BIG IP F5 LTM Tutorial - Part 2

BIG IP F5 LTM:

Historical Overview: -

Historically, there have been two ways to build Application Delivery Networking

Appliances—build them for performance or build them for intelligence. In the open market, customers have traditionally selected solutions that exhibit the best performance. As a result, most vendors have built their devices on faster, packet based designs instead of the poorer performing proxy-based architecture. As the need for intelligence in these devices has grown, vendors find themselves in a precarious position: the more intelligence they add to the devices in response to

Customer demand, the closer they resemble a proxy and the worse they perform.

F5 initially took the packet-based path, but simultaneously started addressing the root problem—making an intelligent solution that also delivers high performance. The result is the F5 TMOS® architecture, a collection of real-time features and functions, purpose-built and designed as a full-proxy solution with the power and performance required in today’s network infrastructure.

TMOS Platform ( Time Management Operating System )

A unified product platform that delivers complete control and scalability: -

TMOS is the universal product platform shared by F5 BIG-IP products. No single competing technology can solve such a wide variety of application delivery problems over networks.

With its application control plane architecture, TMOS gives you intelligent control over the acceleration, security, and availability services your applications require. TMOS establishes a virtual, unified pool of highly scalable, resilient, and reusable services that can dynamically adapt to the changing conditions in data centres and virtual and cloud infrastructures

 TMOS is a collective term used to describe the completely purpose-built, custom architecture which F5 spent years and significant investment developing as the foundation for F5 products going forward. From a high-level, TMOS is:

Ø  A Collection of Modules: networking driver module, an Ethernet module, an ARP module, an IP module, a TCP module, and so on.

Ø  Self-Contained and Autonomous : TMOS-based device has a form of Linux running on it but TMOS & Linux are two different parts & It is important to note that this Linux system is not involved in any aspect of the traffic flowing through TMOS.

Ø  A Real-Time Operating System: A real-time operating system means TMOS does not have a preemptive CPU scheduler.

Ø  Both Hardware and Software: Because TMOS is inherently modular in design; it doesn’t matter whether individual functions are handled by software or by hardware. With TMOS, everything can be done in software utilizing highly optimized and purpose built modules.

Ø  Stateful inspection

Ø  Dynamic Packet Filtering : Bu default deny all policy in F5

Note: For more detail please refer http://www.f5.com/pdf/white-papers/tmos-wp.pdf