On 10.x, my config has one vs for external smtp, one vs for internal smtp, one vs for rpc mapi, one for https and http redirect.

Hello-

You'll probably want to start by downloading the Deployment Guide from https://f5.com/solutions/deployment-guides/microsoft-exchange-server-2010-and-2013-big-ip-v11

Then you'll want to install the latest version of the iApp (currently 1.3), available in the iApps ZIP file (iapps-1.0.0.157.0.zip) from https://downloads.f5.com/esd/ecc.sv?sw=BIG-IP&pro=big-ip_v11.x&ver=11.5.1&container=iApp-Templates) Downloading and installing this is covered in detail in the Deployment Guide.

When installed on your BIG-IP system, version 1.3 of the iApp will walk you through some questions. You can select the option "BIG-IP LTM will load balance and optimize CAS traffic" in the Deployment Scenario section, and then do NOT select APM in the following section, if you have APM licensed and provisioned but don't want to make use of APM functionality. (If you don't have APM licensed and provisioned, you won't even see those options).

The rest of the iApp template is pretty self-explanatory, and is covered fully in the Deployment Guide if you run into questions. Feel free to post back here with your experience, or if you get stuck, but the iApp should do what you need without too much effort. Let us know how it goes!

As Dayne Miller suggested, have a look at the deployment guide. It's very straight forward. There's one table where you can see a summary of the pools, profiles virtual servers, etc. you need to use for LB ex2010.Read carefully and be aware of the notes for Ex2010 and Ex2013 int he guide**

As a personal recommendation, try to build the config by yourself(no iApp). That makes you more aware of what's happening and really helps you too much in the case you need to troubleshoot functionality (usually happens).

good luck, hheredia

Just a quick follow-up-

Although HHeredia's suggestion of building by yourself without an iApp has a lot of merit in terms of learning what's going on, given your "green" status with BIG-IP (and the complexity of Exchange), I'd actually suggest starting with the iApp to start with a known-good config. If you want to build a parallel set of virtual servers and pools manually, great! But please refer to the manual configuration tables in the Deployment Guide; there are a lot of subtleties (especially when deploying multiple Exchange services on the same FQDN/virtual server) that are easy to get into a state that cause one or more services to have problems. (The iApp accounts for all such known issues.)