Manual Chapter : Deploying Changes

Applies To:

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BIG-IQ Centralized Management

  • 5.1.0
Manual Chapter

How do I evaluate changes made to managed objects?

To change the object settings on a managed device, there are four tasks to perform.

This figure illustrates the workflow you perform to manage the objects on BIG-IP® devices. Evaluating the changes you have made is the third step in this process.

Evaluate object changes

Overview of evaluating changes made to managed objects

Note: If you need to make an urgent change, you can skip the evaluation step. However, we highly recommend evaluation in all but emergency situations. See Making an urgent deployment for details.

Evaluating configuration changes

Evaluating your changes gives you a chance to spot critical errors and review your revisions one more time before deploying them.
Note: Critical errors are issues with a configuration change that cannot be deployed successfully. Verification warnings are less serious in that they may not cause the deployment to fail, but should be reviewed nonetheless.
Note: If you have Local Traffic & Network (LTM) changes to deploy, deploy the LTM changes before deploying changes to other components, or those deployments may fail.
  1. Log in to F5® BIG-IQ® Centralized Management with your user name and password.
    Important: You must log in as an Administrator, ADC Manager, or ADC Deployer to perform this task.
  2. At the top left of the screen, select Change Management from the BIG-IQ menu.
  3. On the left, expand EVALUATE & DEPLOY.
  4. Under EVALUATE & DEPLOY, select Local Traffic & Network.
    The screen displays a list of LTM® evaluations and deployments that have been created on this device.
  5. Under Evaluations, click Create.
    The Create Evaluation screen opens.
  6. In the Name field, type in a name for the evaluation task you are creating.
  7. In the Description field, type in a brief description for the evaluation task you are creating.
  8. For the Source, select what you want to evaluate.
    • To compare the object settings currently on the managed device with the object settings in the pending version, select Current Changes.
    • To compare the object settings currently on the managed device with the object settings in a stored snapshot, select Existing Snapshot, then choose the snapshot you want to use.
  9. For the Target setting, identify the devices for which you want to evaluate changes.
    1. If the devices are in a device group, select Group, and select the group from the list.
    2. If the devices are not in a device group, select Device.
    3. Select the devices from the Available list, and use the arrow button to move the devices to the Selected list.
      Important: If you deploy changes to a device that is in a DSC® cluster, you must include both devices before you can create the evaluation.
      Important: If the device in the Selected list has a filled circle in front of it, a deployment is needed for the BIG-IP device configuration to match the BIG-IQ working configuration for that BIG-IP device. This notification occurs only when creating Web Application Security evaluations.
  10. Click the Create button at the bottom of the screen.
    The system adds the new evaluation to the list, and analyzes the changes for errors. When the configuration evaluation completes, you will see how many changes or errors the evaluation found.
  11. Review the evaluation to determine whether you are going to deploy it or not.
    1. If there are critical errors, you cannot deploy these changes. Click each error to see what it is, and then go back to where you made the change to fix it.
      After resolving any critical errors, you can come back and repeat the evaluation.
    2. If there are verification warnings, you can still deploy your changes, but you will probably want to resolve the warnings first. Click each warning to see what it is, and then go back to where you made the change to fix it.
      After resolving any verification warnings, you can come back and repeat the evaluation.
    3. If there are no critical errors or verification warnings, review the changes by clicking the Difference link.
      Each change is listed. You can review each one by clicking the name.

To apply the object changes to the managed device, you must deploy them.

How do I deploy changes made to managed objects?

Deploying changes applies the revisions that you have made on the BIG-IQ® to the managed BIG-IP® devices.

Note: Before the BIG-IQ deploys configuration changes, it first reimports the configuration from the managed device to ensure there are no unexpected differences. If there are issues, the default behavior is to discard any changes made on the managed device and then deploy the configuration changes.
  • To accept the default, proceed with the deployment. The settings from the managing BIG-IQ overwrite the settings on the managed BIG-IP device.
  • To override the default, rediscover the device and reimport the service. Any changes that have been made using the BIG-IQ are overwritten with the settings from the managed BIG-IP device.

This figure illustrates the workflow you perform to manage the objects on BIG-IP devices. Deploying the settings is the last step in this process.

Deploy object changes

Change managed object workflow

Deploying configuration changes

To apply the changes you made on the BIG-IQ to your managed device, you must deploy those changes to the managed device.

