IBM QRadar (BIG-IP v11.3: LTM)

This F5 deployment guide shows administrators how to configure the BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for Syslog event load balancing for IBM Security QRadar SIEM and Log Manager.

The BIG-IP LTM is capable of load balancing Syslog event messages. This is beneficial for environments that have more logs being generated than a single log server can collect. By deploying multiple QRadar log servers behind the BIG-IP system, the load of the log generating devices can be spread across multiple log collectors.

Scaling syslog services can become a manual task that involves the configuration and restart of multiple configuration files; an error prone
set of procedures. By using BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager, you can realize the following benefits:

  • Reduce configuration complexity by using a Virtual IP Address instead of hard-coding individual QRadar SIEM IP addresses,
  • Increase uptime and percentage of log retention by managing failover through BIG-IP's health monitors,
  • Ease scaling the configuration by reducing the effort required to add resources; simply add a new server to the BIG-IP load balancing pool.

The following diagram shows the network topology of the configuration described in this guide.

Published June 14, 2018
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