**Many thanks to F5's Helen Johnson  and Microsoft engineers Joe Davies and Craig Schwandt for putting this guide together!**

Introduction

Applications running across networks encounter a wide range of performance, security, and availability challenges. These problems cost organizations an enormous amount in lost productivity, missed opportunities, and damage to reputation.

The BIG-IP product family is a system of integrated application delivery services that work together on the same best-in-class hardware. From load balancing, SSL offload, and web acceleration to network security, application security, access control, and much more, the BIG-IP system creates an agile infrastructure to ensure your applications are awlays fast, secure, and available.

The modular BIG-IP system is built on the TMOS platform, which offers tremendous scalability and customization. You can start with one specific function to meet your current business needs and budget, and add more capacity and functionality as your application and business demands change.

With TMOS, you gain the adaptability to adjust to network conditions and business policies using iControl, F5’s highly versatile open API, and iRules, the F5 custom, event-driven scripting language. You also get a unique, application-centric view of your infrastructure with powerful iApps features. iApps enables you to deploy and manage network services for each of your specific applications with unprecedented speed and accuracy. In addition, TMOS also gives you unique ScaleN functionality, which enables you to virtualize, scale up, or scale out on demand as your business needs change.

The BIG-IP product family gives you granular control, scalability, and flexibility that are not available with other traffic management technologies.

In this guide

This paper contains instructions for setting up a test lab that demonstrates F5 BIG-IP load balancing for SharePoint Server 2010 based on the Test Lab Guide: Configure SharePoint Server 2010 in a Three-Tier Farm.

Important

The following instructions are for configuring a BIG-IP test lab by using the minimum number of computers in a virtualizaed environment. Individual computers are needed to separate the services provided on the network and to clearly show the desired functionality. This configuration is neither designed to reflect best practices nor does it reflect a desired or recommended configuration for a production network. The configuration, including IP addresses and all other configuration parameters, is designed only to work on a separate test lab network. Attempting to adapt this test lab configuration to a pilot or production deployment can result in configuration or functionality issues.

Test lab overview

In this virtualized test lab, BIG-IP load balancing functionality for SharePoint Server 2010 is deployed with:

· One computer, named DC1, that runs Windows^® Server^® 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition and that is configured as an intranet domain controller, Domain Name System (DNS) server, DHCP server, and enterprise root certification authority (CA).

· One intranet member server, named SQL1, that runs Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition and is configured as a SQL database server.

· One intranet member server, named APP1, that runs Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition and is configured as the SharePoint Server 2010 application server.

· One intranet member server, named WFE1, that runs Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition and is configured as a SharePoint Web front-end server.

· One intranet member server, named WFE2, that runs Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition and is configured as a SharePoint Web front-end server.

· One member client computer, named CLIENT1, that runs Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate.

· One virtualized BIG-IP load balancer named BIGIP1.

The BIG-IP test lab consists of a single subnet named Corpnet (10.0.0.0/24) that simulates a private intranet. Computers and the BIP-IP virtualized device on the Corpnet subnet connect by using a hub or switch. See the following figure.

Hardware and software requirements

The following are required components of the test lab:

· The product disc or files for Windows Server 2008 R2.

For an evaluation copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition in download and virtual hard disk (VHD) form, see Windows Server 2008 R2 Evaluation Free 180-Day Trial (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=102582).

· The product disc or files for Windows 7.

· The product disc or files for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. See SQL Server 2008 R2 Trial for a trial version of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.

· The product disc or files for SharePoint Server 2010. See Download SharePoint 2010 Trial for a trial version of SharePoint Server 2010 (for example, choose the SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Client Access License features version on the Download Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 web page).

· Five computers that meet the minimum hardware requirements for Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition. For more information, see Windows Server 2008 System Requirements.

· One computer that meets the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate. For more information, see Windows 7 system requirements.

· An instance of the F5 BIG-IP LTM VE Edition (http://downloads.f5.com).

 

Steps for Configuring the BIP-IP Load Balancing for SharePoint Server 2010 Test Lab

There are five steps to follow when setting up the BIG-IP load balancing for SharePoint server 2010 test lab.

1. Set up the SharePoint Server 2010 3-tier farm test lab.

2. Install and configure a new server named WFE2.

3. Install SharePoint Server 2010 on WFE2.

4. Set up the BIG-IP LTM VE.

5. Configure and demonstrate BIG-IP load balancing for SharePoint.

Note

You must be logged on as a member of the Domain Admins group or a member of the Administrators group on each computer to complete the tasks described in this guide. If you cannot complete a task while you are logged on with an account that is a member of the Administrators group, try performing the task while you are logged on with an account that is a member of the Domain Admins group.

The following sections provide details about how to perform these steps.

Step 1: Set up the SharePoint Server 2010 3-tier Farm Test Lab

Set up the SharePoint Server 2010 3-tier farm test lab by using the procedures in the Test Lab Guide: Configure SharePoint Server 2010 in a Three-Tier Farm.