F5 VE on Proxmox
Has anybody been successful running F5 BIG-IP VE on Proxmox?
Proxmox:
- Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
- Kernel: Linux 5.0.18-1-pve
- Architecture: x86-64
F5 VE:
- virtual edition 14.1.2.2 from downloads.f5.com
- I tried both qcow2 and .ova(scsi)
- licensing with trial license obtained from F5
- single NIC mode
According to https://clouddocs.f5.com/cloud/public/v1/matrix.html, Debian should be supported distribution.
Following instructions on https://techdocs.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/bigip-ve-setup-linux-kvm-13-0-0/1.html.
Creating new VM in Proxmox:
- OS: guest OS Linux, 2.6 Kernel, no media for OS
- Hard Disk: bus SCSI, VirtIO SCSI, NFS storage, QEMU format (qcow2), 100GB
- CPU: 4 sockets
- Memory: 8GB
- Network: bridge vmbr0 openvswitch with appropriate vlan tag, VirtIO, no firewall
- VM is created
- replacing just created qcow2 on remote storage with downloaded F5 qcow2 image.
- VM is started
I am able to get prompt in Proxmox console, log in with default root account.
But then mcpd keeps on restarting - constantly every few seconds.
Logs show errors caused by permission errors.
For some reason F5 is complaining that it cannot create "/shared/.snapshots_d/" because of permission problem.
However permissions of "/shared" are OK.
When I create .snapshots_d folder manually as root, mcpd no longer restarts, no more console errors...
I run config utility to setup management IP/mask/gateway.
As expected in single NIC mode, https port is automatically configured to 8443.
I am able to reach GUI configuration utility and login as admin.
Up until now everything looks fine.
When trying to license the VM, I am able to generate dossier, also receive the generated license file from F5.
But when I apply the license to the VM and click next, it acts as if nothing has happened.
GUI keeps showing VE is not yet licensed.
LTM logs says: err mcpd: License file open fails, Permission denied.
"/config/bigip.license" has read permission for all and write for tomcat.
Those are expected permissions for the license file.
Funny though, content of /config/bigip.license is now actually populated with the correct new license.
But "Registration Key" in "tmsh show sys hardware" is empty.
There are several other file system related warnings or errors in logs.. so I suspect that the whole issue is with how F5 VE is accessing file system on Proxmox. But I don't know what to check or fix further.
Is it even possible to run F5 VE on Proxmox? (although F5 clearly states it should be.)
thx.