GTM users: Read this before discovering F5 devices

This didn't surprise me. I have been waiting for EM to be mature enough not to directly impact what's monitoring and managing but these 2 products seem to do more then what should be doing. I guess I am going to keep on waiting.

 

 

CB

Thank you for noting the support article related to GTM impact. Yes, we are aware of the issue and specifically designed our discovery to NOT impact GTM by default.

 

 

Both the latest version of Enterprise Manager, and the F5 Management Pack access performance data on the Big-IP through a new version of an agent, called Big3d. For older versions of Big-IP, we need to update the agent, which we can do during discovery.

 

 

When the big3d agent is restarted whether via EM or MP discovery, or by a manual hotfix of big3d by an adminstrator, there is a small window of time where GTM balancing may be impacted ~ usually less than one minute.

 

 

To ensure that administrators are informed when the update is required, the Management Pack does NOT update GTM unless the administrator specifically authorizes that.

 

 

If you have not authorized a Big3d update, and the MP Discovery mechanism detects an older or unsupported version of Big3d, Discovery will be aborted and a related error message will be provided to the administrator. In this way, you can schedule when to update Big3d (via discovery) and manage and coordinate your GTM impact.

 

 

To authorize an update of Big3d you can do one of the following for a device:

 

- Via the graphical UI, check the box at the bottom of the device list for authorization

 

- Via the console UI (f5mpcmd.exe), include the ":updatebig3d" option in your discovery command

 

- Via the PowerShell UI, include the "-UpdateBig3d" switch parameter for the Start-Discovery commandlet.

 

 

Please let us know if you have other concerns that would block your deployment.

Ah, that's good to hear.

 

 

Most people neglect scheduling maintenance windows for monitoring/discovery types of things. C-Y-A.