GTM instead of LTM HA

 

Mmm... Sorry, diverging from F5's a bit here... I've used FWSM's in the past... They have their good points, but also some severe limitations depending on the configuration chosen. For example when running in multi-context mode they don't do multicast... And the only way you can run them active/active is with multi-context enabled. Sadly also the offload mode was pulled just before they released it too... And they have a pretty hard limit on bandwidth (6Gbps). And to get a safe harbour version you'll have to run a different version of IOS on your 6500's with FWSM cards than on your 6500's without.

 

 

Other than that they are pretty cool... But expensive... And for my mind, I find it hard to justify losing a 6500 slot (Or two) for them. I feel it's probably better to run the new VSX's and put 10Gbps interfaces into them...

 

 

Having said about cost, the cost of the FWSM's can probably be offset by buying cheaper supervisor cards (Sup32's vs Sup720's. FWSM's can't use the fabric switching in Sup720's, so you're better off with Sup32's by quite a bit of money there)

 

 

Now back to F5's... if you run 10.x on your 6900's you get multiple heartbeats (If you configure them). It's only 9.x that has the single heartbeat problem.

 

 

1 pair or 2 pairs... Comes down to cost really...

 

 

The other option is to run everything in a mini-cloud with VMWare and use virtual LTE's... You'd have to do the numbers though to see how the performance would go, but if you can scale sideways you might be surprised (Sorry, left field suggestion here). Especially if you use something like Cisco UCS's with Nexus virtual switching etc...

 

 

 

H