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Release Note: BIG-IP GTM and BIG-IP Link Controller version 11.1.0
Release Note

Original Publication Date: 03/15/2012

Summary:

This release note documents the version 11.1.0 release of BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager and BIG-IP Link Controller.

You can apply the software upgrade to systems running software versions 10.x. For a list of supported platforms, see SOL9412: The BIG-IP release matrix. For information about which platforms support which module combinations, see SOL10288: BIG-IP software and platform support matrix.

Contents:

- User documentation for this release
- New in 11.1.0
- New in 11.0.0
- Installation overview
     - Installation checklist
     - Installing the software
     - Post-installation tasks
     - Installation tips
- Upgrading from earlier versions
- Fixes in 11.1.0
- Fixes in 11.0.0
- Known issues
- Contacting F5 Networks
- Legal notices

User documentation for this release

For a comprehensive list of documentation that is relevant to this release, refer to the BIG-IP GTM 11.1.0 Documentation page and the BIG-IP Link Controller 11.1.0 Documentation page.

New in 11.1.0

New in 11.1.0

There are no new features specific to Global Traffic Manager/Link Controller.

New in 11.0.0

DNS Express

You can now configure DNS Express on BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM) to mitigate distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) and improve performance of both the local BIND server on the BIG-IP system and any back-end DNS servers.

GTM on VIPRION

This release provides support for BIG-IP GTM on the VIPRION platforms.

Virtual Edition

BIG-IP GTM is now available as a Virtual Edition (VE).

IP Anycast

This release provides support for IP Anycast for DNS services on BIG-IP GTM. This configuration helps mitigate distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), reduce DNS latency, improve the scalability of your network, and assist with global traffic management.

Device-specific Probing and Statistics Collection

With this release, you can configure BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM) to perform intelligent probing of your network resources to determine whether the resources are up or down. This allows you to specify which BIG-IP systems probe specific servers for health and performance data.

Life Span of Default System Certificates Extended

This release provides default system certificates with a ten year initial life span on BIG-IP GTM.

GTM Monitor Supports Route Domains

You can now deploy BIG-IP GTM on a network where BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) systems are configured with route domains.

Installation overview

This document lists very basic steps for installing the software. BIG-IP System: Upgrading Active/Standby Systems and BIG-IP System: Upgrading Active-Active Systems contain details and step-by-step instructions for completing an upgrade.

Installation checklist

Before you begin:

  • Update/reactivate your system license, if needed, to ensure that you have a valid service check date.
  • Ensure that your system is running version 10.0.0 or later and is using the volumes formatting scheme.
  • Download the .iso file (if needed) from F5 Downloads to /shared/images on the source for the operation. (If you need to create this directory, use the exact name /shared/images.)
  • Configure a management port.
  • Set the console and system baud rate to 19200, if it is not already.
  • Log on as an administrator using the management port of the system you want to upgrade.
  • Boot into an installation location other than the target for the installation.
  • Save the user configuration set (UCS) in the /var/local/ucs directory on the source installation location, and copy the UCS file to a safe place on another device.
  • Log on to the standby unit, and only upgrade the active unit after the standby upgrade is satisfactory.
  • Turn off mirroring.
  • If you are running WAN Optimization Manager, set provisioning to Minimum.

Installing the software

F5 offers several installation methods. Choose the method that best suits your environment.
Warning: Do not use the --nomoveconfig option described in the following table on systems with existing, running installations of Application Security Manager. Doing so removes all content from the associated database. Instead, ensure that the configuration on the source installation location matches the one on the destination. To do so, save the UCS configuration on the location you want to preserve, and apply that configuration to the destination before or after the installation operation.

To install the software, use one of the methods described here.

