Release Notes : BIG-IQ Cloud, 4.2.0

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BIG-IQ Cloud

  • 4.2.0
Release Notes
Original Publication Date: 03/04/2014 Updated Date: 04/18/2019

Summary:

This release note documents version 4.2.0 of BIG-IQ Cloud.

Contents:

Product description

Cloud administrators can use BIG-IQ Cloud to supply tenants with on-demand access to resources such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services. These cloud resources can be located on BIG-IP devices in a private local network, a public third-party cloud service, or a combination of both.

Each tenant has restricted and dedicated access to resources based on their tenant role and user account. Cloud space can be expanded, retracted, and reallocated to tenants as needed, providing flexible resource balancing.

Supported platform

This version of BIG-IQ Cloud is supported on the BIG-IQ 7000 Series platform.

Screen resolution requirement

To properly display, the BIG-IQ system requires that your screen resolution is set to 1280x1024 or higher.

Browser support

BIG-IQ Cloud supports the following browsers and versions:

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer version 9 and later
  • Mozilla Firefox version 18.x and later
  • Google Chrome version 18.x and later

User documentation for this release

For a comprehensive list of documentation that is relevant to this release, refer to the BIG-IQ 4.2.0 Documentation page.

Software installation

For procedures about specifying network options and performing initial configuration, refer to the BIG-IQ System: Licensing and Initial Configuration guide.

Preparing BIG-IQ Cloud high availability systems for upgrade

If you have set up BIG-IQ Cloud in a high availability configuration, use this procedure to prepare the systems for upgrade.
  1. Log in to the active BIG-IQ system.
  2. At the top of the screen, click System Overview.
  3. Click High Availability. The peer BIG-IQ system displays.
  4. Click the Delete button. A pop-up displays.
  5. Click the Remove button.
  6. Log in to the BIG-IQ Cloud you removed as the root user.
  7. Type the following command: bigstart stop restjavad; rm -rf /var/config/rest; bigstart start restjavad This command removes from BIG-IQ Cloud, information associated with devices previously managed on this system.
You can now upgrade each BIG-IQ Cloud by performing the steps outlined in the section titled Upgrading a BIG-IQ system in this release note. After you upgrade, you can re-configure the high availability pair. For more information, refer to the BIG-IQ High Availability chapter in the BIG-IQ Cloud: Cloud Administration guide.

Upgrading a BIG-IQ system

Before you can upgrade the BIG-IQ system, you must perform the following tasks:

  • Reactivate your current license to ensure that you have a valid service check date.
  • Download the .iso file for the upgrade from F5 Downloads to /shared/images on the BIG-IQ system. If you need to create this directory, use the exact name /shared/images.
  • Using the management port, log in to the system and boot into an installation location other than the target for the installation.
  • Locate the user configuration set (UCS) in the /var/local/ucs directory on the source installation location, and copy the UCS file to another system for safe keeping.
Use this procedure to upgrade a BIG-IQ system.
  1. Log in to the BIG-IQ system with the administrator user name and password.
  2. At the top of the screen, click System > Overview .
  3. Select License screen and click the Re-Activate button. The screen refreshes to display the activation keys.
  4. Click the Activate button. The BIG-IQ system license reactivates and the screen refreshes to display license details.
  5. Log in to the command line with your root user name and password.
  6. Type the following command, where <image name> is the name of the .iso file you downloaded and <volume name> is the volume to which you want to install the file on the BIG-IQ system. tmsh install sys software image <image name> volume <volume name> reboot
  7. Transfer your current configuration (for all stored configuration data including self IP addresses, host names, devices discovered, and so forth) to the new installation partition: # getdb liveinstall.saveConfig. If the setting is disabled, first enable it by typing: setdb liveinstall.saveConfig enable.
  8. Log in to the BIG-IQ system with the administrator user name and password.
  9. Navigate to the Devices panel. Managed BIG-IP devices display a Discovery Failed Message.
  10. Click the properties icon for each device and:
    1. Type the device's administrator user name and password.
    2. Click the Save button.
    The BIG-IQ system rediscovers the device.

