Bonus Lab – Traffic groups, iApps and Active-Active

If you have time, this is a bonus lab. Here you will create a new traffic group. You will use iApps to create a new HTTP application that reside in that address group and you will create a floating IP address that will be used as the default gateway that also resides in that traffic group.

Building a new traffic group and floating IP.

1. On your Active BIG-IP, go to Device Management >> Traffic Groups and hit Create

   1. Use the f5.http template, which was designed for general web services

      1. Name: iapp_tg
      2. Take the defaults for the rest.

2. Add a floating Self-IP to the server_vlan. Go to Network >> Self IP

   1. Name: server_gateway
   2. IP Address: 10.1.20.240
   3. Netmask: 255.255.255.0
   4. VLAN/Tunnel: server_vlan
   5. Traffic Group: iapp_tg (floating)

Building an HTTP application using an iApp template.

1. Go to iApp >> Application Services and hit Create

   1. Use the f5.http template, which was designed for general web services

      1. Set the Template Selection to Advanced

      2. Name: my_new_iapp

      3. Traffic Group: iapp_tg (floating)

         1. You will have to uncheck the Inherit traffic group from current partition / path.

      4. Under Template Options

         1. Select the Advanced – Configure advanced options for the configuration mode

      5. Under the Network tab

         1. How have you configured routing on your web servers? Servers have a route to the clients through the BIG-IP system
         2. In other words, the BIG-IP is the default gateway for the servers
         3. Otherwise the template would use SNAT by default

      6. Under Virtual Server and Pools

         1. Your virtual server IP is 10.1.10.110
         2. Your hostname will be www.f5agility.com <http://www.f5agility.com> because you have to put one in.
         3. Create a new pool with the members 10.1.20.14:80 and 10.1.20.15:80
         4. If you hit add after the last pool member and have a new row, you will need to delete the row prior to finishing

      7. Hit Finished at the bottom of the page

2. Go to iApp >> Application Services and select the new application you created

   1. Select Components from the top bar

      1. Here you will see all the configuration items created by the iApp
      2. Do you see anything created that you weren’t asked about?

3. Remember the concept of strictness? Let’s test that out

   1. Go to Local Traffic >> Pools >> Pool List

      1. Select the pool created by your iApp: my_new_iapp_pool

      2. Attempt to add 10.15.11.13:80 to your my_new_iapp_pool

         1. Did it fail?

   2. Go to your iApp and select Reconfigure from the top bar

      1. Now attempt to add your new pool member
      2. You can check the Components tab to verify your success

SYNCHRONIZE YOUR CHANGES

Active-Active Setup

1. Now, let’s make our sync-failover group active-active. On the Active BIG-IP:

   1. Go to Device Management >> Traffic Groups

      1. Go to you iapp_tg traffic group.

      2. Under Advanced Setup Options

         1. You are going to set up iapp_tg to prefer to run on bigip02.f5agility.com and auto failback to bigip02 if bigip02 should go down and come back up later.
         2. Is this normally a good idea?

      3. Failover Method: HA Order

      4. Auto Failback: <checked>

      5. Failover Order: bigip102.f5agility.com then bigip01.f5agility.com

      6. Ensure you synchronized the change to the other BIG-IP

2. If the traffic group is active on the wrong BIG-IP initially you will have to do a Force to Standby on the traffic group to make it active on the BIG-IP you want it on by default

   1. What is the ONLINE status of each of your BIG-IPs?
   2. Reboot the BIG-IP with your second traffic group on it. Watch to see if the application becomes active on the other BIG-IP during the reboot and if it falls back to the Default Device once the BIG-IP has come back up.
   3. You can verify this by checking your traffic groups or going to the web server and looking at the client IP