Included in Local Traffic Managers Universal Inspection Engine (UIE) is a set of functions that you can specify within BIG-IP system iRules to direct traffic in more granular ways. Using these iRule functions, you can write expressions that direct traffic based on content data, or direct traffic to a specific member of a pool. Universal  Full Article…

BIG-IP® Local Traffic ManagerTM offers several features that you can use to intelligently control your SSL traffic. Some of the SSL traffic-management features are: The ability to authenticate clients and servers to maintain secure connections between a client system and the BIG-IP system, and between the BIG-IP system and a target web server The ability  Full Article…

In some cases, you might want to allow a client on an external network to send a request directly to a specific internal node (thus bypassing the normal load balancing server selection). To send a request directly to an internal server, a client normally needs to know the internal nodes IP address, which is typically  Full Article…

When you need to ensure that server responses always return through the BIG system, or when you want to hide the source addresses of server-initiated requests from external devices, you can implement a SNAT. A secure network address translation (SNAT) is a BIG-IP® Local Traffic ManagerTM feature that translates the source IP address within a  Full Article…

An iRule is a powerful and flexible feature within the BIG-IP® local traffic management system that you can use to manage your network traffic. Using syntax based on the industry-standard Tools Command Language (Tcl), the iRulesTM feature not only allows you to select pools based on header data, but also allows you to direct traffic  Full Article…

F5 supports active / standby redundancy. One device is active serving all the traffic request and one is waiting in standby mode for a break in network or active device itself. When two BIG-IP systems are configured in a redundant pair, there are individual settings unique to each device: Hostname (bigip1.verizon.com, bigip2.verizon.com) Unit ID (1,2)  Full Article…

Upgrade process is quite straightforward: Backup standby unit Upgrade standby unit Active system forced to standby Verify upgraded unit works OK Do same steps with other system. Note that no configuration changes should be done while BIG-IP systems are running different versions. Upgrade files You can can download upgrade / hot fixes in askF5 pages.  Full Article…

To achieve high availability BIG-IP uses failover managers that monitor various parts and services of BIG-IP When failover manager detects failed process, it will do one of several actions which can be configured. It can restart the process, failed to standby mate, reboot. Here are some failover managers: watchdog – performs hardware health check overdog  Full Article…