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Torijori_Yamamada's avatar
Torijori_Yamamada
Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
Jun 12, 2023

Can APM Licenses on Two Separate Boxes Be Combined?

Hello all,

Looks like people that used another VPN solution before F5 APM a bit confused about licenses. Couple of times they asked below question to me. Apperantly, they don't seem to believe my answer and asked an article that proof/explain this is not possible.

  • Is there any way to combine and increase the number of concurrent connection limit with using two APM licenses which registered to two standalone boxes when they become a member of a HA cluster?
  • I mean, two standalone APM boxes have licenses that supports up to 500 (CCU) on each. When we gather them in a HA cluster (Active/Stand-By), in license perspective what will we have in total?

 

application delivery
BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
CCU License
licensing
  • whisperer's avatar
    whisperer
    Jun 12, 2023

    In an HA configuration, the CCU limit is based on the limit of the current active box. So if both BIGIP units have a 500 CCU limit, then at any given time, depending which unit is active, the limit will be 500 CCU. There is no such thing as combining  2 units to give you the licensed performance of BOTH units with only one active. The issue here is... over provisioning!

    You have two options..

    - Buy more CCU license add on for both units.

    - Load balance before both units, keeping them as standalone. Perhaps DNS based load balancing with an iRule to redirect to the other unit of the CCU limit is reached.

    - This should not be your problem. Incredulous executives or managers can be dealt by having F5 sales engineers and executives being involved. Sometimes you can't reason with stupid.

    Hope this helps.

     

  • whisperer's avatar
    whisperer
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Jun 12, 2023

    In an HA configuration, the CCU limit is based on the limit of the current active box. So if both BIGIP units have a 500 CCU limit, then at any given time, depending which unit is active, the limit will be 500 CCU. There is no such thing as combining  2 units to give you the licensed performance of BOTH units with only one active. The issue here is... over provisioning!

    You have two options..

    - Buy more CCU license add on for both units.

    - Load balance before both units, keeping them as standalone. Perhaps DNS based load balancing with an iRule to redirect to the other unit of the CCU limit is reached.

    - This should not be your problem. Incredulous executives or managers can be dealt by having F5 sales engineers and executives being involved. Sometimes you can't reason with stupid.

    Hope this helps.

     

    • Torijori_Yamamada's avatar
      Torijori_Yamamada
      Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
      Jun 12, 2023

      Thank Whisperer

      I totally agree with you. During last couple of days, i was looking for an article which related with this matter and could not find any. I guess that i have to ask them to talk to F5 sales represantatives.

      • whisperer's avatar
        whisperer
        Icon for MVP rankMVP
        Jun 12, 2023

        Agreed that guidance on this has always been black magic with F5. Here are some excellent resources, but none are a smoking gun answer concerning CCU license consumption in HA:

        - https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K09115252

        - https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K72971039

        In particular, look at the last item. There are many cases where CCU is not consumed, even if you are using certain APM features. In the past 15 years or so, I have taken a look at many customer APM implementations when asked about guidance on future proofing and ensuring no issues with CCU limits. I always refer to the 2nd article link. At the busiest time period, run the TMSH command to view current CCU consumption. In many cases, I have seen a big fat ZERO returned. So it depends on configuration and usage, but definitely something to check to if this is even a current concern.