Applies To:
Show Versions
BIG-IQ Cloud
- 4.2.0
BIG-IQ Device
- 4.2.0
BIG-IQ Security
- 4.2.0
What is BIG-IQ Virtual Edition?
BIG-IQ Virtual Edition (VE) is a version of the BIG-IQ system that runs as a virtual machine in specifically-supported hypervisors. BIG-IQ VE emulates a hardware-based BIG-IQ system running a VE-compatible version of BIG-IQ software.
About BIG-IQ VE compatibility with XenServer hypervisor products
BIG-IQ VE is compatible with using Citrix® XenCenter® version 5.6 with Service Pack 2 or version 6.0.
About the hypervisor guest definition requirements
The XenServer virtual machine guest environment for the BIG-IQ Virtual Edition (VE), at minimum, must include:
- 2 x virtual CPUs (up to 9 are supported)
- 4 GB RAM
- 2 x virtual network adapters
- 1 x 100 GB IDE disk
For production licenses, F5 Networks suggests using the maximum configuration limits for the BIG-IQ VE system. Reservations can be less for lab editions. For each virtual machine, the XenServer virtual machine guest environment permits a maximum of 7 virtual network adapters (1 management + 6 dataplane).
There are also some maximum configuration limits to consider for deploying a BIG-IQ VE virtual machine, such as:
- CPU reservation can be up to 100 percent of the defined virtual machine hardware. For example, if the hypervisor has a 3 GHz core speed, the reservation of a virtual machine with 2 CPUs can be only 6 GHz or less.
- To achieve licensing performance limits, all allocated RAM must be reserved.
- For production environments, virtual disks should be deployed Thick (allocated up front). Thin deployments are acceptable for lab environments.
