Forum Discussion

RecontuerSG_258's avatar
RecontuerSG_258
Historic F5 Account
Dec 06, 2017

What happens when a licensed F5 VE instance was restarted by hypervisor?

Assuming I have one Vmware F5 instance running on host 1. It was licensed, configured and running. However, a host 1 failure caused hypervisor to restart my F5 instance onto host 2. Will this F5 instance be able to boot up because in the beginning the 'fingerprint' or 'dossier' was tied to host 1?

 

Is this the right solution to the above problem? - Adding more interfaces into F5 VE? https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K12149

 

application delivery
BIG-IP
  • NicCage's avatar
    NicCage
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 06, 2017

    I haven't encountered any issues here with the VE as long as you only migrate the instance via Vmotion. This preserves the hardware information visible within the VM and you won't have any licensing issues.

     

    But if you try to clone / copy the VM, during the copy Process the hardware information will change and you might get a license error.

     

    Their is one article describing the process: K13570: Moving BIG-IP Virtual Edition to a new VMware host may require authorization for license moves

     

    • DavisLi's avatar
      DavisLi
      Icon for Employee rankEmployee
      Dec 08, 2017

      Awesome! Thank you for your answer! The F5 article mentioned about moving/migrating.. but when a VE restarted because a host is down, it will be moved to a new host, that may cause a license issue?

       

      The only way to counter this is to set "host-affinity" and setup an HA pair. In this case, F5 VE does not benefit from all the hypervisor features such as moving VM to rebalance resources, or when there is resource contention on one host, and some VMs need to move to other hosts, or when hypvervisor tries to save power by moving all VMs away from a host to make host standby.

       

  • Kai_48835's avatar
    Kai_48835
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 06, 2017

    I haven't encountered any issues here with the VE as long as you only migrate the instance via Vmotion. This preserves the hardware information visible within the VM and you won't have any licensing issues.

     

    But if you try to clone / copy the VM, during the copy Process the hardware information will change and you might get a license error.

     

    Their is one article describing the process: K13570: Moving BIG-IP Virtual Edition to a new VMware host may require authorization for license moves

     

    • DavisLi's avatar
      DavisLi
      Icon for Employee rankEmployee
      Dec 08, 2017

      Awesome! Thank you for your answer! The F5 article mentioned about moving/migrating.. but when a VE restarted because a host is down, it will be moved to a new host, that may cause a license issue?

       

      The only way to counter this is to set "host-affinity" and setup an HA pair. In this case, F5 VE does not benefit from all the hypervisor features such as moving VM to rebalance resources, or when there is resource contention on one host, and some VMs need to move to other hosts, or when hypvervisor tries to save power by moving all VMs away from a host to make host standby.