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Forum Discussion

gossett_151899's avatar
gossett_151899
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Aug 12, 2014

I have a very basic noob question. How do the servers in the load balancing pool know how to use the virtual server IP address?

My question is this: how do the servers in a load balancing pool know to use the virtual server IP address? Example:   server 1 server 2   virtual server IP x.x.x.x   how do server 1 and ser...
application delivery
LTM
management
Cory_50405's avatar
Cory_50405
Icon for Noctilucent rankNoctilucent
Aug 12, 2014

Typically end user traffic is directed to the virtual server, which then load balances the connection across the two backend servers. The return traffic from your servers will either route back out through the BIG-IP (specifying it as a default gateway for example) or the BIG-IP will use source NAT (SNAT) to ensure that all return traffic from the servers comes back through the BIG-IP.

 

Hope this answers your question. If not, keep 'em coming.

 

Cory_50405's avatar
Cory_50405
Icon for Noctilucent rankNoctilucent
Aug 12, 2014
Typically something like this: End user wants to access your application. Types the FQDN corresponding to your application into his browser, http://www.example.com for example, which DNS resolves to the IP address on your virtual server. BIG-IP then proxies the connection through to the backend servers. So DNS configurations would need to be in place as well, unless you are accessing the application directly by IP address. In this case, that IP address would be the virtual server address.