F5 MP in an MS Cluster

Hi Sam,

 

 

We'll be posting a technical article on deploying the F5 Management Pack to an Active/Passive MS Cluster with SCOM 2007. If there are there any specific concerns or questions that you may have regarding this deployment let us know, so that we can cover the related scenarios as well. We'll get back soon here, with updates.

 

 

Julian

hi there i m interested to know as well

 

 

we got a clustered Windows 2003 OpsMgr 2007 RMS server. its a two node cluster and we want to install the F5 MP on it. We need this technical doc to guide us on how best to install it and for any issues that we might encounter. Could you please forward us this technical article.

 

 

thanks

 

Bao

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Bao,

 

 

As soon as we have the article ready it will be posted on our F5 Management Pack solution forum and we'll let you know. I'll make sure we cover any specific configuration detail, question or concern that might come up on this thread in the meantime.

 

 

Thanks for your interest in our MP.

 

Julian

Thanks Julian

 

my plan of attack at the moment looks like:

 

 

- Install F5 MP on both nodes so that the binary and service gets installed

 

- create "Generic Service" resource and use the parameter "F5MonitoringService" and every else as default. I m unsure as to what registry keys need replicating as i dont know if any of them stores data.

 

- Change entries in C:\Program Files\F5 Networks\Management Pack\f5mpsvc.exe.config to point to virtual cluster name of RMS, SDK or SCOM host.

 

 

I think that should work. Am i missing anything or need to check out?

 

 

regards

 

Bao

 

 

 

Bao,

 

 

That all sounds reasonable and it should be the normal way of preparing the clustered configuration for the F5 Management Pack solution, but there's a problem with correctly persisting the F5 Monitoring service state (related to device configuration) across the cluster nodes and I will briefly describe the issue here, with a more elaborate follow-up in our future article, about clustering the F5 Management Pack.

 

 

First of all, I should probably start by mentioning here that the current version (1.x) of the F5 Management Pack (F5MP) does not have a 'native' built-in support for clustering with MS Cluster Service (MSCS). While the SCOM-integrated modules of the F5MP (and the actual management pack), for the most part would follow the clustering pattern implemented by the SCOM-clustering infrastructure, there is a problem with the F5 devices discovered and the way the F5MP associates them with the actual host (RMS / MS) they have been discovered on. The association goes by MAC-address unfortunately, e.g. "server host with MAC-address 'foo' owns device 'bar'". As you would probably guess, if we discovered device "DEV-1" on RMS-host "RMS-1" the F5MP datasource will store the device configuration data associated with the MAC-address of RMS-1. In the Active / Passive clustering scenario supported by SCOM (clustering the RMS hosts), when RMS-1 goes down and RMS-2 takes over, the F5 Monitoring service will assume that DEV-1 is "owned" by RMS-1 and as a result there will be no F5 device configuration / hierarchy rendered within SCOM, to say the least.

 

 

At this point, a possible temporary workaround / solution we're looking at, would probably be to update the F5MP database on-the-fly (through some service-startup-scripting mechanism) with the current MAC-address of the RMS-host taking over, so that after the fail-over the whole device-configuration data would be associated with the appropriate MAC-address. But this may not work entirely, and we're still testing this approach. But again, at this time, we're not committed to support in any way the clustered configuration with the current release of the F5MP.

 

 

Native clustering support with the F5MP is definitely on our road-map, but it will be a future release of the F5MP addressing this capability and this will also depend on Microsoft's direction with the upcoming SCOM platform (OM10, to be out around 2010).

 

 

Thanks Julian we will install it and also wait for the fully supported cluster version

 

regards

 

Bao

Hi Julian

 

 

I m have issues with discovery of F5 devices where its trying to contact the health services on the cluster node name and i think i need to change this so it will be the Virtual name as my SPN are setup there.

 

error is : F5Networks.ManagementPack.DataAccess.ManagedConnections.OperationFailedException: Health Service monitoring object not found on host: clusternode1

 

Do you know where the "F5" health service hostname is configured? I understand the F5 mp is unsupported in a clustered RMS environment but i want to hardcode everything so it will work on the one node until a newer version is released.

 

 

thanks

 

Bao

 

 

 

 

 

Bao,

 

 

There are a few fixes we need to add to the F5 Management Pack prior to have basic clustering support even for a clusterd self-containted RMS (with no Management Servers). There's no configurable hostname setting for getting the [SCOM] Health Service hostname, inside the F5 Management Pack (F5 MP). The Health Service hostname is dynamically retrieved inside our F5 MP, using various API calls, and some of them would simply ignore clustered environment configuration settings (as initially the F5 MP has not been targeted to support MS cluster deployments). We are looking into making these changes into our F5 MP and add basic clustering support in one of our upcoming releases.

 

 

Julian

Hi there does the new management pack support clustered RMS servers

 

 

Bao

Bao,

 

 

With the new Management Pack (v1.3.0.715) we've added a couple of features (Big-IP security model integration and Operations Manager PowerShell integration - Click here for more information), but no clustering support yet. Support for clustering RMS servers is on our roadmap and we are working on adding this feature to our Management Pack soon.

 

 

Is the clustered deployment of the F5 Management Pack a blocking issue for you?

 

 

Also, since we're actively looking into making the clustering support a strong feature of the F5 Management Pack, we would like to gather any relevant information regarding your clustering needs, number of F5 devices, configuration (LTM?, GTM?, etc.), or any other input or requirement that you may have, specific to your environment, that would possibly make the F5 Management Pack clustering a compelling feature. You can email all this information to us at ManagementPack(at)f5.com.

 

 

Input from the real world deployments of the F5 Management Pack is key for us to build a better product and we very much appreciate the feedback from users like you.

 

 

Thank you.

 

Julian