Exercise 1.3: Adding a load balancing pool

Objective

Demonstrate use of the BIG-IP pool module to configure a load balancing pool in BIG-IP device. A load balancing pool is a logical set of devices, such as web servers, that you group together to receive and process traffic.

Guide

Step 1:

Use VS Code Explorer to create a new file called bigip-pool.yml.

The Ansible node is equiped with Visual Studio Code and can be accessed via UDF ACCESS Methods.

Step 2:

Enter the following play definition into bigip-pool.yml:

---
- name: BIG-IP SETUP
  hosts: lb
  connection: local
  gather_facts: false

• The --- at the top of the file indicates that this is a YAML file.
• The hosts: lb, indicates the play is run only on the lb group. Technically there only one F5 device but if there were multiple they would be configured simultaneously.
• connection: local tells the Playbook to run locally (rather than SSHing to itself)
• gather_facts: false disables facts gathering. We are not using any fact variables for this playbook.

Do not exit the editor yet.

Step 3

Next, append the first task to above playbook. This task will use the bigip_pool module configure the two RHEL web servers as nodes on the BIG-IP F5 load balancer.

tasks:

- name: CREATE POOL
  bigip_pool:
    provider:
      server: "{{private_ip}}"
      user: "{{ansible_user}}"
      password: "{{ansible_ssh_pass}}"
      server_port: 8443
      validate_certs: no
    name: "http_pool"
    lb_method: "round-robin"
    monitors: "/Common/http"
    monitor_type: "and_list"

• name: CREATE POOL is a user defined description that will display in the terminal output.
• bigip_pool: tells the task which module to use.
• The server: "{{private_ip}}" parameter tells the module to connect to the F5 BIG-IP IP address, which is stored as a variable private_ip in inventory
• The provider: parameter is a group of connection details for the BIG-IP.
• The user: "{{ansible_user}}" parameter tells the module the username to login to the F5 BIG-IP device with
• The password: "{{ansible_ssh_pass}}" parameter tells the module the password to login to the F5 BIG-IP device with
• The server_port: 8443 parameter tells the module the port to connect to the F5 BIG-IP device with
• The name: "http_pool" parameter tells the module to create a pool named http_pool
• The lb_method: "round-robin" parameter tells the module the load balancing method will be round-robin. A full list of methods can be found on the documentation page for bigip_pool.
• The monitors: "/Common/http" parameter tells the module the that the http_pool will only look at http traffic.
• The monitor_type: "and_list" ensures that all monitors are checked.
• The validate_certs: "no" parameter tells the module to not validate SSL certificates. This is just used for demonstration purposes since this is a lab.

Save the file and exit out of editor

Step 4

Run the playbook - exit back into the command line of the control host and execute the following:

[centos@ansible ~]$ ansible-playbook bigip-pool.yml

Playbook Output

The output will look as follows.

[centos@ansible ~]$ ansible-playbook bigip-pool.yml

PLAY [BIG-IP SETUP] ************************************************************

TASK [CREATE POOL] *************************************************************
changed: [f5]

PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
f5                         : ok=1    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0

Solution

The finished Ansible Playbook is provided here for an Answer key. Click here: bigip-pool.yml.

Verifying the Solution

Login to the F5 with your web browser to see what was configured. Grab the IP information for the F5 load balancer from the lab_inventory/hosts file, and type it in like so: https://X.X.X.X:8443/

Login information for the BIG-IP: - username: admin - password: provided by instructor, defaults to f5ansible

The load balancer pool can be found by navigating the menu on the left. Click on Local Traffic-> then click on Pools.

You have finished this exercise. Click here to return to the lab guide