High Availability in a Bare Metal World

Overview

As organization’s move sensitive resources to the edge it is critical that security moves to the edge as well.  This especially applies when deploying onto bare metal at the edge; such as with Equinix Metal.  Equinix Metal provides bare metal “as-a-service” and interconnects with several public and private cloud providers via the Equinix Fabric.  The following video walkthrough provides guidance for deploying a highly available and scalable application delivery infrastructure on top of Equinix Metal utilizing a KVM hypervisor.

BIG-IP on bare metal using KVM 

In this configuration, the BIG-IP instances are deployed on top of KVM and can operate in either an “active/active” or “active/standby” mode depending upon application requirements and services utilized.  The bare metal KVM server(s) provide BGP services and can interact directly with the EQ Metal BGP infrastructure.

Rather than walk you through the entire configuration, how about a movie?  The video below provides a brief walkthrough deployment of F5 BIG-IP on Equinix Metal utilizing KVM. 

 Note: The video assumes the viewer has a basic understanding of the Equinix Bare Metal platform and the bare metal deployment process.  Additionally, it is assumed the reader is familiar with Linux operating systems as well as F5 BIG-IP application delivery terminology and configuration.  For additional information including written guidance, contact info@f5.com.