New features

Active-active high availability support

BIG-IQ Cloud now supports high availability configurations in an active-active pair.

Improved VMware integration

This release of BIG-IQ Cloud includes integration with VMware NSX version 6.0 and VMware vCloud Networking and Security version 5.5.

Device inventory

Starting in this release, you can view details about the managed devices in your network. Information includes associated IP addresses, platform type, license details, software version, and so forth. In addition to viewing this information, you can also export it to a CSV file and edit the data as required to create reports for asset management.

Enhanced statistics and performance monitoring

You can now view the individual statistics and performance trends of traffic to your applications and your application servers.

OpenStack support

This release includes management tools for OpenStack private cloud resource integration. This management includes discovering, creating, starting, and stopping BIG-IP VE virtual machines and application servers running in the private cloud.

Automated Amazon EC2 elasticity

You can now configure BIG-IQ Cloud to automatically provision and deploy resources based on tenant-specified capacity thresholds, ensuring that traffic to applications is not interrupted when volume to customer's applications unexpectedly increases. When short-term volume increases subside, resources are easily retracted. This feature is not compatible for BIG-IP devices running 11.4.1 and earlier.

Licensing pools

The BIG-IQ system now helps you manage resource usage in a dynamic application environment through the use of license pools. Each license pool is limited to a specific number of licenses. After you perform the initial license activation, the BIG-IQ system automatically grants and revokes licenses for the BIG-IP virtual edition systems as resource demands change. This gives you the flexibility to license devices only as needed, keeping your operating costs fixed. You can also use different license pools for different applications, allowing for flexible provisioning options. This feature is not compatible for BIG-IP devices running 11.4.1 and earlier.

Fixes

Issue Description
418899 Applications that a tenant creates now properly display in the catalog panel for the cloud administrator.
418490 In previous releases, VMware vSphere hypervisor returned TMM restart messages when using the four-core configuration option. This issue is resolved and the errors no longer occur.

