Forum Discussion

Luca_Comes's avatar
Luca_Comes
Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
Jun 07, 2019

Migration from virtual to hw appliance

Dear all,

I'm managing an old BIG-IP VE cluster running release 12.1.1 and provisioned with LTM, ASM and APM. Now we have a new couple of BIG-IP i7600 running version 14.1.0.2 provisioned with LTM and APM modules. I need to migrate the configuration (many virtual servers and APM policies) from the virtual to the appliances but I'm not able to do this. I made some tries:

 

  1. Imported an ucs from the old to the new one and installed with no-license and platform-migrate flag: no success
  2. Downgraded new units from 14.0.2 to 12.1.1 and installed the ucs file as described before: no success
  3. Tried a migration with the migration tool assistant: no success

 

Have you any idea how to solve this? Adding new appliances on device group from old cluster is not a choice because APM doesn't support more than 2 unit at a time. I cannot believe ther isn't a method to migrate configurations, should I reconfigure all the virtual servers/policies/iRules and so on by hand?

 

I hope you can help me.

 

Luca

application delivery
BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
LTM
    • Dario_Garrido's avatar
      Dario_Garrido
      Icon for MVP rankMVP
      Jun 07, 2019

      By the way, importing a UCS could be failing because of the master key. You should review logs to figure out what the problem is about.

      Using this command is also a good point. 

      # tmsh load sys ucs <filename> platform-migrate

      KR,

      Dario.

      • Luca_Comes's avatar
        Luca_Comes
        Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
        Jun 10, 2019

        Hi Dario,

        apparently the problem isn't related to the master key but on the modules provisioned to the hardware. Underneath you can find the log from importing the ucs with the hardware running the same version of the VE:

         

        root@(localhost)(cfg-sync Standalone)(ForcedOffline)(/Common)(tmos)# load /sys ucs appf502_07062019_no_pass.ucs no-license platform-migrate 

        Replace all configuration on the system? (y/n) y

        Processing UCS file: /var/local/ucs/appf502_07062019_no_pass.ucs

         

        Installing full UCS (12.1.1) data, excluding license file.

        Saving active configuration...

        The hostname is set to appf502.master.local

        Extracting manifest: /var/local/ucs/appf502_07062019_no_pass.ucs

        Product : BIG-IP

        Platform: UCS  : Z100

             System: C118

        Version : 12.1.1

        Edition : Final

        Hostname: appf502.master.local

        Installing --full-- configuration on host appf502.master.local 

        Installing configuration...

        ERROR: Module am is invalid for platform-migrate mode. Only LTM and GTM are supported.

        ERROR: Module apm is invalid for platform-migrate mode. Only LTM and GTM are supported.

        Post-processing...

        usermod: no changes

        Error detected. Skipping final load.

        WARNING: There were one or more errors detected during installation.

             Check the error messages and take the proper actions if needed.

        ERROR: UCS installation failed.

        Operation aborted.

        Unexpected Error: UCS loading process failed.

  • shsingh's avatar
    shsingh
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Jun 07, 2019

    I would also look at seeing whether you have the ability to upgrade your VE to 14.x so that you can migrate *that* UCS over to your new platforms. Do you have any spare VEs or lab licenses you can test this on?

  • Stanislas_Piro2's avatar
    Stanislas_Piro2
    Icon for Cumulonimbus rankCumulonimbus
    Jun 08, 2019

    Here is the process which will make it simpler

     

    1. Configure new HW with different self IPs and Management IPs
    2. Allow in Firewalls new Self IPs to access pool members if there is firewall between F5 and nodes.
    3. create a cluster between hardware and VE.
    4. synchronize from VE member to HW.
    5. failover to HW
    6. Check if everything works as expected.
    7. failover to VE
    8. Upgrade HW to version 14.1.0.5
    9. failover to HW
    10. Check if everything works as expected.
    11. switch off VE
    12. remove VE from Cluster device groups in HW configuration
    13. remove VE from Peer list in HW configuration

     

    I did this 2 weeks ago without issue

     

     

    • Luca_Comes's avatar
      Luca_Comes
      Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
      Jun 10, 2019

      Hi Stanislas,

      I was thinking aout that but I have some problems. First my VE is made by 2 VM clustered and I now that APM module support up to 2 device in a cluster. So to perform the action I should open the VE cluster, insert an hardware platform, sync configuration, and rebuild the old cluster and the new hardware cluster. Moreover my HA VLAN is local to devices and is not transported over the network so I should reconfigure also this part. I'd prefer not modify the production environment but I understand it perhaps is the unique solution.

  • Luca_Comes's avatar
    Luca_Comes
    Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
    Jun 26, 2019

    Hi guys,

    just to let you informed my problem was that the new HW appliance is not licensed with the AAM module (it is in EOL/EOS now so it can't be added). The original UCS file has a lot of aam profile in it so it cannot be imported into the new one, the only solution is deconfigure aam and deprovision it on the VM and then export again the configuration. Obviously I cannot do it so I think I will go to manually reconfigure the new appliance I can't see any other method. I think I would have the same problem also adding the HW appliance to the VM cluster.

     

    Luca