Dig deeper into Ansible and F5 integration

Hi,

You do not need to have a default gateway if you have L2 connectivity to your external (Client traffic) and your internal (server traffic), but if your servers are on a different subnet and you need to tell BIG-IP how to route to that subnet then yes you do need specify static routes. Though it is good practice to specify a default route.

Example of adding a static route:

- name: Add route(s)
    bigip_static_route:
      server: "{{bigip_ip}}"
      user: "{{ bigip_username }}"
      password: "{{ bigip_password }}"
      name: "{{item.name}}"
      gateway_address: "{{item.gw_address}}"
      netmask: "{{item.netmask}}"
      destination: "{{item.destination}}" 
      validate_certs: "no"
    with_items: "{{static_route}}"
    
 Associated variable file:
 static_route:
- name: "default"
  gw_address: "10.168.68.1"
  destination: "0.0.0.0"
  netmask: "0.0.0.0"

Yes if your backend servers are not on the same subnet you have two options: 1) Set SNAT to 'Automap' on the Virtual server, this will change the source IP address to the internal Self-IP address of the BIG-IP, so the return traffic will be forced to go back through the BIG-IP 2) If you donot want to use Automap , point all your backend servers default route to the internal Self-IP address of the BIG-IP

Thanks