New to LTM...looking to build an LTM-VE virtual lab....any helpful info or web-links

Good choice :)

 

Probably you can do 90% of tests and trials on your VE lab environment. At least it works in my case. I am using an i7 with 32 GByte RAM and VMware Workstation 9.

 

My VMs are provisioned with 4-8 GByte RAM and up to 200 GByte storage. Trying ASM (VE Lab Edition) may require reallocation of storage. Typically I am running a single VE with virtual servers and HTTP-response iRules to reflect traffic instead of installing real webservers (please see iRule below).

 

A second VE is representing the device under test. As a client the local webbrowser, tools like nc, cURL, host etc. are used to generate queries.

 

The implementation also allows to bridge an interface to the real network interfaces. But most times I am just using the virtual VMnet interfaces and a loopback interface.

 

Have fun!