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Angel_Lopez_116's avatar
Angel_Lopez_116
Icon for Altostratus rankAltostratus
Nov 27, 2014

Consolidation of hardware BIG-IP on vCMP guests

Hi there,

 

I'm just about to start a consolidation process of several BIG-IP 2000S into our new vCMP platform. I've looking for some documentation about consolidation good practices or technical recommendations but I haven't find much.

 

My first thought was getting a UCS in the 2000S and load it in the guest, but I guess that first I've to adapt somehow the config to the guest "platform" (more than just loading it with the no-platform o no-license check options). I'm thinking here in things like VLAN definitions or physical interface definitions that are all specified in the bigip_base.conf

 

Maybe it's enough with editing the file, remove completely VLAN and interface definitions and try to load it with the tmsh sys load config command.

 

From your experience, are the physical interfaces and VLAN configuration all that I should remove (or adapt in any way) or there's something more?

 

Second option I'm thinking of is just recreating all the LTM objects (nodes, pools, virtual servers) and re-importing certificates, external monitors... through config merge or maybe a tmsh script. Doing the consolidation process more "manually" but this is a lot more of work, and I'd prefer to adapt the config and just load the UCS in the guest.

 

Prefering the UCS approach I'm afraid of letting behind some snippet of configuration that could cause weird behaviors at guest level. From some tests that I've done loading the UCS, I got weird interfaces and an incorrect monitoring of the nodes and pools.

 

Any recommendation will be very welcomed! :) Thanks!

 

application delivery
guest
LTM
management
vcmp
virtualization
  • What_Lies_Bene1's avatar
    What_Lies_Bene1
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Nov 27, 2014

    I can't say I'm a vCMP expert but my recommendation would be to use SCF files, sans interface and VLAN definitions. Configure those manually (on the host and guests) as necessary as well as SSL certs and keys, prior to loading the SCF.

     

  • Hamish's avatar
    Hamish
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Nov 27, 2014

    Or on the 2000 just do a 

     show running config

    From tmsh, then copy the relevant bits and do a 

    load config merge

    with them on ghe new unit... Make sure you include the dependencies though 😉

    Sometimes that will be easier. Depending on versions, whats changing between the ltm's etc...

    H

  • Jim_43841's avatar
    Jim_43841
    Historic F5 Account
    Dec 05, 2014

    You'll probably want to keep the vlans in the new guest config file (in whatever form you're loading it), but remove the vlan members from each vlan. Also remember to create the vlan on the hypervisor and assign it to the guest. For best results; double, then triple-check that the name and tags match.