Virtualize Absolutely Everything! Part III Deploying F5 Viprion with a FlexPod

In my previous two posts which can be viewed here: https://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/mquill/archive/2012/08/09/virtualize-absolutely-everything-deploying-f5-viprion-2400-with-flexpod-validated.aspx and here: https://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/mquill/archive/2012/08/10/virtualize-absolutely-everything-part-ii-deploying-viprion-2400-with-a.aspx we reviewed the networking setup and integration between the F5 Viprion and the Cisco Nexus switches, provisioned 2 guests via vCMP on the Viprion and then configured the iApp for LTM to direct traffic to the Microsoft Exchange 2010 CAS servers.  In the final post we will review the setup and configuration of the APM iApp on the BIG-IP.  As always this is an example configuration, to have an expert discussion on how to deploy a FlexPod and F5 you might want to consult with our friends at Scalar Decisions.

 

Just to review a bit about our setup:

Configuration of EDGE01 F5 iApp and Access via OWA

We will now review the configuration of the F5 iApp for Exchange 2010 on the EDGE01 guest. In the previous section we configured the Exchange APM iApp for inbound unencrypted connections from the EDGE01 guest. We will now configure the virtual server on the EDGE01 BIG-IP guest and configure the pool to have the APM virtual server on EXCHLB01 as the lone pool member. For additional details on the deployment of APM with Exchange 2010 please reference the Exchange 2010 iApp deployment guide. 

 

EDGE01 iApp Configuration

Menu Item	User Input
Name	FlexPod_Exchange_2010_APM
Which scenario describes how you will deploy BIG-IP in your environment?	BIG-IP Edge Gateway or APM will secure remote access to CAS servers
If you are deploying Outlook Web App (OWA) what is the FQDN that will be used to access OWA?	mail.scalarlabs.ca
What is the name or IP address of an Active Directory server that this BIG-IP can contact?	172.16.20.253
What is the Active Directory domain for your Exchange users?	SCALARTEST
Does your Active Directory domain allow anonymous binding?	Anonymous binding is allowed
What IP address do you want to use for your Edge Gateway virtual server?	203.0.113.100
Which SSL certificate do you want to use?	star.scalarlabs.ca
Which SSL key do you want to use?	star.scalarlabs.ca
What is the virtual IP address on the remote BIG-IP to which you want to forward traffic?	10.10.16.101
Will clients be connecting to this BIG-IP primarily via a LAN or WAN	WAN
If you are deploying Outlook Web App (OWA), what is the URI for reaching OWA?	/owa/

 

Validating F5 iApp Setup by Authenticating to EDGE and Accessing OWA

After configuring the setup and deployment we verified that the connection to the virtual server on the EXCHLB01 BIG-IP was active and available. We first need to connect and authenticate to  From the external client we will launch a web browser and direct to the 203.0.113.100. In the F5 iApp for Exchange 2010 we have configured Single Sign On (SSO) as can be seen in the below screen capture.

 

Figure 2: APM SSO Configuration

Figure 3: OWA Access via APM

Conclusion

With the wide scale adoption of virtualized data centers a major push to consolidate and deploy an infrastructure to support fully virtualized application deployments. With FlexPod validated data center designs we now have a supported solution comprised of industry leading storage, compute and layer-2 networking. In the above document we have described and detailed how the F5 BIG-IP Viprion 2400 platform is uniquely designed to maintain application availability, scale to address application performance requirements and provide multi-tenancy capabilities with VCMP. Through the expertise and support of trusted advisors like Scalar and Avnet, a repeatable demonstration of the value of an F5 and FlexPod integration