04-May-2020 11:01 - edited 18-Aug-2022 09:03
This article will provide information about BIG-IP and NGINX high availability (HA) topics that should be considered when leveraging the public cloud. There are differences between on-prem and public cloud such as cloud provider L2 networking. These differences lead to challenges in how you address HA, failover time, peer setup, scaling options, and application state.
Topics Covered:
High availability can mean many things to different people. Depending on the application and traffic requirements, HA requires dual data paths, redundant storage, redundant power, and compute. It means the ability to survive a failure, maintenance windows should be seamless to user, and the user experience should never suffer...ever!
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability
So what should HA provide?
Let's look at a common use case...
"gaming app, lots of persistent connections, client needs to hit same backend throughout entire game session"
The requirement of session state is common across applications using methods like HTTP cookies, F5 iRule persistence, JSessionID, IP affinity, or hash. The session type used by the application can help you decide what migration path is right for you. Is this an app more fitting for a lift-n-shift approach...Rehost? Can the app be redesigned to take advantage of all native IaaS and PaaS technologies...Refactor?
Reference: 6 R's of a Cloud Migration
The cloud provider does a great job with things like scaling, but there are still cloud provider limits that affect sizing and machine instance types to keep in mind. BIG-IP and NGINX are considered network virtual appliances (NVA). They carry quota limits like other cloud objects.
Unfortunately, not all limits are documented. Key metrics for L7 proxies are typically SSL stats, throughput, connection type, and connection count. Collecting these application and traffic metrics can help identify the correct instance type. We have a list of the F5 supported BIG-IP VE platforms on F5 CloudDocs.
BIG-IP supports the following HA cluster configurations:
Reference: BIG-IP High Availability Docs
NGINX supports the following HA cluster configurations:
Reference: NGINX High Availability Docs
In the following sections, I will illustrate 3 common deployment configurations for BIG-IP in public cloud.
This failover method uses API calls to communicate with the cloud provider and move objects (IP address, routes, etc) during failover events. The F5 Cloud Failover Extension (CFE) for BIG-IP is used to declaratively configure the HA settings.
Key Findings:
Recommendations:
Key difference:
Recommendations:
Key difference:
Recommendations:
In the following sections, I will illustrate 2 common deployment configurations for NGINX in public cloud.
Recommendations:
Reference: Active-Passive HA for NGINX Plus on AWS
Key difference:
Recommendations:
Reference: Active-Active HA for NGINX Plus on AWS, Active-Active HA for NGINX Plus on Google
Review this handy table to understand the high level pros and cons of each deployment method.
As a means to make this topic a little more real, here is a common customer scenario that shows you the decisions that go into moving an application to the public cloud. Sometimes it's as easy as a lift-n-shift, other times you might need to do a little more work. In general, public cloud is not on-prem and things might need some tweaking. Hopefully this example will give you some pointers and guidance on your next app migration to the cloud.
Current Setup:
Requirements for Successful Cloud Migration:
Recommended Design for Cloud Phase #1:
This example comes up in customer conversations often. Based on customer requirements, in-house skillset, current operational model, and time frames there is one option that is better than the rest. A second design phase lends itself to more of a Replatform or Refactor migration type. In that case, more options can be leveraged to take advantage of cloud-native features. For example, changing the application persistence type from iRule UIE to cookie would allow BIG-IP to avoid keeping track of state. Why? With cookies, the client keeps track of that session state. Client receives a cookie, passes the cookie to L7 proxy on successive requests, proxy checks cookie value, sends to backend pool member. The requirement for L7 proxy to share session state is now removed.
Here is another customer scenario. This time the application is a full suite of multimedia content. In contrast to the first scenario, this one will illustrate the benefits of rearchitecting various components allowing greater flexibility when leveraging the cloud. You still must factor in-house skill set, project time frames, and other important business (and application) requirements when deciding on the best migration type.
Current Setup:
Requirements for Success Cloud Migration:
Recommended Design for Cloud Phase #1:
This is a great example of a Repurchase in which application characteristics can allow the various teams to explore alternative cloud migration approaches. In this scenario, it describes a phase one migration of converting BIG-IP devices to NGINX Plus devices. This example assumes the BIG-IP configurations can be somewhat easily converted to NGINX Plus, and it also assumes there is available skillset and project time allocated to properly rearchitect the application where needed.
OK! Brains are expanding...hopefully? We learned about high availability and what that means for applications and user experience. We touched on the importance of application behavior and traffic sizing. Then we explored the various F5 products, how they handle HA, and HA designs. These recommendations are based on my own lab testing and interactions with customers. Every scenario will carry its own requirements, and all options should be carefully considered when leveraging the public cloud. Finally, we looked at a customer scenario, discussed requirements, and design proposal. Fun!
Read the following articles for more guidance specific to the various cloud providers.
Great write up. Articles like this a great to explain all the options and design considerations.