Adding new virtual node to physical HA cluster

Hey Mabdrasol

From the information I have found there should be no issues clustering hardware and virtual appliances. This is what I found:

"Beginning in BIG-IP 11.4.0, F5 supports redundant devices in a device group on different hardware or virtual platforms through the load-aware failover feature. For more information about load-aware failover, refer to the Managing Failover chapter of the BIG-IP Device Service Clustering: Administration guide."

K8665: BIG-IP redundant configuration hardware and software parity requirements

The only warning I have read is when you use HA Order and that you might want to assign a device capacity as the performance of the devices may differ:

"Note: If you have varying hardware platforms in your device group, you can use tmsh to specify the relative capacity of each device, and this value factors into the score calculation along with the traffic load value. The tmsh command to do this is: modify /cm device device_name ha-capacity integer."

Manual Chapter: Managing Failover

Other than that, make sure:

• Licensing on all devices match. With APM make sure User Connectivity License (CCU) match
• Provisioning is the same.

Other than that it should be fine. I think the method of actually configuration the base of the virtal machines, adding them to the cluster and syncing over, is the most effective method of migrating the configuration as it copies certificates and master keys as well.

I hope this helps!