F5 BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM) provides tiered global server load balancing (GSLB). BIG-IP GTM distributes DNS name resolution requests, first to the best available pool in a wide IP, and then to the best available virtual server within that pool. GTM selects the best available resource using either a static or a dynamic load balancing method. Using a static load balancing method, BIG-IP GTM selects a resource based on a pre-defined pattern. Using a dynamic load balancing method, BIG-IP GTM selects a resource based on current performance metrics collected by the big3d agents running in each data center.

So F5 GSLB configuration logic for a DNS record is as below:

• Define a Data Center, e.g. “SL-SYD-Site1”;
• Define a server which can be F5 LTM or any other kind of local load balancer or host;

• Create virtual servers if you don’t use F5 BigIP LTM or you don’t “Virtual Server Discovery” feature for your F5 BigIP LTM
• Create GTM pool/pools using virtual server as member of this newly created pool;
• Create Wide-IP which points to the GTM pool/pools which you defined in the previous step ; Note: F5 module in Ansible 2.3 still doesn’t support the association of GTM pool with wide-ip.

Unlike F5 BigIP LTM, Ansible F5 module doesn’t support F5 BigIP GTM very well. The known limitation of automating F5 GSLB configuration with Ansible version 2.3 includes:

1. Doesn’t support setting up a server; (Luckily, if you are using F5 BigIP LTM, this is one-off task: you only need to perform this task once for each LTM.)
2. Doesn’t support adding pool member when you create a GTM pool;
3. Doesn’t support adding pool when you create a wide ip;
4. Doesn’t support health monitor when you create GTM virtual server and GTM pool;

To accommodate these above limitation, I pre-defined a F5 LTM server called “myLTM”. 

After running my Ansible playbook, I manually add pool member into newly created GTM pool and add the GTM pool to wideip as well.

My playbook YAML file:

– name: f5 config
hosts: lb.davidwzhang.com
connection: local
tasks:
– name: create a GTM DC SL-SYD-Site1
bigip_gtm_datacenter:
password: “password”
server: “10.1.1.122”
user: “admin”
name: “SL-SYD-Site1”
validate_certs: “no”
delegate_to: localhost
– name: create a virtual server myVIP
bigip_gtm_virtual_server:
password: “password”
server: “10.1.1.122”
user: “admin”
virtual_server_name: “myVIP”
virtual_server_server: “myLTM”
validate_certs: “no”
port: “80”
address: “192.168.72.199”
state: “present”
delegate_to: localhost

– name: create GTM pool: mypool
bigip_gtm_pool:
server: “10.1.1.122”
user: “admin”
password: “password”
name: “mypool”
state: “present”
type: “a”
validate_certs: “no”
delegate_to: localhost

– name: create a wideip w3.davidwzhang.com
bigip_gtm_wide_ip:
server: “10.1.1.122”
user: “admin”
password: “password”
lb_method: “round_robin”
name: “w3.davidwzhang.com”
type: “a”
state: “present”
validate_certs: “no”
delegate_to: localhost

Ansible Playbook Output:

GTM DC

GTM Virtual Server

GTM Pool

GTM WideIP

NSlookup for wideip: w3.davidwzhang.com