Install method Command
Format for volumes, migrate source configuration to destination image2disk --format=volumes <downloaded_filename.iso>
Format for volumes, preserve destination configuration (for fully 10.x environments) image2disk --nomoveconfig --format=volumes <downloaded_filename.iso>
Install without formatting (not for first-time 10.x installation) bigpipe software desired HD.<n.n> version 10.x build <nnnn.n>.iso product BIG-IP
Format for partitions (for mixed 9.x and 10.x environments) image2disk --format=partitions <downloaded_filename.iso>
Install from the browser-based Configuration utility Use the Software Management screens in a web browser.

Post-installation tasks

This document lists very basic steps for installing the software. BIG-IP System: Upgrading Active/Standby Systems and BIG-IP System: Upgrading Active-Active Systems contain details and step-by-step instructions for completing an upgrade.

After the installation finishes, you must complete the following steps before the system can pass traffic.
  1. Ensure the system rebooted to the new installation location.
  2. Log on to the browser-based Configuration utility.
  3. Run the Setup utility.
  4. Provision the modules.
  5. Convert any bigpipe scripts to tmsh. (Version 11.0.0 does not support the bigpipe utility.)

Installation tips

  • The upgrade process installs the software on the inactive installation location that you specify. This process usually takes between three minutes and seven minutes. During the upgrade process, you see messages posted on the screen. For example, you might see a prompt asking whether to upgrade the End User Diagnostics (EUD), depending on the version you have installed. To upgrade the EUD, type yes, otherwise, type no.
  • You can view a list of the image2disk utility options by running the command image2disk --help.
  • You can check the status of an active installation operation by running the command watch tmsh show sys software, which runs the show sys software command every two seconds. Pressing Ctrl + C stops the watch feature.
  • If installation fails, you can view the log file. For image2disk installations, the system logs messages to the file you specify using the --t option. For other installations, the system stores the installation log file as /var/log/liveinstall.log.

Upgrading from earlier versions

Your upgrade process differs depending on the version of software you are currently running. Software version 10.x introduced the ability to run multiple modules based on platform. The number and type of modules that can be run simultaneously is strictly enforced through licensing. For more information, see SOL10288: BIG-IP software and platform support matrix.

Warning: Do not use the 10.x installation methods (the Software Management screens, the b software or tmsh sys software commands, or the image2disk utility) to install/downgrade to 9.x software or operate on partitions. Depending on the operations you perform, doing so might render the system unusable. If you need to downgrade from version 10.x to version 9.x, use the image2disk utility to format the system for partitions, and then use a version 9.x installation method described in the version 9.x release notes to install the version 9.x software.

Upgrading from version 10.x

When you upgrade from version 10.x software, you use the Software Management screens in the Configuration utility to complete these steps. To open the Software Management screens, in the navigation pane of the Configuration utility, expand System, and click Software Management. For information about using the Software Management screens, see the online help.

Upgrading from versions earlier than 10.x

You cannot roll forward a configuration directly to this version from BIG-IP version 4.x, or from BIG-IP versions 9.0.x through 9.6.x. You must be running version 10.x software. For details about upgrading to those versions, see the release notes for the associated release.

Fixes in 11.1.0

Bug Description
ID 355937 This release fixes validation for pool members. They will now reference the pool member (rather than incorrectly referencing the backing VS).
ID 361548 After the first install on a cluster, an rndc reload may be necessary. This fix allows that to happen.
ID 364437 Link Controller GUI: removed the erroneous table columns from wideip member stats and wideip details stats tables.
ID 364918 Syncing configuration changes from a Link Controller to a Global Traffic Manager in the same sync group no longer causes the monitors to fail to load on the GTM.
ID 365582 A GTM iRule that refers to a pool without specifying the full path (e.g., [pool pool1]) will now work correctly when that pool is found in multiple folders. Correct behavior is to always choose the pool in the wideip's folder, and to dynamically switch if a pool (with the same name as in the iRule) is added/deleted in that folder.
ID 366165 Configuration changes to any/every GTM object now triggers the configuration file to be saved.
ID 367082 This release corrects an issue where gtmd could grow excessively.
ID 367836 This release corrects an issue involving excessive memory usage and crash/core when loading GTM configs with large numbers of virtual servers with topology records.
ID 368715 Corrected a condition where importing a ucs file generated from a previous release with depends_on in the configuration would fail.

