BigIP F5 LTM – Administrative States

Via the use of administrative states, the administrator has the power to gracefully select a pool members state.

States

There are 3 administrative states:

Enabled – This is the default state. All connection types are passed to the pool member and the monitor continues to determine the state of the member.
Disabled – Only new connections from returning clients within the defined timeout period (via the persistence record) are allowed.
Forced Offline – This state is administratively set. No additional connections are allowed and monitor checks are not performed.

Note : The states Forced Offline and Disabled only differ when persistence is configured.

Changing the State

The state can be configure via :

  1. Virtual Server – Go to the ‘Virtual Server | General Properties | State’ then select either Enable/Disabled.
  2. Pool Member – Go to ‘Local traffic | Pools | Members | Select member’ and then select either Enable/Disabled/Forced Offline.

When an administrative state is :

Disabled the monitor status icon is black but the monitor status icon shape is retrained.
Forced Offline the icon consists of a black diamond.

Note : To distinguish between Disabled and Forced Offline hover the mouse over the status icon.

Rick Donato

Want to become an F5 Loadbalancers expert?

Here is our hand-picked selection of the best courses you can find online:
F5 BIG-IP 101 Certification Exam – Complete Course
F5 BIG-IP 201 Certification Exam – Complete Course
and our recommended certification practice exams:
AlphaPrep Practice Tests - Free Trial