Large file transfer load balancing - too much for F5?

Hello all

 

 

I am new to F5 products and solutions, so general pointers and ideas are greatly appreciated.

 

 

We'd like to know if there is feasible F5 solution that can help us with load balancing and high availabilty for a Network we use for transfering PC desktop "images" from a server farm onto individual PCs.

 

 

We have around 60 servers in the farm, organized in groups of 5 servers: 1 main image server and 4 "cache" servers; the cache servers deploy images (8 to 20 GB size files / proprietary format) on to the PCs.

 

 

Per our guidelines, there is an average of 15 PCs that can be served simultaniously by each cache server.

 

 

The servers are connected to two (2) Core Switches (HP ProCurve 8212zl - Routing/Switching capacity 692 Gbps, Switch performance 428 Mpps), which in turn connect to intermidiate switches IDF (HP ProCurve 5300); al links are 1GB, with some having 2 x 1gb port trunking.

 

 

Each intermediate swtich IDF can have up to 144 ports that connect to the PCs.

 

 

The Core switches are interconnected (4 x 10GB links), and servers connect to both Core switches. (via 1GB link)

 

 

We have a proven design using VRRP, VLANs and multiple spanning tree for high availability and a simple/basic way of load balancing.

 

 

We'd like to use a solution like F5 that can help us do more intelligent load balancig, in such a way, that the image file is transfered from the cache servers onto the PCs through the least congested route/segment or via the server with most available capacity.

 

 

Our concern is that if we introduce a load balancing appliance like F5, it will prove to be just a bottleneck for network traffic.

 

 

Hope I have been clear on what we are looking for; your advise is greatly appreciated.

 

 

Best regards

 

Mauricio