Getting better mileage on your journey to an SDDC with VMware and F5

It's a foregone conclusion that many organizations have hit the road in their transformational journey to achieve a Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC). While mileage may vary based on the degree to which an organization has committed to operationalizing their environments, the reality is that those organizations adopting operationally efficient software-defined approaches like DevOps and SDN have seen positive results in stability, agility and the speed with which they are able to traverse the application deployment pipeline.

That deployment pipeline crosses traditional silos within IT, including infrastructure and network services alike. It requires a cooperative, workflow-oriented approach to not just an deploying an app but also addressing its infrastructure and networking needs. That requires collaboration, not just of the disparate teams within your organization dedicated to provisioning and managing those services, but between the vendors responsible for delivering the solutions that enable that collaborative approach.

That's why we explored 23 different possible methods of deploying F5 BIG-IP alongside VMware NSX in a non-integrated, co-existence model. Because we wanted to address the challenges faced by joint customers when they decide to embark on their journey to an SDDC, such as rolling out NSX without putting at risk applications currently delivered by BIG-IP.

We selected three of the explored topologies as archetypes and developed detailed design and recommended practice guides for those deployment topologies.

These topologies cover both big-iron and software including F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) physical and virtual editions (VE). They include guidance for both environments including VXLAN encapsulation and those that don't, as well as a variety of BIG-IP architectural placement options.

Contact F5 to explore the guides and you can always find the latest information on VMware and F5 solutions here on f5.com.