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Mubasher_Sultan's avatar
Mubasher_Sultan
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Dec 19, 2013

Need to Understand the Hardware (Serial) Failover Vs Network Failover in F5 - LTM v11.3?

Hi Folks,

 

I had a version 10.2 with Hardware Failover and now we upgraded the system to 11.3 HF8.

 

We had a hardware failover enabled only. When we planned to upgrade into 11.3, we got the recommendation to use the Network Failover.

 

I need to understand that what is the advantage of using the network failover over hardware failover. Need to understand that what to use and whats are the benefits...

 

If we are using both together, then both should happen to do a fail-over to be happen...

 

I also read the below http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/2000/300/sol2397

 

F5 recommends Hardware failover then why and where do we need Network failover except we have a long distance between devices or viprion or Active / Active configuration.

 

Please advise or correct me if i am wrong!

 

Thanks,

 

Regards, Mubasher

 

17 Replies

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  • Mubasher_Sultan's avatar
    Mubasher_Sultan
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 23, 2013

    So... What is best to configure? I mean what is the recommendation? Do we need to configure both Network and Hardware Failover together? If yes, then how it works. IF one of the network links fails but how does it will react?

     

  • nathe's avatar
    nathe
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Dec 23, 2013

    f5 did used to recommend hardware failover, where applicable. Not seen anything to the contrary. Where applicable means the two big-ips are within 50ft and are in active-standby. Active-active requires network failover.

     

    If you configure both then for a big-ip to failover you would need both network failover and hardware failover to fail, i.e. just a network failover issue would not do it if there was still a voltage heartbeat between the two.

     

    Hope this helps,

     

    N

     

  • Mubasher_Sultan's avatar
    Mubasher_Sultan
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 23, 2013

    It means that both should not be configure... Will not b a best practice. Both, can't b fail at the same time in most of cases, i believe.

     

    Well, what abt connection mirroring and persistence mirroring? IF we need them then, we need to have a network Failover... M i correct?

     

  • nathe's avatar
    nathe
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Dec 23, 2013

    I'm sure you don't need network failover for mirroring. If you create a HA VLAN then you can use this same vlan for mirroring, if not you can use a self IP.

     

  • Mubasher_Sultan's avatar
    Mubasher_Sultan
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 23, 2013

    But, i asked the F5 support engineer. He mentioned that we need to configure the network failover if we need to have connection mirroring stuff.

     

    Please update...