F5 MP in an MS Cluster

Julian,

 

 

I'm also interested in F5 Management Pack support for RMS clusters. I got the same error as Bao right now during discovery process: F5Networks.ManagementPack.DataAccess.ManagedConnections.OperationFailedException: Health Service monitoring object not found on host: clusternode1

 

 

It is indeed a blocking issue.

 

 

Somebackground info:

 

1/ RMS fail-over cluster on W2K8 (majority node with file share witness - spread accross 2 sites).

 

2/ 4 BIG-IP 6400 LTM (+ASM)

 

 

Could you give us a roadmap overview (when do you plan a new release with cluster support) ?

 

 

Thanks a lot for the efforts !

 

 

Best Regards,

 

 

Vincent

 

 

PS: I can provide additional technical info if needed.

 

Vincent,

 

 

We're currently testing the F5 Management Pack on the RMS failover cluster, using SCOM 2007 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2. There are a few issues that we identified so far and we're working on getting those fixed. We understand that the support for clustering is becoming a blocking issue for more folks and we do our best to come up with a resolution, very soon. I will try to get back in a few days with more details, here on this post.

 

 

Thank you all for your patience and in your interest in our product.

 

Julian

Hi Julian,

 

 

Any update on the tests ? I'm afraid we will have to find alternatives (like SNMP monitoring) without clustering support, but this means extra implementation efforts.

 

 

This is becoming more critical for us as the customer has 2 separated entities, both running F5's but with also separated monitoring environnements (and clusters).

 

 

Thank again for your support !

 

 

Best Regards,

 

 

Vincent

Vincent,

 

 

We identified the blocking issues for deploying the F5 Management Pack in a clustered SCOM 2007 RMS environment and we're currently working on adding the RMS clustering support to our product. Dev work and testing are in progress, so we're looking at a timeframe of at least a couple of months as of now. How critical would be for you to get the RMS clustering support in December or early next year?

 

 

Thanks for being part of our community,

 

Julian

Julian,

 

 

Wel we are busy with implementation en finetuning of the different MP. But the F5 monitoring within SCOM is one of the steps of the implementation and the SCOM implementation will not be accepted by the customer without this integration.

 

We expect the project to be completed in December the latest.

 

 

With Best Regards,

 

 

Vincent

Thanks Vincent. We'll do our best and everything possible to get this done ASAP.

 

 

Julian

The latest version of the F5 Management Pack (v1.6.1212) supports SCOM 2007 RMS clustering.

 

 

You can download the F5 Management Pack here:

 

http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=217

 

 

Here’s the article describing the configuration of the F5 Management Pack in a SCOM 2007 RMS cluster:

 

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/jbalog/archive/2010/01/18/clustering-the-f5-management-pack-with-scom-2007-rms-cluster.aspx

 

 

The integration and support for SCOM 2007 RMS clustering will improve with our future releases of the F5 Management Pack.

 

Any feedback is greatly appreciated, as we strive to make the F5 Management Pack a better product.

 

 

Thank you for being part of our community.

 

 

Julian Balog

 

F5 Management Pack Team

 

Thanks Julian!

 

 

I noticed that the installation instructions indicate that Windows 2008 should be used. Our SCOM environment is running Windows 2003. Does the pack work with Windows 2003?

 

 

Cheers

 

Sam

Hi Sam,

 

 

There shouldn't be any problem with integrating the F5 Management Pack with Windows 2003 / SCOM RMS-clustering.

 

 

We used Windows 2008 R2 and SCOM 2007 R2 with our RMS-clustering installation instructions just for the simple fact that these are the latest platforms released by Microsoft, and we are striving to be compatible with the forefront technologies at hand. Most of the tests we've done with RMS-clustering were targeted against Windows Server 2008 and SCOM 2007 R2, but really the application programming interface used is backward compatible with Windows Server 2003 and SCOM 2007 SP1, as well.

 

 

This being said, I wouldn't worry about F5 Management Pack compatibility issues in supporting RMS-cluster on Windows Server 2003. Should any problems arise, just let us know and we'll do our best to assist you.

 

 

Thanks!

 

Julian