Forum Discussion

leemedz's avatar
leemedz
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Aug 12, 2024

VCMP Terminology question

Hi all,

Just trying to get a better understanding of VCMP resource allocation (specifically memory) but could someone confirm the following please?

In the following F5 article - vcmp-for-viprion-systems-administration-14-0-0 - I keep coming across sentences that seem to use 'slot' and 'blade' seemingly at random and I think that 'slot' means the same as 'blade' and that one can be swapped with the other without any change in the meaning.  

The following picture from further down the same article (under heading 'Example of blade removal and memory use') would suggest that this is the case but just wondering if I am missing some subtle distinction between the two.

 

Furthermore regarding the above - it says 'Guest - 4GB memory allocation' but based on the 2GB per vCPU figures and the memory use numbers I think this means 4GB of memory allocated per slot\blade so in total there is 16GB allocated? That would make sense to me but again it isn't 100% clear at the minute.

Also can someone clarify the second part of the sentence as follows: 

'You should specify enough cores to satisfy the combined memory requirements of all BIG-IP modules that you provision within the guest. When you deploy the guest, the host allocates this number of cores to every slot on which the guest runs, regardless of the number of slots you have assigned to the guest.'

Is this related to the maximum and minimum number of slots allocated values? That is the only thing I can possibly tie into the above that makes any sort of sense.    

Any clarification on the above would be much appreciated.   

  • In many F5 articles and documentation, "slot" and "blade" might be used interchangeably due to their close relationship, but technically, a slot is the position where a blade fits, and a blade is the actual hardware component. Ensure to verify context-specific definitions in the article or product documentation to avoid confusion.