Forum Discussion

Giorgi_Gujabidz's avatar
Jul 17, 2020

BIG IP appliance is not booting when AOM interface is attachned to the switch

Hello Everyone.

 

I work as a system engineer at IT Integrator company. Unfortunately I don't have much experience with f5 devices so I need your help.

 

Couple days ago, we have installed two i4600 devices in customer's datacenter. The datacenter is also new, customer plans to migrate existing infrastructure to this new one, that's why there is no network infrastructure yet in new DC. I mean, there is network hardware installed, but they're not configured yet. That's why, when we've installed BIG IPs into racks, I've just connected Console interfaces into TOR switch with standard RJ45 patch cord, but didn't configured AOM itself, as there's no VLANs yet. I've had startup of both devices (customer gave me only MGMT network), activated them, upgraded TMOS versions and when I've restarted them, the devices didn't booted. I've been waiting for more than 10 minutes, after I connected to the Console port via standard (serial) console cable and as soon, as I connected and pushed on Enter, the system started to Boot. As if it was waiting to some actions from Console.

 

I've disconnected cables from Console ports (which were connected into switches) and tried to restart devices 2 times, both were successful. Then I've connected the cables back (console port to switches) and again, after restarting appliances, they refuse to boot, unless I connect serial console cable to console port and TMOS is starting booting immediately.

 

Is that some kind of pre-configured feature which I can disable from tmsh, is that due to the not configured AOM, or is that bug? Did anyone faced that behavior? The devices came with two versions of software 13 and 15. I tried on both of them and the result is the same.

 

I really appreciate your suggestions, do you even configure/use that Console port with AOM IP configured and should it be constantly connected to network, or should I treat it as an ordinary Out-of-Management/LOM/IPMI port which will be used only in emergency situations, physically connecting serial cable. I didn't manage to find much information about f5's AOM management and as it has feature to assign IP address to that port, I thought that it will be good idea, to connect it to the switch permanently, so that Administrator will be able to connect to it remotely via AOM IP.

 

Thanks in advance and sorry for long text :-)