Efficient way to manage apps

I can't say if this is recommended or best practice, but I prefer SNI setup for hosting multiple applications using single virtual server address. It can host upto 65536 applications/virtual servers with a single IP address. Also, it gives the privilege to maintain SSL certificate, session persistence, custom iRule or any other custom need per individual application.

Assuming your all applications are TLS based. You can configure master TLS SNI VIP. Let's assume you want to host applications app1.example.com to app10.example.com using same VIP.

sni_vs_80 ---> 10.10.10.10:80 ---> this will have redirect iRule/ltm policy to redirect to default https

sni_vs_443 ---> 10.10.10.10:443 ---> standard VIP. configure snat set to automap, default persistence profile as ssl and would have custom ltm policy (policy_sni). Please note, this VIP shouldn't have http profile, iRule, ssl profile or pool attach to it. details of ltm policy below.

policy_sni

Rule1 - ssl extension server name is any of <app1.example.com> at SSL clienthello forward traffic to virtualserver app1.example.com_8443 at SSL clienthello. You can keep on adding rules for each application in the same policy.

Now you can configure the virtual server for app1.example.com_8443 using same VIP and 8443 port (10.10.10.10:8443). This VIP can be configured standard VIP and with a standard pool with all regular or custom settings you need.

You can keep on adding with any of the custom port you want to host a new application. e.g. as below

app1.example.com_8443 ---> 10.10.10.10:8443

app2.example.com_8444 ---> 10.10.10.10:8444

app3.example.com_8445 ---> 10.10.10.10:8445

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Now, for all applications just listening without TLS you can follow similar approach but forward based on HOST header.

There's many ways to do this, but it matters on specification & requirement.

You can use a single VIP & put irule to route to different pools based on the host header too. So its just 1 VIP, multiple pools inside it. But make sure your VIP doesn't go bottleneck on peak traffic,,,

Thank you so much for your replies guys. I appreciate your help and time here.

From all the above post, now I realized that there are multiple options available on F5 to have multiple options behind single Virtual Server. Everything is dependent on the use cases, I can use the better approach for the configuration. I will thoroughly check my application requirements and then select the best approach. At least, now I am confident to proceed further. Thank you again. I will keep you updated.

Hello guys, after lots of internal discussions over the weekend, the second approach suggested by  suits our requirement and so for now we are configuring the URLs using irule given on single virtual server.      Thank you guys for ​your comments. I appreciate your help.