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nathe's avatar
nathe
Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
Mar 29, 2010

SCF v UCS

Hi,

 

 

I'm trying to fully understand the differences between an SCF and a UCS file and best practice on which to use for a migration. I know that the SCF file is a flat text file with various bigpipe commands and the UCS file is an archive file which includes the configuration files themselves (e.g. bigip.conf). In the docs for both they both state that they can be used to configure a new big-ip system, but there must be key differences to be aware of when knowing when to use either tool.

 

 

My particular scenario is this, I have 2 big-ips in a HA pair running version 9.4.4 and we will be purchasing new hardware on version 10.x shortly. Would the SCF or UCS tool be the best tool to use or does it not matter in this scenario.

 

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Nathan
management
monitoring

6 Replies

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  • hooleylist's avatar
    hooleylist
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Mar 29, 2010
    Hi Nathan,

     

     

    I think F5 is trying to provide a single flat file config export option with the SCF. It doesn't include ASM or WAM config though. In general, I think a UCS is a much safer option for archiving and installing the full configuration.

     

     

    If you have the option of installing 9.4.4 on the new hardware, you could install the old unit's UCS and then upgrade the units to 10.x. You might have to tweak the config if the platforms are significantly different. Else, you could try using loading the SCF on the new 10.x units, but it might not be (probably won't be?) fully compatible without some manual tweaks.

     

     

    Aaron
  • nathe's avatar
    nathe
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Mar 29, 2010
    Thanks Aaron, interesting thought about installing the old software on a new device, this may be an option. If not I'll probably go for the UCS file and see what tweaks I have to make.

     

     

    Thanks again,

     

    Nathan

     

     

  • hooleylist's avatar
    hooleylist
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Mar 29, 2010
    I wouldn't try to install a 9.4.x UCS on a 10.x unit as it will probably be difficult to resolve the issues with loading the full configuration. You might do better trying the SCF file or more ideally, just try loading the bigip_base.conf and bigip.conf from 9.4.4 on the 10.x unit. Of course, the cleanest solution is to install the same 9.4.4 OS version on the new platform (assuming it's supported on the new platform) and then upgrade the OS. The configuration will be upgraded to the new syntax in the process.

     

     

    Aaron
  • nathe's avatar
    nathe
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Mar 30, 2010
    I now think another option would be to upgrade the existing hardware to v10.x and then migrating to new hardware will be simpler. Will have to check platform support lifecycle and whether our hardware supports v10.x of course.

     

     

    Thanks Aaron, think I've got a few options to consider now.

     

     

    Nathan
  • John_Arnold_106's avatar
    John_Arnold_106
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Mar 31, 2010
    In general we have moved over to SCF for most (99%) operations. SCF makes deployments a lot easier since you can templatize the whole LTM config, and also is a lot easier to integrate into config archiving systems like HP NAS (Truecontrol) etc, or any other config diffing system. Also, there are a lot of issues with UCS and doing RMAs that are resolved with just using SCF.

     

     

    That said, some caveats:

     

    -SCF doesn't contain your SSL certs or any other flat files you may need

     

    -SCF doesn't contain all the config data for every module
  • Nilesh_Dubey_36's avatar
    Nilesh_Dubey_36
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 09, 2018

    I think UCS is much better and safe option as SCF does not contain SSL certificate and some other configuration files.

     

    Thanks,