Modernizing F5 Platforms with Ansible
I’ve been meaning to publish this article for some time now. Over the past few months, I’ve been building Ansible automation that I believe will help customers modernize their F5 infrastructure. This especially true for those looking to migrate from legacy BIG-IP hardware to next-generation platforms like VELOS and rSeries. As I explored tools like F5 Journeys and traditional CLI-based migration methods, I noticed a significant amount of manual pre-work was still required. This includes: Ensuring the Master Key used to encrypt the UCS archive is preserved and securely handled Storing UCS, Master Key and information assets in a backup host Pre-configuring all VLANs and properly tagging them on the VELOS partition before deploying a Tenant OS To streamline this, I created an Ansible Playbook with supporting roles tailored for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. It’s built to perform a lift-and-shift migration of a F5 BIG-IP configuration from one device to another—with optional OS upgrades included. In the demo video below, you’ll see an automated migration of a F5 i10800 running 15.1.10 to a VELOS BX110 Tenant OS running 17.5.0—demonstrating a smooth, hands-free modernization process. Currently Working Velos Velos Controller/Partition running (F5OS-C 1.8.1) - which allows Tenant Management IP to be in a different VLAN Migrates a standalone F5 BIG-IP i10800 to a VELOS BX110 Tenant OS VLAN'ed Source tenant required (Doesn’t support non-vlan tenants) rSeries Shares MGMT IP with the same subnet as the Chassis Partition. Migrates a standalone F5 BIG-IP i10800 to a R5000 Tenant OS VLAN'ed Source tenant required (Doesn’t support non-vlan tenants) Handles: Configuration and crypto backup UCS creation, transfer, and validation F5OS System VLAN Creation, and Association to Tenant - (Does Not manage Interface to VLAN Mapping) F5 OS Tenant provisioning and deployment inline OS upgrades during the migration Roadmap / What's Next Expanding Testing to include Viprion/iSeries (Using VCMP) Tenant Testing. Supporting hardware-to-virtual platform migrations Adding functionality for HA (High Availability) environments Watch the Demo Video View the Source Code on GitHub https://github.com/f5devcentral/f5-bd-ansible-platform-modernization This project is built for the community—so feel free to take it, fork it, and expand it. Let’s make F5 platform modernization as seamless and automated as possible.
