For more information regarding the security incident at F5, the actions we are taking to address it, and our ongoing efforts to protect our customers, click here.

Forum Discussion

fubarSUSHI's avatar
fubarSUSHI
Icon for Altocumulus rankAltocumulus
Feb 27, 2015

Load balancing two ISPs? With GTM or LTM?

Im assisting with an installation but Im trying to find a method to load balance two ISPs. We purchased a GTM license but everything looks like it should be done with an LTM that is on the outside p...
deployment
design
shaggy_121467's avatar
shaggy_121467
Icon for Cumulonimbus rankCumulonimbus
Feb 27, 2015

@Brian R. said it well - very similar to link controller (but hopefully easier/better because LC is like LTM+GTM lite)

 

also check out https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/ltm-implementations-11-1-0/2.html

 

Outbound ISP load-balancing uses LTM, inbound ISP load-balancing is DNS-based and uses GTM. Each public site that you want to load-balance between the ISPs will have a unique IP address in each ISPs public space, and the GTM will load balance by resolving the name to its address in either ISP space

 

  • fubarSUSHI's avatar
    fubarSUSHI
    Icon for Altocumulus rankAltocumulus
    Feb 27, 2015
    tyvm for your time. I havent read the article yet but I just wanted to ask a quick question... could I route traffic based upon type? In other words... web traffic goes isp1 while app traffic goes isp2?
  • Max_Q_factor's avatar
    Max_Q_factor
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Feb 27, 2015
    I assume when you say web traffic you mean outbound client traffic? and app traffic is internet initiated services traffic? That is very common, in GTM you will want to setup a global availability load balancing for the internet initiated services traffic and a simple priority group in the LTM for the outbound client based internet access.
  • fubarSUSHI's avatar
    fubarSUSHI
    Icon for Altocumulus rankAltocumulus
    Feb 27, 2015
    @Brian - correct. Im referencing outbound traffic only. I guess maybe I can call it "traffic shaping" but that might be the inappropriate 'cisco' term. For all egress traffic... if I want http based egress traffic to use isp1 and all non-http based egress traffic to use isp2. For ingress traffic... it sounds like you hit the nail on the head and I thank you for pointing link controller to me. Ingress traffic I am looking to use isp1 as my main connection and isp2 will be failover. I believe the GTM "dns" aspect should take care of this using cname records. And I always thought GTM is for 2 DCs only versus using it as such. In the DNS portion... I will need to get my DNS provider to allow the GTM to be authoritative for a sub-domain. I assume I will need to use two name servers 1 for isp1 and 2 for isp2 and put them in a pool for the GTM side correct?