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dkraut_23236
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Sep 20, 2011

LTM VE Network config on ESXi (vSphere)

Are there any best practice docs or sample network configurations for LTM VE ? Something that shows sample IP addresses and VLAN's? I'm trying to implement LTM VE in a new environment and need to understand where it best fits between the Internal network, our frewall and the Internet. Also a bit confused on how to configure virtual switches/uplinks. Thanks!
  • No you're certainly not the only one.

     

    On the networking though there's really nothing specific about VE as opposed to a hardware appliance - you can either configure VLAN trunks to VE (configure VLAN 4095 on the vswitch) and tag the VLANs within the VE, or setup separate interfaces for client and server traffic and configure those as untagged VLAN's / interfaces within VE. Either way works fine, as VE is limited to 1 gigabit anyway, there's no need for any traffic engineering in the way of multiple ports (trunks in F5 speak), and with virtual switches nor is there any need for any high availability type network configuration.

     

    Are you familiar with F5's other than your VE experience? The free training http://www.f5.com/services/global-training/web-based-training/ may be helpful if not.

     

     

  • Hey Simon, thanks for the response. I have a pretty good admin background with F5 LTM, but I have never installed one from scratch. I also have a good deal of vmware experience so I'm good there. Where I'm struggling a bit is determining where to insert the F5 in the network. Our ISP provided 2 public external ranges. The first is a /30 which is used for the external interface of our firewall. The second public range is a /28. What I'm thinking is >

     

     

    Internet > (/30 subnet here) Firewall External > Firewall Internal > Switch ( /28 Public subnet here) > F5 External > F5 Internal > Switch (Internal Private network here) > Internal Servers

     

     

    Sound about right?

     

  • Yes, that sounds exactly right to me. F5 just where it needs to be in order to have VIPs on your /28