Node vs. Member

Steven,

Node is just the server IP address, for example. Whilst Member will be Node + port.

You may have two pools, an http one and an ftp one. Both pools have the same pool members, for example. So, to decide between Node or Member for load balancing you would ask yourself, do you care if pool member A, for example, is serving multiple FTP requests when you deliver HTTP traffic to it. If you would rather this was taken into account then Node would be the answer, if you don't then using Member would just care about current http requests to a pool member, disregarding how many ftp connections there are.

Does this make sense?

N

So I am going to say that real world cases are going to use "node" the most because we do care how many other connections are serving outside a particular protocol because this will have an affect on performance. Would this be a good assumption?

More often than not, you're probably not going to have multiple load balanced protocols load balanced from the same server. That would be like running an FTP server on your web server. So to elaborate on Nathan's advice, if you for example have FTP and WWW services running on the same boxes, and you have separate pools for each (and FTP pool and a WWW pool), then the node vs. member decision becomes most relevant. A node is just an IP address, while a member is a service (IP and port). If you choose member, the any load balancing or health monitoring will be based on the service (irrespective of anything else that may be load balanced). If you choose node, then a load balancing or health monitoring decision will take into consideration all services being load balanced. For load balancing, that involves looking at ALL of the connections to that server (FTP and WWW). If health monitoring, a failure of one service can remove the node from both pools.

node is not only ip address, it can be (IP Address + Port) so it is equal to member? ??

Steven, you mentioned going through the F5 university, but did you go through the LTM essentials modules?

I'm still new to the BIG-IP platform, but it was extremely helpful to go through these. I've returned to these many times. You may need a support contract to register.

http://f5.learn.com > Go to Training Catalog > LTM Essentials.

Can anybody will explain me the structure of node, pool, VIPs, server etc? I am not sure which consist what? I hope you people can explain it to me! And also what is the difference between pool and pool member? (It will sound stupid but I am really confused.)

Thanks R