Manual Chapter : BIG-IQ System Introduction

Applies To:

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BIG-IQ Cloud and Orchestration

  • 1.0.0
Manual Chapter

BIG-IQ System Introduction

Overview: BIG-IQ system

The BIG-IQ® system is a tool that streamlines the management of F5 devices in your network. Because it is based on the same platform as BIG-IP® devices, it includes full product support, security patches, and internal and external security audits (AuthN and AuthZchecks). The specific functionality offered is dependent on your software license.

Cloud administrators use BIG-IQ Cloud to provide cloud tenants self-service access to shared computing resources such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services. Cloud resources can be private or public, depending on the customer's requirements. Each tenant has restricted and dedicated access to cloud resources based on a specific user account or tenant role, ensuring that tenants have access only to their own resources. Cloud resources are easily expanded and reallocated as needed, providing flexible resource balancing.

Additional resources and documentation for BIG-IQ systems

You can access all of the following BIG-IQ® system documentation from the AskF5™ Knowledge Base located at http://support.f5.com/.

Document Description
BIG-IQ® Systems Virtual Editions Setup guides BIG-IQ® Virtual Edition (VE) runs as a guest in a virtual environment using supported hypervisors. Each of these guides is specific to one of the hypervisor environments supported for the BIG-IQ system.
Release notes Release notes contain information about the current software release, including a list of associated documentation, a summary of new features, enhancements, fixes, known issues, and available workarounds.
Solutions and Tech Notes Solutions are responses and resolutions to known issues. Tech Notes provide additional configuration instructions and how-to information.

About incorporating BIG-IQ system securely into your network

To successfully manage devices in your network, including BIG-IQ® peer systems, the BIG-IQ system requires communication over HTTPS port 443. The BIG-IQ administrator can provide fine-grained access to various roles, which are verified by authorization checks (AuthN and AuthZ). Authenticated users have access only to the resources explicitly granted by the BIG-IQ administrator.

Open ports required for device management

The BIG-IQ® system requires bilateral communication with the devices in your network in order to successfully manage them. For this communication, the following ports are open by default to allow for the required two-way communication.

Open Port Purpose
TCP 443 (HTTPS) Discovering, monitoring, and configuring managed devices
TCP 443 (HTTPS) and TCP 22 (SSH) Upgrade BIG-IP® devices running version 11.5.3 and later
TCP 443 (HTTPS) Upgrade BIG-IP devices running version 12.0.0
TCP 443 (HTTPS) Replicating and synchronizing BIG-IQ systems