ACI F5 integration best practice unmanaged mode

[gavinhans]

what are best practices for ACI F5 integration unmanaged mode? will ACI push EPGs to F5?

[Sergiu.Daniluk]

Hi @gavinhans,

Unmanaged mode, also known as network policy mode means that APIC only configures the network portion of the service graph, and doesn't push configurations to the L4-L7 device.

It is hard to say "these are the best practices" since it all depends on the topology, desired flow, requirements etc.

I would suggest to have a look over the whitepapers:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/data-center-virtualization/application-centric-infrastructure/white-paper-c11-734298.html 

There is also a F5 BIG-IP app which can be installed on your APIC: https://dcappcenter.cisco.com/f5-aci-servicecenter-3-2-7f-2-3-522.html 

Hope it helps,

Sergiu

[prasad.gsmc]

Best and easy way is as below. It assumes ACI is gateway for all EPG.

Create F5 LTM in two arm mode

• Make External interface as L3-out in ACI
• Make Internal interface as normal BD/EPG.
• If LTM is using SNAT, there is nothing more to be done on ACI. 

The advantage of this design is that you can use any subnet as VIP Pool and just route it to LTM external next hop IP.

with regards,

Prasad

[gavinhans]

Thank you Prasad.

why this method is preferred over un-managed service graph?