Standby - Active HA F5 Pair Best Practice Cabling question?

If the units are close enough (50 feet) to use hardwire failover, that's the best option as it's low level and fast. I generally don't recommend using a trunk for network failover as the config needs to load before the trunk can come up and the trunk needs to be initialized. As the trunk comes up, the unit will be active and cause IP conflicts for shared IP addresses. If you need to use network failover, you can use a single cable between the units (ideally with no switch).

 

 

I don't suggest using a preferred active/standby configuration as this can cause an unnecessary failover when the preferred standby unit is active and the preferred active unit comes back up.

 

 

Here are a few related links:

 

 

sol2397: Comparison of serial failover and network failover features

 

http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/2000/300/sol2397.html

 

 

Network Failover:

 

http://devcentral.f5.com/Community/GroupDetails/tabid/1082223/aff/31/afv/topic/aft/1172984/afc/1197426/Default.aspx

 

 

Aaron