Forum Discussion

shawn306_84070's avatar
shawn306_84070
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Mar 08, 2009

Looking for some Windows help

First time here. Pretty new to Load Balancing with the F5 Looking for some answers.

 

 

I am trying to find out if F5 can be used in place of Microsoft Load Balancing.

 

 

What they (work) are looking to do is this...

 

 

They want to be able to use the F5 for drive mapping.

 

 

they want the vs ip address to map to a folder that will be set up across multiple servers.

 

 

example: run

 

\\servername\Testfolder$

 

 

will map to a the Testfolder on specified server

 

 

Can I set up a vs with say four servers in the pool so the users can map

 

 

\\vs\Testfolder$

 

 

Thanks

 

 

microsoft
partner
  • Enfintas_150062's avatar
    Enfintas_150062
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Apr 07, 2014

    Such an excellent article - could we not create an iApp rule for this as it's a great feature that I've been searching absolutely everywhere for! Thanks again.

     

  • hooleylist's avatar
    hooleylist
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Mar 09, 2009
    Hi Shawn,

    You can configure a Performance L4 virtual server on port 445 pointing to a pool of windows servers to load balance the SMB traffic. Here are two posts you can reference for setting this up:

    File share high availability

    http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&forumid=25&tpage=1&view=topic&postid=22206

    External Monitor for Shared Folders

    http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&forumid=32&tpage=1&view=topic&postid=2292025084

    And a sample configuration: 

     
 virtual test_fastl4_port445_vs {  
    snat automap  
    pool test_port445_pool  
    destination 10.1.1.1:445  
    ip protocol 6  
    profiles fastL4  
    persist source_addr  
 }  
 pool test_port445_pool {  
    members 10.2.2.2:445  
    members 10.2.2.3:445  
 }

    Aaron
    • LiefZimmerman's avatar
      LiefZimmerman
      Icon for Admin rankAdmin
      Dec 02, 2020

       - a community member  contacted us looking for "information on using multiple SMB shares across a single F5 VS". The question is 404'ng but this answer you mention about File Share HA (also badly formatted from a previous ETL exercise) might have the answer?

      I need to go into the wayback machine to see if I can figure out what that link WAS supposed to point to but figured I'd ask if you know of some more current info to help  out?