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Herman2024
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Jan 13, 2025

What is the best practice for migrating from iseries to rseries?

hi ,we plan to migrate to new r-series F5 (v15.1.x) from i-series  legacy appliance v13.x.x. We will create the same vlans and IP address config, but the physical interfaces will be different. The new r-series appliance is already licensed. What is the best practice for this migration? 

option1:

 import the whole UCS file to new r-series appliance. after importing the ucs to new appliance, what are the next steps to complete the whole migration? 

option2: 

 copy the config for every module, for example to copy ltm config first, then gtm, final AFW ......

 

can someone please advise, thanks in advance!

  • Hi Herman2024,

     

    For me, the best migration strategy is:

    1. Upgrade the i-series to v15.1.x, in this case, you could set offline one of the current devices and create a cluster with the new r-series device, make a failover, and test the services "it only applies if APM is not provisioned"
    2. If APM is provisioned you have two options:
      1. Big bang - migrate the configs into new devices " I recommend updating the i-seres to avoid possible issues in the config migration", so in this case, you have to disable the current devices and then enable the new devices "at the SW level is the best option because you can configure the HA between the devices only provisioning the vlan for this propose but you have to replace the current IPs in the config"
      2. Migrate by services with a different networking config - In this case, the idea is migrating by group of services or VIPs, you have to keep a different network configuration, and in the new devices you have to disable the ARP, for VIPs and SNAT and the migration is easy, you have to disable ARP in the current devices for a group of services and enable in the new devices.

    Note: If your current i-series can´t be upgraded because the support contract is over, you could contact your F5 SE to request a temporary license to upgrade the devices. 

    I hope it works.