Applies To:
Show Versions
BIG-IP AAM
- 11.6.5, 11.6.4, 11.6.3, 11.6.2, 11.6.1
BIG-IP APM
- 11.6.5, 11.6.4, 11.6.3, 11.6.2, 11.6.1
BIG-IP GTM
- 11.6.5, 11.6.4, 11.6.3, 11.6.2, 11.6.1
BIG-IP Link Controller
- 11.6.5, 11.6.4, 11.6.3, 11.6.2, 11.6.1
BIG-IP LTM
- 11.6.5, 11.6.4, 11.6.3, 11.6.2, 11.6.1
BIG-IP AFM
- 11.6.5, 11.6.4, 11.6.3, 11.6.2, 11.6.1
BIG-IP PEM
- 11.6.5, 11.6.4, 11.6.3, 11.6.2, 11.6.1
BIG-IP ASM
- 11.6.5, 11.6.4, 11.6.3, 11.6.2, 11.6.1
Overview: Configuring all-active clustering using ECMP
You can implement the clustering of BIG-IP devices on a network through the use of the Equal Cost Multi-Path (ECMP) protocol. Specifically, you can enable ECMP on an upstream router and then configure the same virtual IP address on each BIG-IP device in a Sync-Only device group. In this case, the upstream router uses ECMP to determine, through route advertisement, whether there are multiple, equal-cost paths to the virtual address. If so, the router employs an algorithm to select a path to the virtual address on any one of the BIG-IP devices.
With this configuration, no single application is pinned to a specific device, and no device operates in a standby state. Instead, all devices in the cluster can be active for that application traffic. Moreover, you can add capacity by simply adding BIG-IP devices to the device group and syncing the configuration, including the virtual IP address, to the new device. Note that all devices in the Sync-Only device group function as standalone devices and therefore do not share state, such as mirroring connections, persisting records, and so on.
You can configure all-active BIG-IP clustering in these ways:
Configuring the virtual server to use SNAT Auto Map
In the configuration example provided in this document, the pool members are on the internal network of the BIG-IP systems. However, because SNAT Auto Map selects the unique self IP address that is local to a device, the pool members can actually reside anywhere on the network, as long as they have a route back to those unique local self IP addresses.
Configuring the virtual server to use SNAT pools
- SNAT pools can provide segmentation of traffic per application, as well scale the amount of connections per pool member.
- In the configuration example provided in this document, the pool members are remote and located on the ECMP router's internal network. The virtual server leverages an iRule to select a unique SNAT pool for each device.
- Because the SNAT pool addresses in this configuration are shared across all devices in the BIG-IP device group, the SNAT addresses must be routable only (that is, not on a directly-connected network).
- All instances reference the same iRule, which selects the SNAT pool for each device. In this case, the server pool is on the ECMP router's internal network.