Known issues

Issue Description Workaround (if available)
441286 If you start manually activating a license pool and the process is interrupted (either by closing or navigating away from the screen), BIG-IQ Cloud saves the license pool in a partially complete state. To change the license pool's name, you must complete the license pool activation process, or delete the incomplete pool and start again.  
441278 The elasticity settings and pool license features introduced in this release do not support BIG-IP versions 11.4.1 and older.
441064 After performing an upgrade to BIG-IQ Cloud version 4.2, previously discovered BIG-IP devices display with a 404 REST error on the properties screen of the Device panel. If you attempt to re-discover a BIG-IP device, BIG-IQ Cloud returns a "Device not found" error message. To successfully re-discover BIG-IP devices, contact the device's tenants and have them remove their applications. Once the applications are removed, re-discover the BIG-IP devices.
441053 When BIG-IQ Cloud is configured with server elasticity enabled, the deployed application does not always populate with the proper number of servers for the tenant in the Servers panel when expansion is required.  
441049 If you restart the BIG-IQ system, health statistics no longer display for the Device panel. To recover and display the health statistics, re-discover managed BIG-IP devices.
440945 When you hover on a server that displays in an error state in the Servers panel, it does not display the reason for the error as it should. View the /var/log/restjavad.0.log or /stats "health.summary" to view the reason for the error.
440944 If a cloud administrator creates a catalog entry and does not specify that the Cloud Connector is tenant property tenant selectable, server elasticity options do not display for the application in the tenant's view. To provide server elasticity options to a tenant, you must leave the Cloud Connector setting as Tenant Selectable.
440863 If you delete a BIG-IQ peer from a high availability active-active pair, and then you add the deleted BIG-IQ system as a standby in an active-standby pair (or again as an active system in an active-active pair), the BIG-IQ peer does not successfully back up the primary BIG-IQ system. After you delete a BIG-IQ system from a high availability active-active pair, create a BIG-IQ system UCS backup for disaster recovery. Then reset the system to factory settings by typing the following command on that device: bigstart stop restjavad && rm -rf /var/config/rest && bigstart start restjavad You can add it back to a high availability pair and they will properly synchronize.
440821 When an elasticity threshold is met for either expansion or contraction of resources, a Pool Expanding notification displays in the Activities panel with the benign message, "The name of the threshold is null".  
440531 If a query times out, the BIG-IQ user interface may become unresponsive. To work around this issue, refresh your browser.  
440333 If you delete a BIG-IQ peer from a high availability active-active pair, then add the same BIG-IQ system back to the same, or to another high availability pair, data between the devices no longer synchronizes. After you delete a BIG-IQ system from a high availability active-active pair, create a BIG-IQ system UCS backup for disaster recovery. Then reset the system to factory settings by typing the following command on that device: bigstart stop restjavad && rm -rf /var/config/rest && bigstart start restjavad You can add it back to a high availability pair and they will properly synchronize.
439026 The BIG-IQ system cannot search for IPv6 addresses within a subnet. Queries for addresses contained within a subnet will return incomplete results. When searching for IPv6 addresses, you must specify an explicit address ranges as a substitute for CIDR notation.
437741 If you have not configured an internal VLAN and an associated self IP address on the BIG-IQ system or a managed BIG-IP device, you will receive the following message (logged to the BIG-IP restjavad.0.log) every minute for each system and device. [8100/shared/identified-devices IdentifiedDevicesWorker][failed] java.net.ProtocolException: Status code:401 You must configure an internal VLAN and self IP address for the BIG-IQ system and all managed devices.
434930 You cannot use a host name to add a device. When you discover a new device, you must use its IP address.
431398 When booting the BIG-IQ system, it may display the following warning in the console or logs: "SKIPPING unix_config_httpd: /defaults/config/templates/xui.tmpl doesn't exist!!!" This message is benign and has no impact on the BIG-IQ system's functionality. You can ignore this benign message.
428071 When you install the required BIG-IQ components on BIG-IP devices running on a VIPRION system with more than one blade, the components load only on the primary blade. To install the required components on the remaining blades, for each blade, run the update_bigip.sh script, then disable the blade through TMUI. After you run the script on all blades, re-enable them through TMUI.
426720 If you discover BIG-IP devices running version 11.3 and then later discover devices running version 11.4, BIG-IQ Cloud deploys applications only to the devices running BIG-IP version 11.3. The BIG-IQ Cloud catalog does not currently include different iApps versions. The supported version of iApps is determined by the first device managed by BIG-IQ Cloud.  

Removing BIG-IQ system services from a BIG-IP device

To manage a BIG-IP device using the BIG-IQ system, you must install specific BIG-IQ system components onto that device using the procedure outlined in the Device Resource Management chapter of the BIG-IQ Cloud: Cloud Management guide. In the event that you have to remove these services for any reason, use this procedure.
  1. Log in to the command line of the BIG-IP device.
  2. Stop any running BIG-IQ system services.
    Note: The msgbusd service might not be installed. You can use the bigstart status command to see if it is running.

    $ bigstart stop restjavad

    $ bigstart stop msgbusd

  3. Remove the RPM packages related to the BIG-IQ system:

    mount -o remount,rw /usr

    rpm -qa | grep f5-rest-java | xargs rpm -e --nodeps

    rpm -qa | grep msgbusd | xargs rpm -e  --nodeps

    mount -o remount,ro /usr

    This removes the BIG-IQ system components from the BIG-IP device, including the F5-contributed cloud connector iApp template (cloud_connector.tmpl).

  4. Optional: Reinstall the F5-contributed cloud connector iApp template:
    1. Download the cloud_connector.tmpl iApp template from F5 DevCentral, https://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/iApp.Cloud_Connector_iApp_Template.ashx.
      Note: You need an account to access the DevCentral site.
    2. Unzip the file, and on the BIG-IP system, upload it to the /var/local/app_template directory.
    3. Install the template with this command: tmsh load / sys application template cloud_connector.tmpl

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Email: support@f5.com

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

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