Yes I mean real server vlans. So if my ACE interface is the default gateway for all my real servers, doesn't that mean that all my internal traffic between real servers and internal network, such as my web server mounting a nfs volume on an internal ip is going to have to pass through the ACE which is limited to a 16Gig backplane connection and also consuming another tcp connection?

here is a picture I have in my head of my configuration.

the /29 on the external ip was suppsoed to be a /23

There are two way to work around that.

If the only issue is the NAS device then you can have a second NIC on servers configured for the NAS VLAN.

The other option would be go with one arm design. In one arm design only the load balanced traffic hits the ACE.The servers will have Vlan interface defined on MSFC as the default gateway. The only issue in this case is to ensure that the return traffic shouldnt bypass ACE.

In order to ensure the return traffic traverse ACE, You will need to configure PBR

. Policy based routing will look for the return traffic from servers (fo example srcip: "server IP" Src port:"80" -- in case of www return traffic) and will forward that traffic to the VLan interface of ACE.

With "one arm design", Ace is like connected to Cat on a stick. Only traffic hitting the Vips will be forwarded to the ACE and every other traffic to/from Servers (like backup / NAS) will bypass ACE.

Syed

Ok. But won't having 2 routes on my server bypass the need for PBR on the MSFC? My default route points to ACE (to find internet connections from VIP) and I add a route for internal networks to go to MSFC.

My plan is to have the database servers behindand internal VIP but other than that I plan to use MSFC for internal traffic