Deploying F5 BIG-IP LTM with SAP Business Objects Part I

In this multi-part post I am going to review a recent deployment of F5 LTM + WA in support of SAP Business Objects business intelligence platform.  We deployed this landscape at the SAP Co-Innovation lab in Palo Alto California.  There are a few things to keep in mind regarding this deployment:

- This was a ‘one armed’ deployment where both the LTM virtual server and Tomcat servers were on the same network

- We provided traffic management for Sybase IQ servers on port 5788, this port is configurable and is not hard set

- In order to support scale testing for the Business Objects environment we deployed a BIG-IP 11000 with a SNAT Pool configured.  This was to support performance and scale testing at the COIL labs.  Your configuration may have a smaller hardware platform and you may not need to configure a SNAT Pool.

 

F5 Hardware and Software Components Used in the Deployment

Software: F5 BIG-IP 11.0 HF1 Build 8121

F5 Hardware Platform: F5 BIG-IP 11050

Networking Setup:

BOE_Trunk: Interfaces 1.1, 1.2

VLAN Setup: VLAN186 untagged BOE_Trunk tag: 4094

Self IP Addresses:

MGT: 10.1.86.200 VLAN186

Production: 10.1.86.201 VLAN186

 

Configure SNAT Pool

- From the F5 web UI navigate to SNATs -> SNAT List and click on the + to add a new SNAT

- Provide a name for the new SNAT list, in this instance we will name it ‘BOE_SNAT’

- Under the Configuration -> Translation menu select the drop down and choose SNAT_POOL

- On the right hand side select BOE_SNAT_POOL

- Keep all other defaults and click ‘Finish’

- Navigate to SNATs -> SNAT Pool and click + to add a SNAT pool

- Provide a name for this pool in this example we named our pool BOE_SNAT_POOL

- In the Configuration section enter the IP addresses for the members of your SNAT pool and click ‘add’ in this instance we added 10.1.86.202 and 10.1.86.203

- Click ‘Update’ to commit the changes to the configuration

- Configure a SNAT translation list from the UI navigate to SNATs -> SNAT Translation List and click +

- Provide the name for your SNAT translation add the IP address in this case we will add 10.1.86.202 and 10.1.86.203

- Check the box next to ‘Inherit device group from current partition/path’

- Check the box for ARP

- Accept all remaining defaults and click ‘Finish’

 

Configure Monitors:

BOE_HTTP Monitor

- From the UI navigate to monitors and click on ‘Create’

- Provide a name for your monitor in this example we will call it BOE_HTTP

- Under ‘Type’ select HTTP (A list of menus will display below)

- Under ‘Send String’ add the line GET /BOE/portal/1108161604/InfoView/logon.jsp\r\n

- Under ‘Receive String’ add the line BUSINESS OBJECTS

- Accept all other defaults and choose ‘Update’

BOE_HTTPS_Monitor

- Click create again under the ‘monitors’ section

- Provide a name for your monitor in this example we will name our monitor BOE_HTTPS

- Under ‘Type’ select HTTPS

- Under ‘Send String add the line GET /BOE/portal/1108161604/InfoView/logon.jsp\r\n

- Under ‘Receive String’ add the line BUSINESS OBJECTS

- Accept all other defaults and choose ‘Update’

Configure Profiles

HTTP Profiles:

- From the Profiles section click ‘Create’ in this example we named our profile ‘BOE_HTTP’

o Parent profile is http

o Accept all defaults and click ‘Update’

- From the same tab click create again in this case we named our profile ‘BOE_base_http’

o Parent profile is set to http

o Click on the checkbox to modify the config and change ‘Pipelining’ to Disabled

o Click ‘Update’

Add Nodes to Configuration:

- Navigate to ‘Local Traffic’ -> ‘Nodes’

- Click create and specify a ‘Node Specific’ monitor select ICMP

 

In part 2 we will setup the virtual servers and configure Web Accelerator (WA) in part 3 we will review the setup of Sybase with LTM.  Please feel free to provide comments or feedback!