Non-Standard GTM/ LTM failover Query

Couple of questions:

 

 

2.GTM redirects end user connections to a virtual server based on the DNS Name"

 

 

Sounds like you have a different DNS name per Server you want to hit?

 

 

4. GTM is used to automate the failover between a standby data centre.

 

3. We will still need to failover the connections en masse. All the Servers will still have the same dependencies (storage, Data centre etc).

 

 

From those two statments I can't exactly figure out the desired failover.. "automatic the failover" and "failover the connections en masse" That sounds like you want to failover everything together... ie "en masse"

 

 

So we really need more information... but to take a stab at it..

 

 

You could have a wildcard Virtual server. Then your irule coud direct traffic to a specific node, keying on the destination port..

 

 

The hurdle you'd have to overcome is failover... you mentioned "automated failover" if you need a one to one failover, ie one node fails you need to send it to the other DC, not "en masse".. That's going to be hard to acheive from a GTM perspective with one VS per DC to key on for availability..

 

 

Another possible angle, lets say you really don't need all the great benefits haveing an LTM will provide you, ie connection manipulation, SSL termination, full proxy, etc etc etc. You could possibly accomplish what you're looking for using Generic hosts, GTMs, and irules (depending on what version you are on)... now you're back to haveing a bunch of elements... but you would solve the failover issue..