4 BIG-IP in one cluster?

[Shurik]

Hello guys,

We have two data centers, with L2 link between the DCs. Is it possible to create one cluster (2 BIG-IP LTM in primary DC + 2 BIG-IP LTM in standby DC)?

And in case one of the services/links go down in primary location, the VIP for that specific service will be up in standby DC?

Is it a good practice?

Thank you.

[Daniel_Wolf · Accepted solution]

It is sort of a good practice, but to shift traffic to a backup data center you would also use F5 DNS.

You would have two clusters, one in each datacenter. And F5 DNS would distribute traffic across data centers.

Take a look at this video: BIG-IP DNS Load Balancing Introduction

Otherwise you would have plenty of (virtual) hardware sitting idle.

[Daniel_Wolf]

On a second thought - without knowing more about your (cloud) infrastructure, your business requirements, the application itself, ... and so on, it is nearly impossible to provide you with a blueprint of a "silver bullet" architecture that will satisfy all your requirements.

From the top of my head, I could see a couple of scenarios.

1. One LTM cluster of four BIG-IP devices with one or more traffic groups
2. Two LTM clusters in two datacenters
3. Four standalone LTM might also be possible, depending on your level of automation / config management

Option 2 and 3 combined with F5 DNS or F5 DNS Load Balancer Cloud Service and optional also with BIG-IQ.

Depending on how far you have developed this idea already, it might make sense to reach out to someone who can help you with the design of your topology.

[Shurik]

Hello Daniel,

I think the f5 DNS will be best solution here, but unfortunately it wasn't in the budget... So I'm exploring alternatives designs.

Scenario 2:

Is there a way to failover virtual server between two different clusters?

Thanks again!

[Daniel_Wolf]

Hello Shurik.

If your idea is that both clusters have the VIP configured and one cluster has the VIP up, while the other cluster has the same VIP down, like a warm standby... nope. At least to my knowledge. Probably possible with some external tools for monitoring & scripting.

With your requirements and budget a 4 node cluster might be a good solution. But also I am not seeing the full picture of your requirements, so I cannot recommend a "best solution".

KR

[Shurik]

Thank you Daniel! I like the DNS solution, we will see what can be done here 🙂