  1. Log in to F5® BIG-IQ® Centralized Management with your user name and password.
    Important: You must log in as an Administrator, ADC Manager, or ADC Deployer to perform this task.
  2. At the top left of the screen, select Change Management from the BIG-IQ menu.
  3. On the left, expand EVALUATE & DEPLOY.
  4. Under EVALUATE & DEPLOY, select Local Traffic & Network.
    The screen displays a list of LTM® evaluations and deployments defined on this device.
  5. Click the name of the evaluation that you want to deploy.
    The View Evaluation screen opens.
  6. Specify whether you want to deploy the changes immediately or schedule deployment for later.
    • To deploy this change immediately:
      1. Select Deploy Now.
      2. Click Deploy to confirm.
    • To deploy this change later:
      1. Select Schedule for later.
      2. Select the date and time.
      3. Click Schedule Deployment.
      4. Click Schedule Deployment again to confirm.
    The process of deploying changes can take some time, especially if there are a large number of changes. During this time, you can click Cancel to stop the deployment process.
    Important: If you cancel a deployment, some of the changes may have already deployed. Cancel does not roll back these changes.
The evaluation you chose is added to the list of deployments on the bottom half of the screen.
  • If you chose to deploy immediately, the changes begin to deploy and the Status column updates as it proceeds.
  • If you choose to delay deployment, the Status column displays the scheduled date and time.

Making an urgent deployment

If you need to make urgent changes, you can skip the evaluation task and deploy changes right now.

  1. Log in to the BIG-IQ® system with your user name and password.
    Important: You must log in as an Administrator, ADC Deploy, or an ADC Manager to perform this task.
  2. At the top left of the screen, select Change Management from the BIG-IQ menu.
  3. On the left, expand EVALUATE & DEPLOY.
  4. Under EVALUATE & DEPLOY, select Local Traffic & Network.
    The screen displays a list of LTM® evaluations and deployments that are defined on this device.
  5. Under Deployments, click Create.
    The Create Deployment screen opens.
  6. In the Name field, type in a name for the deployment task you are creating.
  7. In the Description field, type in a brief description for the deployment task you are creating.
  8. For the Source setting, select what you want to deploy.
    • To deploy your changes to the managed device, select Current Changes.
    • To deploy the object settings from a stored snapshot, select Existing Snapshot, then choose the snapshot you want to use.
  9. Using the Target settings, identify the devices for which you want to deploy changes.
    1. If the devices are in a device group, select Group, and select the group.
    2. If the devices are not in a device group, select Device.
    3. Select the devices from the Available list and use the arrow button to move the devices to the Enabled list.
  10. Consider one more time how you want to deploy these changes.
    • To make the changes right now, click Deploy immediately.
    • If you want to review the changes, click Create evaluation.
  11. Click Create.
    • If you selected Deploy immediately, the changes begin to deploy and the Status column updates as it proceeds.
    • If you selected Create evaluation, the new evaluation is added to the list and the changes are analyzed for errors. When the evaluation completes, you will see how many changes or errors the evaluation found.

Deploying to one device when a cluster member is down

Deploying changes to a device in a cluster that has a device offline will generally fail. Normally, all device members must be available before you deploy changes to a cluster member. However, if you need to deploy changes before all cluster members are available you can do so.
  1. Log in to the BIG-IQ® system with your user name and password.
    Important: You must log in as an Administrator to modify cluster properties (step 5). Administrators, ADC Deploy, or an ADC Manager can deploy changes to individual cluster members.
  2. At the top left of the screen, select Device Management from the BIG-IQ menu.
  3. On the left, click BIG-IP DEVICES.
    The screen displays a list of managed devices for this BIG-IQ Centralized Management system.
  4. Under Device Name, click the cluster member to which you want to deploy changes.
    The properties screen for this member opens.
  5. Under Cluster Properties, click Edit.
    The Cluster Properties popup screen for this cluster opens.
  6. For Deployment Settings, select Ignore BIG-IP DSC sync when deploying configuration changes.
  7. Click OK, and then click Close.

With the "ignore sync" option selected, you can now deploy changes to the member that is available, and BIG-IQ will not attempt to sync those changes to the member that is unavailable.

Use the Deploying configuration changes task to deploy changes to the available member. When you select the target device for deployment, do not select the unavailable device.