BIG-IQ Virtual Edition (VE) is a version of F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management that runs as a virtual machine on specifically-supported hypervisors. BIG-IQ VE emulates a hardware-based BIG-IQ system running a VE-compatible version of BIG-IQ software.
Each time there is a new release of BIG-IQ Virtual Edition (VE) software, it includes support for additional public and private cloud products. The Virtual Edition and Supported Hypervisors Matrix on the AskF5 website, support.f5.com , details which are supported for each release.
The OpenStack virtual machine guest environment for the BIG-IQ Virtual Edition (VE), at minimum, must include:
CPU, RAM, and disk space requirements are determined by the following factors.
Usually, the extra storage space is for DCDs. However, there are also situations in which BIG-IQ systems can use the extra space. For example, you might want to store a large number of UCS backups. Or, your business needs might require you to store multiple versions of the BIG-IQ software so you can upgrade back and forth between BIG-IQ versions.
Deployment type | CPUs | RAM | Disk Space |
---|---|---|---|
BIG-IQ system | 4 or 8 See When do I need extra resources? |
16, 32, or 64 GB See When do I need extra resources? |
Generally, 95 GB; or if extra space is needed, 500 GB. |
Data collection device | 4 | 16 GB |
Initially, 500 GB. |
Higher performance and scale | 8 | 32 or 64 GB | VE disk space can be extended further as needed. |
When the BIG-IQ system you deploy manages a number of devices that exceeds specified thresholds, F5 recommends that you use 8 CPUs and either 32 or 64 GB of RAM. These thresholds vary depending on which modules are licensed on the devices that the BIG-IQ manages and where the devices are deployed.
The following table lists thresholds for each BIG-IP module that impacts the amount of RAM that a BIG-IQ requires. For example, if the BIG-IQ manages more than 32 devices provisioned with the Access module, you should use 32 GB instead of 16.
A BIG-IQ managing devices... | Needs 32 GB to manage more than: |
---|---|
provisioned with Access | 32 devices |
provisioned with ADC | 80 devices |
provisioned with ASM | 40 devices |
provisioned with DNS | 100 devices |
provisioned with FPS | 50 devices |
deployed in a VMware service scaling group | 100 devices |
deployed in an AWS or Azure service scaling group | 50 devices |
Before you can deploy a BIG-IQ VE in the OpenStack environment, you must have the following environmental elements in place:
In addition, you might wish to define the following optional environmental elements:
To successfully deploy and run the BIG-IQ VE system, the host system must satisfy minimum requirements.
The host system must include these elements:
After the system completes the initialization process, two built-in user accounts are enabled that provide you with the access you need to complete initial configuration and setup:
You can use the shell command tmsh list sys management-ip to confirm that the management IP address has been properly assigned.
To verify that the MTU setting is causing the issue, you can log in to the BIG-IQ using SSH and run the following command: ifconfig eth0 mtu 1450. Then try connecting to the BIG-IQ again using your browser. If you can connect successfully, then you know that the MTU setting is the issue, and you need to permanently modify the MTU setting to make sure the user interface performs properly.
If you change the MTU value on the BIG-IQ using the command line, the value resets to 1500 whenever the VE reboots. So you need to edit the custom configuration file so that any time the VE restarts, the config file sets the correct value.