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jan_carlin_4038's avatar
jan_carlin_4038
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jul 22, 2010

Question about basic setup of BigIP

All,

 

I am trying to setup a BigIP loadbalancer I have installed under VMWare.

 

 

My ultimate goal is to work out a problem one of our customers has with SSL offloading. This is the first time I have seen BigIP and have only a working knowledge of networking so please bear with me.

 

I want my laptop to connect to another (running our server software) via the loadbalancer. I need only one virtual server and one pool member I would think since I am not trying the load-balancing feature but the offloading one.

 

The VMWare workstation ipconfig looks like this:

 

 

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

 

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

 

Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::c444:157:5594:711d

 

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.3

 

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

 

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1 ...

 

Ethernet adapter VMware Network Adapter VMnet1:

 

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

 

Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::d19d:8908:99db:e9

 

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.40.1

 

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

 

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

 

Ethernet adapter VMware Network Adapter VMnet8:

 

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

 

Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::5c8f:338d:74bb:6694

 

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.235.1

 

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

 

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

 

So my laptop's ip is 192.168.0.03. The target laptop's is 192.168.0.13.

 

My (limited) understanding led me to believe that I should define the external VLAN to have VMNet1 IP: 192.168.40.1 and the internal one to VMNet8: 192.168.235.1. I then set up a Virtual server with the same IP as the VMNet1 and a pool with one member, namely the other laptop's: 192.168.0.13.

 

The server on the target laptop is set up to only accept connections on port 8000 and only of the origin is a specific hostname, namely bigipvirtual.local so I set up an entry in the hosts file (on my laptop) for that name pointing to VMNet1 (192.168.40.1). I have SNAT set to "AutoMap".

 

I can ping the other laptop from the bigip VMWare instance and from my laptop. I can use curl on the bigip instance to get the html content my server serves upon port 8000 but cannot do the same on my laptop. I get "Connection refused". I can ping the VMWare VMNet1 from my laptop. I cannot however ping from my laptop to the other laptop via the BigIP. I get "connection refused".

 

I have a number of questions:

 

1) Are my assumptions correct? Should the VLANs be setup this way or should I not use the VMWare VMNet adapter IPs?

 

2) Should the Virtual server have the same IP as the VMNet1? I can ping that from outside of VMWare, from my laptop's command shell. If I set it to an arbitrary IP I cannot ping it from the outside so that doesn't work for me right now.

 

3) How do I see what connections have arrived to the load-balancer? I see the logs in the management UI but I see no connections from my laptop.

 

 

Regards

 

--Jan

 

ve
virtualization
  • hoolio's avatar
    hoolio
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Jul 23, 2010
    Hi Jan,

     

     

    Can you try assigning the external VLAN to a bridged adapter and move the management to a host only adapter? You shouldn't need an internal VLAN if all of your clients and servers are on the same subnet.

     

     

    Aaron
  • jan_carlin_4038's avatar
    jan_carlin_4038
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jul 23, 2010
    Thank you for your reply.

     

    I took away the internal VLAN and connected the external one to one of the two IP addresses I see when I do ipconfig on the windows machine that runs the VMWare instance. It didn't work. The I tried the other IP. No luck.

     

    I also tried to connect the management interface to a host only network but I am not sure how to do that so I failed there as well.

     

    Excuse my ignorance but would you, or anyone I guess, mind telling me how to do what you suggested in the above entry?

     

  • qe_102628's avatar
    qe_102628
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jul 29, 2010
    Q1) Are my assumptions correct? Should the VLANs be setup this way or should I not use the VMWare VMNet adapter IPs?

     

     

    A1) The IP addresses that you're seeing in the output from ipconfig are the Windows machine's IP addresses. You do not want to use these as the IP addresses of the BIG-IP. While the Virtual Edition is running on your laptop, it's accessed as if it's a completely separate physical machine. You will want to use unique IP addressing that's within the same subnet. Before assigning a unique address to the BIG-IP try pinging the address from your Windows machine. If the address responds, something else is already configured for that IP.

     

     

     

    Q2) Should the Virtual server have the same IP as the VMNet1? I can ping that from outside of VMWare, from my laptop's command shell. If I set it to an arbitrary IP I cannot ping it from the outside so that doesn't work for me right now.

     

     

    A2)The Virtual Server should not have the same IP address as the Windows Workstation's VMNet1 interface . See my previous answer. Unique addressing must be used across machines.

     

     

     

    Q3) How do I see what connections have arrived to the load-balancer? I see the logs in the management UI but I see no connections from my laptop.

     

     

    A3) I think you're looking in the right place. Given the configuration issue you've mentioned, it sounds like traffic isn't reaching the BIG-IP.