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vytbr2's avatar
vytbr2
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Feb 01, 2023

Automating via BIG-IQ vs. BIG-IP direct configuration

Hello,  I'm a bit puzzled with the architectural intention of central management through BIG-IQ platform from the perspective of automating the multi-Load-balancer configuration (system parameters A...
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  • Paulius's avatar
    Paulius
    Feb 01, 2023

    vytbr2 From what I have seen and experienced you are correct in your conclusions. As far as backups are concerned the only piece that will suffice as a backup is running a backup on the BIG-IQ which is usually a scheduled task and in that task you can also copy the backup to another device such as backup server for long term storage and even configure a setting to delete over a certain amount of backups off of the BIG-IQ. Now you to retain a certain amount of configuration on the BIG-IQ for the BIG-IPs that it manages but nothing that can be used to restore a deleted or failed device. If you had a replacement device and you configured everything on it so it would be accessible the remainder of the configuration such as virtual servers, pools, monitors, and other LTM functions those would sync back to the BIG-IP provide the device is named the same.

vytbr2's avatar
vytbr2
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Hi Paulius,

  thanks for your comprehensive answer. Please correct me if I missunderstood something, but by reading your response I'm leaning towards the following conclusions:

1. BIG-IQ is best when you need to work with multiple devices manually (meaning by using GUI or CLI as opposed to automated scripts)

2. BIG-IQ is not supporting ALL config optoins available at BIG-IPs (in addition to your example with with LACP I believe I saw a KB article, which mentions creating new partitions is only possible from within BIG-IP)

3. As per the above and given I'm not looking to reduce manual efforts (because I'm automating and  a "computer" would do all the work for me) - I'm better off dealing with pre-configuring BIG-IPs directly and then syncing their settings to BIG-IQ.

Let me know if you agree with my reasoning or have any additional thoughts.

Also, based on your experience - is the configuration of the BIG-IP saved in BIG-IQ anywhere after I have synced the config? I guess the config would be saved if I initiate a backup of BIG-IP devices from within BIG-IQ, but that's a different story. In other words - if I were to pre-configure a virtual BIG-IP, sync it to BIG-IQ and then remove the BIG-IP VM, would BIG-IQ retain all the config objects it synced from that BIG-IP even if it no longer exists?

thanks,

Vytautas

Paulius's avatar
Paulius
Icon for MVP rankMVP
Feb 01, 2023

vytbr2 From what I have seen and experienced you are correct in your conclusions. As far as backups are concerned the only piece that will suffice as a backup is running a backup on the BIG-IQ which is usually a scheduled task and in that task you can also copy the backup to another device such as backup server for long term storage and even configure a setting to delete over a certain amount of backups off of the BIG-IQ. Now you to retain a certain amount of configuration on the BIG-IQ for the BIG-IPs that it manages but nothing that can be used to restore a deleted or failed device. If you had a replacement device and you configured everything on it so it would be accessible the remainder of the configuration such as virtual servers, pools, monitors, and other LTM functions those would sync back to the BIG-IP provide the device is named the same.