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Udendu's avatar
Udendu
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Dec 22, 2021

Platform upgradation

I'm planing for upgrading an I2800 series HA pair to i3800 series platform. What are all steps and precautions I should follow ?
application delivery
BIG-IP
LTM
Udendu's avatar
Udendu
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Dec 31, 2021

Great peace of advice Daniel and Niels. Thank you so much. My existing environment has an active/standby cluster. So if I go by Niels way, I just need to add the new i3800 to the cluster and sync the configuration then do the failover. I was just not sure if an i3800 could be added to a cluster having i2800 members.

 

Regarding the retention of management and self IP(s), I haven't been communicated from the applications team whether they need a new set IP or want to have the existing. So if they want the same set of IP, Daniel what extra steps will be needed ?

  • Daniel_Wolf's avatar
    Daniel_Wolf
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Dec 31, 2021

    Hi ,

     

    the way the Niels suggested is also very promising, with the one exception when you are using APM.

    See: K7040: BIG-IP APM and FirePass do not support mixing hardware platforms within an HA pair

    In case you are not using APM, it is really a good way and I'd recommend it too.

     

    The extra steps for the other process of migration depend a bit on the way you want to migrate.

    Do you plan to have a zero downtime migration, or do you have a change window?

     

    Independent from that, I will try to give some general advice.

    In case you want to keep the management and self IP addresses, you could restore the UCS archive on the new platform using options no-license and no-platform-check (K14906).

    If you want to change the management IP and also the self IPs you could use no-license and platform-migrate options (K82540512).

    However, changing management or self IP addresses usually is also not a big issue, unless they are used for config sync, HA or mirroring. In that case... we are back to the point where I would recommend to get help from someone who has done this before.

     

    Either way - you would have to make a plan how the old and new devices are not online at the same time, to avoid IP address conflicts. Easiest is, in my opinion, to disable the interfaces on the switch at a certain point in time.

     

    KR

    Daniel

    • Udendu's avatar
      Udendu
      Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
      Jan 08, 2022

      Hi Daniel, Thank you again. We will have change window for this. And we don't have APM, it's just LTM. Unfortunately we are the vendor for this implementation for our client. We do have an operations team for F5 but no production expertise on platform migrations. Now I have to set up a call and discuss the critical points that you and Neils have put forth. I'll get back to this with outcomes and if I need more assist. Thank you.

       

      Regards

      Udendu