Monitoring in a cluster

Thank you Chris,

There are two redundantly connected HP superdomes hosting a number of ESXi virtual machines where the F5 active/passive cluster is directly connected to a port on each superdome.

+----------+ redundant links +----------+
|Superdome1|=================|Superdome1|
+----------+                 +----------+
      |                     |
      |1.1                   1.1 |
+----------+ 1.2         1.2 +----------+
| activeF5 |-----------------|passiveF5| 
+----------+                 +----------+ 
      |1.3                   1.3 |
 

1.1 is inside (using multiple tagged VLANs), network failover+session sync os on 1.2 & outside is on 1.3

The problem is that the virtual switch inside the Superdome performs a kind of spanning tree where only one exit port is functional as a kind of spanning tree is used to shut down the connection to the passiveF5 which normally only becomes active when the port on the activeF5 fails. Following Nathan's reply I placed the inside VLANS on 1.2 as well as 1.1 to allow the passiveF5's monitors to function.

No, this is not the architecture I advised. IMO, both the F5s & the Superdome assume that there is a redundant switch layer between them but the network guy thinks that because the F5 can do the bridging by itself that we should use the F5's to do so. I'm currently performing tests to see whether or not this will work or if we must use the usual architecture with redundant switches.

Anyone who has been in a similar situation & has any advice they can share would be appreciated...