Failover and Mirroring

Testing Failover

Now that you have created your HA environment let’s play with it. In this lab, you will set up mirroring and perform failover and synchronization of updates.

Ensure bigip02 is the Active BIG-IP. If bigip01 is the Active BIG-IP then go to Device Management >> Traffic Groups. Select traffic-group-1 and hit the Force to Standby button.

Browse to http://10.1.10.100?

Q1. What is the source IP in the Request Details?

Browse to http://10.1.10.115?

Q2. What happened? Why?

The default gateway for the servers in the secure_pool is 10.1.20.240. This IP is currently assigned to traffic-group-local-only in bigip01 and resides in the bigip_base.conf. We need this IP address to float to the active BIG-IP upon failover. Because we are changing this from a base IP to a floating IP you will encounter an error when trying to sync the configuration. Incremental updates are the default sync method, but sometimes a full overwrite is required.

On bigip01, open the self IP server_gw (10.1.20.240) and assign it to the default floating traffic group traffic-group-1. Select Changes Pending or Device Management > Oveview.

From the Overview page, select bigip01.f5demo.com, select Sync Device to Group, select Overwrite Configure and select Sync.

Browse to http://10.1.10.115.

Q3. Did the site work? What was the client IP?

Browse to http://10.1.10.100.

Q4. What was the client IP address that the server saw (under Request Details on the main page)? Why?

Failover the active BIG-IP by going to Device Management > Devices > <device name> (self) and at the bottom of the page select Force to Standby. This is how a system level failover is performed.

Q5. Does http://10.1.10.115 still work? What is the client IP?

Mirroring

Once you place a BIG-IP in a device group, mirroring selections will show up for SNAT objects, persistence profiles and connection mirroring on virtual servers. The BIG-IP will only mirror records created after mirroring is enabled. Let’s see how mirroring persistence works, as an example.

Go to your Active BIG-IP.

Open you www_vs virtual server and add my-src-persist as your Persistence Profile.

On each BIG-IP go to Module Statistics > Local Traffic and bring up the Persistence Record statistics.

Browse to http://10.1.10.100.

Q1. Do you have a persistence record on each BIG-IP? What would happen if you did a failover?

Go to your persistence profile my-src-persist and check the Mirror Persistence box.

Synchronize your changes.

On each BIG-IP go to Module Statistics > Local Traffic and bring up the Persistence Record statistics.

SSH to your active BIG-IP and view your persistence records. In TMSH run the following command:

show /ltm persistence persistence-records

Note the CLI/TMSH prompt, you can find the sync status and the BIG-IP state.

For this lab, if you have any persistence records delete them:

delete /ltm persistence persistence-records

Browse to http://10.1.10.100 and refresh the page few times.

Check the persistence records on each of your BIG-IPs, you should see the records are mirrored on each device.

Q2. If you had persistence records existing prior to mirroring would they appear on the standby box?

Go to Device Management > Traffic Groups. Select the default traffic group traffic-group-1 and check out the Next Active Device.

Refresh the web page at http://10.1.10.100, and in traffic-group-1, select Force to Standby.

Browse or refresh http://10.1.10.100.

Q3. Did you persist to the correct pool member? What is the client IP?