Standalone to HA active/passive pair - best practices?

Thank you for this great information. My SE also provided another reference in solution 8581, so mashing them together I end up with a couple of questions.

 

 

https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/8000/500/sol8581.html?sr=12563274

 

 

1. is a reboot required when changing the existing standalone unit to "Redundant Pair" in the High Availlability setting in the System>Platform, probably after the floating IP is added?

 

2. the solution indicated that the existing interface IP should be moved to be the floating IP address shared between the units. The reason provided in the solution is that "this eliminates the need to modify the upstream router or downstream nodes". Unless it is for ARP or something similar, I don't think that the router nor other systems really look at the IP of the F5. I guess if a reboot is necessary in step 1 it doesn't make much difference.

 

 

My goal is to change from standalone to high available with this node as the primary/active node without interruption to services. Then to add the new secondary pair member. Note that this system is a '1-arm' and all services use SNAT (it is not a default gateway).

 

 

The procedure you provided seems to indicate that may very well be possible but there is a difference in the approach taken with the solution 8581 in regard to the floating address and need to reboot and failover a couple of times. I do agree that once this is in place that I will want to test the configuration synchronization and failover between the units.

 

 

Thanks again for your insight and advice.