Fixes in 11.0.0

Bug Description
226783 [Global Traffic Manager] Global Traffic Manager now correctly performs name resolution for the IPv6 addresses, and BIND responds correctly to DNS requests against IPv6 self IP addresses.
223590, CR130729 [Global Traffic Manager] This release provides the functionality for clearing link statistics.
343798 [Global Traffic Manager] This version of the software adds two read-only fields to gtm_dnssec_key_generation: creator and key_tag. The value of creator is a string representing the host name of the BIG-IP system that created the DNSSEC key generation. The value of key_tag is a hash calculated from the DNSKEY resource record (RR) for that generation. You can use these fields to help debug DNSSEC deployments. In addition, this release provides better constraint on which generations can rollover, which helps mitigate a potential race condition. Finally, this release provides additional debug logging.
348726 [Global Traffic Manager] The online help page for custom GTM SNMP monitors has been provided.

Known issues

This release contains the following known issues.

Bug Description
ID 363142 [Link Controller] global Auto-Discovery can be disabled while having a link with bigip_link monitor
ID 364774 You have to create a redundant-bigip server object via tmsh for LC by hand.
ID 363134 Links get auto-discovered when global Auto-Discovery is disabled and Link Discovery is on.
ID 356586 BIND v9.7, new in v11.0.0, requires an A (IP address) record for a Nameserver (NS) entry in its configuration. In the past, a FQDN or CNAME for the NS was sufficient. This means that upgrades of BIND configurations to v11.0.0 might fail to load if such an A record is not present (the symptom will be zrd stuck in a restart loop). The best solution is to create an A record for the NS *before* upgrading.
ID 225759 When you upgrade a BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager synchronization group to version 10.1.0 or later, the master key is not synchronized to all members within the synchronization group. For step-by-step instructions to fix this known issue, see SOL11868 on AskF5.
ID 343030 "The named process might log the following error in daemon.log: Oct 22 09:44:24 local/localhost err named[8832]: 22-Oct-2010 09:44:24.278 general: error: managed-keys-zone ./IN/external: loading from master file 3c4623849a49a53911c4a3e48d8cead8a1858960bccdea7a1b978d73ec2f06d7.mkeys failed: file not found Although it reported the error, the daemon is up and running, so you can safely ignore the error."
ID 361650 "Starting with 11.0.0, it takes no less than 15 seconds for BIG-IP GTM to save any configuration change, regardless of whether it is made in the Configuration utility or in tmsh."
ID 344048 [Behavior Change] In previous releases, BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager set the time-to-live (TTL) on a name server (NS) record generated by a wide IP to 500. The system now sets the TTL on an NS record generated by a wide IP to 0 (zero) to ensure that the client does not retain the value, but instead obtains the value from the authoritative name server.
ID 346551 "[Global Traffic Manager] BIND 9.7.3 requires behavior change BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager now includes BIND version 9.7.3. This version of BIND requires that when a zone is created with a name server (NS) record that is contained in the zone, that NS record must have a matching A record. With this release, when you create a wide IP that requires the creation of a zone, BIG-IP GTM automatically creates not only an NS record, but also an A record for the NS record that points to the local host. The NS and A records are given a time-to-live (TTL) of 0 (zero). The administrator should change the NS record to match the desired NS record."
ID 360270 Resolv::lookup -ptr and Name::lookup -ptr are not caching returned records, so the tmm must perform a query each time. This could result in slower than expected performance.
ID 355018 GTM logging does not put the event name in the output. This has always been the case, so it is a widely known issue.

Contacting F5 Networks

Phone: (206) 272-6888
Fax: (206) 272-6802
Web: http://support.f5.com
Email: support@f5.com

For additional information, please visit http://www.f5.com.

Legal notices

Copyright ©2011, F5 Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

For a current list of F5's trademarks and service marks, click here. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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