RE: F5 and Load Balancing

["Stachowicz, Mark" <mstachowicz () national aaa com>]

Ethan,

In my experience, I've used the same physical load balancers on both the
web and application tier for quite some time with no issues.  Using
VLANs will be suffice to keep the tiers separate.

I would break things up if you were having some performance issues,  but
other than that,  you should be fine having one HA for both tiers.  Save
you some money too.  ;)

Hope this helps.

Mark Stachowicz
Information Security Analyst


-----Original Message-----
From: listbounce () securityfocus com [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com]
On Behalf Of Ethan_Steiger () Polk com
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 1:10 PM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: F5 and Load Balancing

My Network group would like to leverage F5's bigIP products to do load
balancing in both the Web tier as well as the application tier of our
networks. While I take no issue with that approach, I do have a level of
paranoia regarding them using the same physical device. Am I justified
in my concern? Should I require them to purchase two additional F5s for
this implementation (HA configuration) or should I allow them to use the
same F5 and use VLANS to separate them? What is the threat of using the
same device? Does the costs justify the added expense?

Lots of questions.

Thanks,
Ethan

______________________________
Ethan Steiger, CISSP=20
Chief Security Officer
Polk Global Automotive=20



ethan_steiger () polk com 
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