F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator Layer 2 Services with rSeries & VELOS
Introduction F5 rSeries & VELOS are rearchitected, next-generation hardware platforms that scale application delivery performance and automate application services to address many of today’s most critical business challenges. F5 rSeries & VELOS are key components of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP). rSeries & VELOS rely on a Kubernetes-based platform layer (F5OS) that is tightly integrated with F5 TMOS software. Going to a microservice-based platform layer allows rSeries & VELOS to provide additional functionality that was not possible in previous generations of F5 BIG-IP platforms. The introduction of a new tenant-based architecture changes many things, including how you configure BIG-IP. Some of these changes affect the network configuration for Inline Layer 2 Services. By default, BIG-IP tenants only have a small set of internal MAC addresses available to them. However, Layer 2 Services (or Bridging) require additional MAC addresses. You must assign an adequate number of MAC addresses to what is called a “MAC pool”. A single Layer 2 Service requires two unique MAC addresses. The MAC Pool must have sufficient MAC addresses based on the number of Layer 2 Services you need. The following KB articles contain additional information on configuring MAC Pools on a BIG-IP rSeries or VELOS platform: K000133655: MAC address assignment in VELOS and rSeries systems K000135389: Configure the MAC Block Size for an existing BIG-IP tenant on the VELOS and rSeries systems Demo Video F5OS Configuration Let’s review the Network configuration on F5OS for a BIG-IP Tenant. From Network Settings select VLANs. Here you can see I have 6 Interfaces configured with VLANs. There’s a Lan VLAN for connectivity from the internal network to the BIG-IP. A Wan VLAN for connectivity from the BIG-IP to the internet. Then there are 4 “L2” VLANs configured to support two Inline Layer 2 Services with SSL Orchestrator. From the Interfaces screen you can associate the VLANs with the physical Interfaces. Next, allocate the VLANs to your BIG-IP Tenant. This is also where you configure the MAC Pool Size for your current BIG-IP Tenant. The MAC Pool can only be changed when the Tenant is not running. From Tenant Management > Tenant Deployments, you can stop the current Tenant if it is already running. Do this with caution during a change window or prior to deployment. Check the box next to the name of the Tenant you wish to configure, “big-ip-kevin” in this example. Then click Configure. Click OK to stop the Tenant When it’s stopped click the name of the Tenant to edit the configuration. Note the VLANs that are allocated to this BIG-IP Tenant: Find the section on MAC Data/MAC Block Size. Set the allocation to Small (8), Medium (16), or Large (32) depending upon your needs. I set mine to Medium. A Small allocation would be sufficient for this deployment but I want to leave room to add more Layer 2 Services in the future. Click Save & Close Click OK to update the configuration You can Deploy the Tenant now that the changes have been made Click OK to Deploy F5 BIG-IP Configuration Minimal configuration is needed on the BIG-IP since F5OS handles the underlying physical interfaces and VLANs. Check the status of the VLANs from Network > VLANs. From here we can see the VLAN configuration from F5OS is reflected in the BIG-IP. Define any Self IPs from Network > Self IPs Now we’re ready to configure SSL Orchestrator. In the interest of time, I will skip to the Network and Services configuration. From Services List click Add Service Double-click on Generic Inline Layer 2 Under Network Configuration click Add Select the L2 VLANs for this Inline L2 Service. Click Done. Click Add again and select the L2 VLANs for this Inline L2 Service. Click Done. It should look like the following: Click Save at the bottom For the Interception Rule select the Lan VLAN under Ingress Network and move it to the right. Click Save & Next at the bottom The Network configuration is now complete. SSL Orchestrator is configured with a Generic Inline Layer 2 Service that contains two Layer 2 “servers” Conclusion F5 rSeries & VELOS are hardware platforms that scale application delivery performance and automate application services to address many of today’s most critical business challenges. They are key components of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP). In this article, you learned how to configure MAC Pools on rSeries and VELOS in order to create Layer 2 Inline Services with SSL orchestrator. Related Content K000133655: MAC address assignment in VELOS and rSeries systems K000135389: Configure the MAC Block Size for an existing BIG-IP tenant on the VELOS and rSeries systems SSL Orchestrator CloudDocs: Creating an Inline Layer 2 Service F5 rSeries: Next-Generation Fully Automatable Hardware F5 VELOS: A Next-Generation Fully Automatable Platform
F5OS VLAN naming length restrictions
I must notice, that there seems to be a length restriction when creating VLANs on F5OS. I'm allowed to enter long names on F5OS-level without any warnings or errors, but when assigning them to a tenant, the name within the tenant will be truncated if its longer than 31 characters. It looks like this, means there is a suffix in the format of "-T<VLAN-ID>.0" On F5OS-level it looks like this: Is this a normal behavior? Can or will this be fixed? And are there any other such restrictions for other configuration items? For your reference, we are running F5OS 1.8.3 and BIG-IP 17.5.1.3. Thank you! Regards, Stefan :)SNMP Monitoring/OIDs for rSeries
I'm currently configuring the required OIDs for monitoring our new rSeries, but I'm wondering if the provided MIBs contain all information? I'm searching especially the values from the GUIs dashboard for Memory Utilization and Storage Utilization like in the following screenshot: Also the mentioned "Base OS Version" and "Service Version" details seems to be not part of the MIB. I only found it under the OID .1.3.6.1.2.1.1.1.0 -> SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0 = STRING: F5 rSeries-r5600 : Linux 3.10.0-1160.119.1.f5.1.el7_8.x86_64 : Appliance services version 1.8.3-23453. Where does the GUI render these information from? Is it possible to poll these details via SNMP as well? Any more details would be very helpful! Thank you! Regards, Stefan :)
Remove alerts showing r-series LCD/Dashboard.
Code is community submitted, community supported, and recognized as ‘Use At Your Own Risk’. Especially R5+ with 1.8.0+, may you will see unexpected "interface down" alerts. You could use this one-liner in rseries Bash. Hope it helps :p [root@appliance-1 ~]# date;docker exec system_manager /confd/scripts/f5_confd_run_cmd 'show system alarms alarm state | csv' Mon Sep 1 14:32:24 JST 2025 # show system alarms alarm state | csv ID,RESOURCE,SEVERITY,TEXT,TIME CREATED 263169,interface-1.0,WARNING,Interface down,2025-06-11 02:24:43.512626724 UTC 263169,interface-10.0,WARNING,Interface down,2025-06-11 02:24:43.514048068 UTC 263169,interface-2.0,WARNING,Interface down,2025-06-11 02:24:43.517935094 UTC 263169,interface-5.0,WARNING,Interface down,2025-06-11 02:24:43.526179871 UTC 263169,interface-6.0,WARNING,Interface down,2025-06-11 02:24:43.528668180 UTC 263169,interface-7.0,WARNING,Interface down,2025-06-11 02:24:43.530864483 UTC 263169,interface-8.0,WARNING,Interface down,2025-06-11 02:24:43.533197062 UTC 263169,interface-9.0,WARNING,Interface down,2025-06-11 02:24:43.535438297 UTC [root@appliance-1 ~]# date;docker exec system_manager /confd/scripts/f5_confd_run_cmd 'show system alarms alarm state | csv'|grep 263169|cut -f 2 -d ,|xargs -I{} docker exec alert-service /confd/test/sendAlert -i 263169 -r clear-all -s {} Mon Sep 1 14:33:27 JST 2025 Alert Sent Alert Sent Alert Sent Alert Sent Alert Sent Alert Sent Alert Sent Alert Sent [root@appliance-1 ~]# date;docker exec system_manager /confd/scripts/f5_confd_run_cmd 'show system alarms alarm state | csv' Mon Sep 1 14:33:54 JST 2025 # show system alarms alarm state | csv % No entries found. <---------- REMOVED. [root@appliance-1 ~]# Ideas came from: https://cdn.f5.com/product/bugtracker/ID1644293.html https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K000150155Is there F5 Virtual Wire(vWire) variable support for vCMP or rSeries tenant?
