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N_67263's avatar
N_67263
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jan 03, 2014

Suggestions needed on F5 failover

Experts,

 

I came across a setup with 2 core switches and F5 boxes connected to each of these core switch in a active/standby mode. i.e. Active F5 connected to Core-01 and Standby F5 connected to Core-02.

 

Recently this setup came across an outage where Core-01 switch went down and this was hosting the active F5 box.

 

The standby F5 did not take over during this scenario. I seen that in this setup the Active and Standby F5 were connected to each other with and HA link directly connected and this could be the reason. Is my understanding correct?

 

If yes, is there any best practice document or some design guidelines which can help prevent such an outage in future? I can think of is connect the HA pair over the switched infrastructure.

 

Regards, Nik

 

1 Reply

  • nathe's avatar
    nathe
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Jan 03, 2014

    Nikhil,

     

    Yes, for failover to occur with HW failover then you need to lost the voltage heartbeat from one to the other, i.e. a BIG-IP powering off.

     

    In your situation this is fine to keep but may I suggest configuring a failover trigger, e.g. VLAN Failsafe. See: SOL13297. This would mean the BIG-IP would monitor traffic on the VLAN(s) and failover if there was no traffic. This would've most likely helped in your scenario.

     

    Hope this helps,

     

    N