ADC:

F5 Networks, Inc. is a multinational American company which specializes in Application Delivery Networking (ADN) technology that
optimizes the delivery of network-based applications and the security, performance, availability of servers, data storage devices, and
other network resources.

Functions of a virtual server:

Static load balancing: round robin, ratio based(user-defined)

Dynamic load balancing:

Priority groups: default is Group 0. Incase all web pool member servers are overloaded, we can bring a FTP server
to as a a web server. In this case, the ftp server will have low priority for web traffic compared to web server.
Fallback host: If all members of pool fails, redirect it to http failed, deliver a nice message for the users to improve
user experience.
Logs: Everything related to logs will be in the /var/log directory.

F5 LTM Traffic Processing configuration

1) Create Nodes and put them into pools

2) Create virtual servers.
Firstly, check self IPS, default route and vlans are configured properly.

"A secure network address translation (SNAT) translates the source IP address within a connection to a BIG-IP system IP
address that you define. The destination node then uses that new source address as its destination address when
responding to the request.
For inbound connections, that is, connections initiated by a client node, SNATs ensure that server nodes always send
responses back through the BIG-IP system, when the servers default route would not normally do so. Because a SNAT
causes the server to send the response back through the BIG-IP system, the client sees that the response came from the
address to which the client sent the request, and consequently accepts the response.

For outbound connections, that is, connections initiated by a server node, SNATs ensure that the internal IP address of the
server node remains hidden to an external host when the server initiates a connection to that host.

Create a pool:

Create a Virtual server:

F5 LTM: NAT and SNAT concepts:
SNAT and NAT are similar, except SNAT does not accept devices that initiate inbound connections.
SNATs are used to change the source IP address, specifically to force the L3 return path for response traffic through the load
balancer when routing from the real server back to the client's real address would bypass the load balancer. An example would be
that you want to load balance a server where the server's gateway is not the load balancer. They are unidirectional except for the
expected replies. It is unidirectional only and one to many connnections.. It is like PAT.
NAT also IP address translation, in the case of F5 they are mainly used to provide administrative access to backend servers via the
load balancer. For example you may have a private non-routable network on the load balancer but you need your administrators to
RDP or SSH directly. So you would use a NAT where from the routable address it can be reached.
NAT changes destination address where as SNAT changes the source address
Usually the servers DGW will be the F5 load balancer. But if the server wants to go to the internet for windows
updates, it cannot go throught he F5. SO we might need to add a router which is a bad idea. So, we use SNAT in the
virtual server/load balancer for the servers to reach the Internet.

Floating addresses are always used before interface addresses. In Auto map, F5 has full control in assigning the
destination IP addresses.
NAT 1:1 To administer each of the servers individually i.e. management translation
SNAT: X:Y For servers to go to internet may be like one to many

NAT configuration:
1) Setup self IP addresses.

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