Hey Everyone, Is there F5 Virtual Wire(vWire) variable support for vCMP or rSeries tenant? I am asking this about vCMP iSeries or rSeries 5800 as the vWire is created on the host and allocated to the tenant but for example in Virtual-wire Configuration and Troubleshooting | DevCentral there are system db variables and how are those supported in this case ? Do you configure this from the vCMP quest or Tenant or from the vCMP host or rSeries appliance ?
Credentialed Scanning - F5OS - Rseries
After solving the remote authentication issue previously with F5OS. My next question is related to credentialed scanning on R series appliances running F5OS. The tenable agent logs in via SSH and tries to run commands in the shell to pull system information. This has never been on issues on the iseries appliances and BIG-IP guests as they allow uses directly to the shell upon login. All linux commands run as intended. F5OS is a new beast for me to understand as it dumps you into its own OS. The shell is protected and only root at the local level is allowed access to the linux shell. This is the issue I face with credentialed scanning. Authentication works perfectly fine but the ability to run the proper commands at the appropriate level seems to be locked and it doesn't appear I can grant shell access to remote accounts. Anyone have any experience running authenticated scans on their rseries appliances with f50S?Issue with 2 parallel F5 clusters
Hello everybody and first of all thank you for taking the time to read my issue! The issue that I have is in regards to a migration We have a productive F5 BigIP cluster (Active/Standby), let's call this "Old F5", which has a lot of Virtual Servers in partitions, with specific pools and monitors for each application/service This device also has 2 Vlans, internal (vlan11) and external (vlan10), and 2 interfaces in an LACP that it's tagged on both Vlans, and it's connected to the same one leg to a Cisco APIC It has 2 Self IP addresses (one for each Vlan): 10.10.10.1-Vlan "external" 10.20.20.1-Vlan "internal" (numbers are just for example) It also has 4 Floating IP address (2 for each Vlan) with 2 traffic groups: 10.10.10.2-Vlan external traffic group 1 10.10.10.3-Vlan external traffic group 2 10.20.20.2-Vlan internal traffic group 1 10.20.20.3-Vlan internal traffic group 2 This device (cluster) has to be replaced by another F5 BigIP cluster (let's call this new F5), this device is an identical copy to the old F5 (the config was took from the old one and imported to the new one), meaning same Vlans, monitors, pools, VServers IP addresses etc At the moment this one has the 2 interfaces disabled and a blackhole default reject route set up in order to not interfere with the old F5 which is the productive one. The ideea is to configure the new F5 device with IP addresses from the same subnet (for example 10.10.10.5), and disable all the Virtual Servers so it doesn't handle traffic (the nodes, monitors, pools stay up on both devices), and have the 2 F5 devices, old and new, running in parallel and then move the Virtual servers one by one by just disabling the VS on the old F5 and enable it on the new F5. At this point we also remove the blackhole route, configure the correct default static route (the same which is on the old F5), and enable the interfaces This sounded and looked good, on the new F5 the nodes, pools are green and the Virtual servers are disabled as expected. On the old productive F5 everything is up and green BUT if I try to reach one of the Virtual servers, either by the Virtual IP address or hostname the attempt just times out without any response (if I try to telnet to the VS on port 443 it connects meaning that the old F5 accepts the traffic) I tried to disable on the new F5 also the nodes but still the same behaviour, the only to get it back to work is to disable the interfaces on the new F5 and add the default reject blackhole route. This is not how I imagined it to work, in my mind I was expecting that the old F5 will work as normal, and the new F5 device will see the nodes and pools up (confirming good communication) but don't handle any traffic regarding the Virtual servers because they are disabled. Does anyone have any idea what is causing this issue, why when both F5 devices are up in parallel, the connection to the Virtual server through the old productive F5 times out while that F5 sees both the pools and Virtual servers as up and running. Thank you in advance!
HA between rSeries tenant and iSeries appliance.
According to F5 documentation, the BIG-IP system supports either homogeneous or heterogeneous hardware platforms within a device group. I want to confirm if anyone has tried to put rSeries tenants and iSeries appliances in the same cluster? Obviously, I understand they will need to be on same version and of course vlans will be same on both. If you have tried this before, what were your challenges and how did you overcome them? I am considering this approach because it makes migration easier and seamless.
