F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management Lab > BIG-IQ All Labs > Class 2: BIG-IQ Deployment with auto-scale on AWS, Azure & VMware Source | Edit on
Module 1: Setup a Service scaling group (SSG) in VMWARE¶
In this module, we will learn about the Service Scaling Group
(SSG) feature
provided with BIG-IQ 6.0 in a VMWare
environment
The Service Scaling Group
(SSG) gives us the capability to setup a cluster of BIG-IPs
that will scale based on criterias defined by the administrator.
Topology of Service Scaling Group¶
With BIG-IQ 6.0, the Service Scaling Group
is composed of 2 tiers of ADCs.
Depending on the environment, the implementation of the Service Scaling Group
(SSG) will differ.
Environment | Tier1 (called Service Scaler ) |
Tier2 (called SSG ) |
---|---|---|
VMWARE | F5 ADC | F5 VE |
Tier1/Service Scaler
management - how does this work ?¶
With BIG-IQ 6.0, the provisioning and deployment of Tier1 has to be done upfront by the administrator. It means that:
- The F5 platform will have to be provisioned, licensed (for F5 VE) and its networking configuration done
- Once the platform is ready. everything related to app deployment will be handled by BIG-IQ
Tier2/SSG
management - how does this work ?¶
With BIG-IQ 6.0, the provisioning of SSG
BIG-IPs is fully automated. You
don’t have to setup anything upfront but licenses for BIG-IQ to assign to the
dynamically provisioned BIG-IPs
To handle the provisioning and onboarding of our F5 virtual edition, we leverage different components:
- ansible playbooks to handle the provisioning of our F5 virtual edition
- our F5 cloud deployment templates
- f5 cloud libs
Note
We will review this in more details in lab4
Application deployment in a SSG
- VMWARE¶
To ensure the traffic goes through the SSG
as expected, application will be
deployed in a certain manner:
When the app is deployed from
BIG-IQ
, it will receive a Virtual server IP.This VS IP will be configured:
On all VEs part of the
SSG
. This IP will be used to setup the relevant All the Virtual editions part of theSSG
will have an identical SetupOn the tier 1/
Service Scaler
cluster.BIG-IQ
will setup a virtual server with the same IP and the following configuration- address translation will be disabled
- the pool members for this app will be the
SSG
Self-IPs - the pool monitor will be based on the app specifications
In this lab, we will create a Service Scaling Group
in a VMWare
environment.