About the Management Pack

Note: This documentation was adapted from the F5 Managment Pack Wiki hosted on DevCentral (http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/MgmtPack.HomePage.ashx). Certain links or context described in these documents may refer to content originally created on the Wiki.

F5 Management Pack is a software plug-in for System Center Operations Manager that gives you a comprehensive range of F5 device health data as well as virtual server, pool, and pool member data. You can use this critical information for trending and analysis of your application delivery architecture in order to optimize resource utilization and effectively manage your infrastructure growth.

By providing near real-time performance monitoring of traffic flowing through BIG-IP LTM as well as device health metrics, F5 Management Pack gives you valuable information you can use to provision resources as efficiently as possible. You can choose from more than 160 metrics about your Application Delivery Networking infrastructure.

You can also correlate data about your F5 devices with application traffic data to gain insight into the performance of your applications. By utilizing the powerful reporting capabilities of Operations Manager to create customized, detailed reports, you can quickly see metrics on your instrumented traffic as well as the health of your objects and devices. This data helps you make critical infrastructure decisions to improve performance and deliver a better user experience.

The F5 Management Pack provides an advanced health model that greatly reduces the number of objects to monitor and the administrative time and resources required. The node enable and disable feature makes it possible for administrators to outsource time-consuming tasks to be handled in a more cost-effective manner.

As traffic changes and increases, the current and historical data you get from F5 Management Pack and Operations Manager help you trend and analyze traffic patterns. This gives you the vital information you need to plan your infrastructure and identify future capacity needs.

The F5 Management pack is a fully supported product by our world class services organization. Customers can purchase the management pack just like any other product in the F5 product portfolio through our sales and partner organization. Please contact your local F5 or F5 partner representative for more information.

User documentation for this release

In addition to these release notes, the following user documentation is relevant to this release.

Note: This documentation was adapted from the F5 Managment Pack Wiki hosted on DevCentral (http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/MgmtPack.HomePage.ashx). Certain links or context described in these documents may refer to content originally created on the Wiki.

• F5 Management Pack Installation and Setup
• Discovering F5 Networks Devices
• Updating the big3d agent manually
• BIG-IP Health Model for F5 Management Pack
• Monitoring the F5 Management Pack
• Performance Metric Collection & Monitoring
• F5 Management Pack Powershell
• Working with Reports
• Troubleshooting the F5 Management Pack

F5 Management Pack Wiki on F5 DevCentral

You can find the the solutions database on the AskF5 Technical Support web site.

Recommended system requirements and supported browsers

Platform requirements

The F5 Management Pack requires Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1, running on a platform that meets the following specifications

• CPU: Two (2) Quad Core Intel Xeon processors
• RAM: 8 GB
• Hard Drive: 100GB 15,000 RPM HDD
• NIC: 1000 BASE-T
• Other: CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive

Software requirements

The minimum software requirements for this release are:

• Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition Service Pack 2. (Both AMD64 and x86 environments are supported.)
• Internet Information Server (IIS)
• Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0
• Microsoft .Net Framework 3.0
• Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 Enterprise or Standard with Reporting Services enabled (with Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3)
• Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 (Cumulative Update 5 recommended)
  See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb309428.aspx on Microsoft TechNet for information on machine requirements.
• Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Reporting Server
• All Windows updates provided by Microsoft for Windows Server 2003 SP2

Important: Reporting Services must be installed for both Operations Manager and SQL Server to exercise reporting and data warehouse functions available in the Management Pack.

Browser requirements

The supported browser for the Web Console view for F5 Management Pack^â"¢ for Operations Manager^â"¢ is:

• Microsoft^® Internet Explorer^â"¢, version 6.0 or later

User Account Requirements

Before installing and running the F5 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager, ensure that you have access to the following user accounts.

• Installation account - You use this account to install the F5 Management Pack. This account should have domain administrator privileges.
• Service account - You use this account to run the F5 Monitoring Service. This account must be in a group that is specified in the Operations Manager Administrators in the Operations Manager Console under Administration->Security->User Roles->Operations Manager Administrators. We recommend that you create a separate Active Directory group for this purpose if you have not done so already.

Licensing Requirements

Each Management Server must be individually licensed and activated for deployment and support. Only the Root Management Server and Management Servers which are directly monitoring BIG-IP must be licensed. Management Servers which are part of the Management Group, but are not performing BIG-IP management do not need to have the F5 Management Pack installed or licensed.

Supported platforms

This release supports the following platforms:

• All platforms that run BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager version 9.4.x or later, and BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager version 9.4.x or later.

Installing the software

You can install the F5 Management Pack in one of two ways: from the command prompt, or through the Windows Server graphical interface.

NOTE: In order to deploy the software across multiple management servers, you must first install the F5 Networks Management Pack onto the Root Management Server. From that point, you can install the suite in any order onto any or all of the existing management servers.

The following instructions explain how to install the version 3.0.0 release of the F5 Management Pack onto existing systems running Microsoft® System Center Operations Managerâ"¢ 2007 SP1. The software for F5 Management Pack is available on http://downloads.f5.com.

Installing the F5 Management Pack for Operations Manager

This procedure describes how to install the F5 Management pack through the Windows Server 2003 graphical interface.

1. From Windows Explorer, navigate to the folder where you downloaded the F5Networks.ManagementPack.Setup.exe file from downloads.f5.com.
2. To start the installation, double-click the file.
   The F5 Networks Management Pack Setup Welcome screen opens.
3. On the Welcome screen, click Next to move to the SQL Configuration screen.
4. On the SQL Setup screen, for SQL-Server, type the name of the SQL Server where our Operations Manager Database resides, then select the SQL credentials option.
5. For SQL credentials, type the User name and Password for accessing the SQL server.
6. Ensure that the Enable autogrow for Microsoft Operations Manager databases option is checked.
7. On the Configure Service Account screen, type the credentials for an Active Directory account that has the rights to log on as a service.
8. Click Next to validate the account information.
9. On the F5 Management Pack is ready to Install screen, review the settings and click Install.
   If the installation is successful, an OK prompt appears. If errors were encounters, the system directs you to check the installation log.

When deploying in a clustered RMS environment, the F5 Management Pack should be installed on each RMS cluster node. The RMS cluster node should be active, when installing the F5 Management Pack. By default the F5 Monitoring Service is stopped on the RMS cluster node. If management servers are present, always install the F5 Management Pack on the RMS cluster nodes first.

Features and fixes introduced in prior releases

The F5 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager version 3.0.0 release includes the features and fixes that were distributed in prior releases. For a list of features and fixes introduced in prior releases see the release notes for the F5 Managment Pack on DevCentral: http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/MgmtPack.ReleaseNotesForTheF5ManagementPack.ashx

Known issues

There are no new known issues in the F5 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager version 3.0.0 release. You can find known issues for previous releases in the release notes for the F5 Managment Pack on DevCentral: http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/MgmtPack.ReleaseNotesForTheF5ManagementPack.ashx

Contacting F5 Networks

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

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