F5 RHI Solution an alternative to GSLB load balancing between Datacenters

This article dives into F5 Route Health Injection (RHI) for load balancing traffic across two geographically dispersed data centers. RHI empowers F5 BIG-IP to leverage health information from various sources, including dynamic routing protocols like BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), for intelligent traffic distribution. This approach enhances application resiliency by directing traffic only to healthy backend servers in either data center.
Understanding F5 Route Health Injection

F5 RHI enables the BIG-IP system to integrate with routing protocols and advertise routes based on the health of backend servers. Here's how it works:

    Health Monitoring: F5 actively monitors backend servers using pre-configured health checks (e.g., HTTP, TCP).
    Route Advertisement: Based on health check results, F5 advertises routes for healthy servers through RHI. This can be achieved by integrating with a routing protocol like BGP or by directly manipulating the routing table.
    Traffic Distribution: The advertised routes are injected into the BIG-IP routing table. When a client sends a request, F5 consults the routing table and directs traffic only towards healthy servers, considering factors like path costs and priorities.
    Dynamic Updates: Any changes in server health are reflected through route updates. If a server becomes unhealthy, the corresponding route is withdrawn, ensuring traffic doesn't reach unavailable servers.

Configuration Steps

1. F5 BIG-IP Configuration:

    Health Checks: Define comprehensive health checks for your backend servers. These checks determine server availability and responsiveness. Choose appropriate health check types (e.g., HTTP, TCP) based on your application requirements.
    Virtual Servers: Create virtual servers on the F5 that represent the services you want to load balance. These virtual servers will point to the pool of backend servers across both data centers.
    Route Health Injection Configuration: Enable RHI on the BIG-IP system. You can configure RHI to advertise routes directly into the routing table (tmm route add command) or integrate with a routing protocol like BGP.

2. BGP Configuration (Optional):

If using BGP for RHI:

    Configure a BGP neighbor relationship between the BIG-IP and a border router in each data center.
    Define route attributes within BGP to advertise routes for healthy servers, including the next-hop IP address of the data center where the server resides. This allows F5 to determine the optimal path for reaching the server.

3. Verification:

    Test the health checks to ensure F5 accurately detects server health.
    Simulate a data center outage to verify F5 routes traffic to healthy servers in the remaining data center. Tools like F5 Traffic Management Shell (tmsh) can be used to view routing table entries and verify route updates.