why VLAN's required

Hi warmachinerocks

Primarily vlans + self-ip are created so F5 does not need to push load balanced traffic to a layer3 device(router). this reduces any form of latency.

Use-case of not creating a vlan + self-ip on F5 I see common in production is say for instance you want to send logs to a logging server and F5 does have a leg in the logging server vlan, you can create a static host route to the logging server or use the default route on the box to get to the logging server. you do not need to create a vlan in this scenario.

Secondly, say you want to load balance a test application and f5 does not have a leg in the test application vlan, the solution above will suffice too.

HTH Regards Eben.