Manual Chapter : Getting Started with iWorkflow Virtual Edition

Applies To:

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F5 iWorkflow

  • 2.3.0, 2.2.0
Manual Chapter

What is iWorkflow Virtual Edition?

iWorkflow® is a multi-tenant platform for deploying application delivery policy onto BIG-IP® devices. Only available as a virtual appliance, it accelerates the deployment of application-oriented services, simplifies architecture, and reduces exposure to operational risk.

iWorkflow Virtual Edition (VE) is a version of the iWorkflow system that runs as a virtual machine in specifically-supported hypervisors.

About iWorkflow VE compatibility with KVM hypervisor products

Each time there is a new release of iWorkflow™ Virtual Edition (VE) software, it includes support for additional hypervisor management products. The iWorkflowVirtual Edition and Supported Hypervisors Matrix on the AskF5™ website, support.f5.com, details which hypervisors are supported for each release.

Important: Hypervisors other than those identified in this guide are not supported with this iWorkflow version; any installation attempts on unsupported platforms might not be successful.

About the hypervisor guest definition requirements

The KVM virtual machine guest environment for the iWorkflow™ Virtual Edition (VE), at minimum, must include:

  • 2 x virtual CPUs
  • 4 GB RAM
    Important: When you provision the amount of RAM allocated to the virtual machine, it must match the amount of reserve RAM.
  • 1 x virtual network adapter
  • 1 x 95 GB disk
Important: Not supplying at least the minimum virtual configuration limits will produce unexpected results.
Important: Although you can successfully deploy iWorkflow software with as few as 2 CPUs and 4 GB RAM, this configuration should only be used for evaluation purposes. For production use, F5 Networks recommends either 4 CPUs and 16 GB RAM, or (for higher performance) 8 CPUs and 32 GB RAM.

There are also some maximum configuration limits to consider for deploying a iWorkflow 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 optimum performance limits, all allocated RAM must be reserved and virtual disks should be deployed Thick (allocated up front).