Create F5 BIG-IP Next Instance on Proxmox Virtual Environment
If you are looking to deploy a F5 BIG-IP Next instance on Proxmox Virtual Environment (henceforth referred to as Proxmox for the sake of brevity), perhaps in your home lab, here's how: First, download the BIG-IP Next OVA File from MyF5 Downloads. Copy the OVA file to your Proxmox host. I am using SCP in the example below. local $ scp BIG-IP-Next-20.0.1-2.139.10+0.0.136.ovf root@proxmox:~/ On the Proxmox host, extract the contents in the OVA file: proxmox $ cd ~/ proxmox $ tar -xvf BIG-IP-Next-20.0.1-2.139.10+0.0.136.ova BIG-IP-Next-20.0.1-2.139.10+0.0.136.ovf BIG-IP-Next-20.0.1-2.139.10+0.0.136.mf BIG-IP-Next-20.0.1-2.139.10+0.0.136.cert BIG-IP-Next-20.0.1-2.139.10+0.0.136-disk1.vmdk Then, run the command below to create a virtual machine (VM) from the extracted OVF file. <vm_id> should be an unused ID on Proxmox. # qm importovf <vm_id> BIG-IP-Next-20.0.1-2.139.10+0.0.136.ovf local-lvm proxmox $ qm importovf 112 BIG-IP-Next-20.0.1-2.139.10+0.0.136.ovf local-lvm Logical volume "vm-112-disk-0" created. transferred 0.0 B of 80.0 GiB (0.00%) transferred 819.2 MiB of 80.0 GiB (1.00%) transferred 1.6 GiB of 80.0 GiB (2.00%) <output truncated> transferred 80.0 GiB of 80.0 GiB (100.00%) transferred 80.0 GiB of 80.0 GiB (100.00%) You should now see a new VM created on the Proxmox GUI. Before starting the VM, we need to attach a few hardware components to the VM: a Network Device for the management interface one or more additional Network Devices for the data plane interfaces (e.g. internal and external). Note that the data plane Network Devices must be of VirtIO model Optionally, you could also configure CLI access with the following instructions Finally, start the VM. This will take a few minutes. If CLI access is available, open up the console and run kubectl get pods until you can see all pods are ready. The BIG-IP Next VM is now ready to be onboarded per instructions found here.BIG-IP Next under Proxmox
In my lab, I'm running Proxmox instead of other virtualization software. Installation is similar to the documentation for VMware here: https://clouddocs.f5.com/bigip-next/latest/install/cm_install_vmware.html I was able to setup BIG-IP Next CentralManager as well as BIG-IP Next instances. Start by downloading the images from here: https://my.f5.com/manage/s/downloads I chose the OVA formats for each. Group BIG-IP_Next Product Line: Central Manager (CM) Version: 20.1 File: BIG-IP-Next-CentralManager-20.1.0-0.8.112.ova Then on your proxmox instance, unpack the ova file with tar for example: mkdir CentralManager cd CentralManager tar xvf ../BIG-IP-Next-CentralManager-20.1.0-0.8.112.ova qm importovf 1100 BIG-IP-Next-CentralManager-20.1.0-0.8.112.ovf local-zfs qm set 1100 -net0 virtio,bridge=vmbr0 I'm using my local-zfs as storage and assigning the vm number 1100. You may want to change one or both of those. The import takes a long time as it's importing 350G of storage! For some reason the OVF import does not create a network interface on my setup, so I add that after the import. You may also want to change the SCSI controller to virtio SCSI as it's a bit more efficient. Next start the VM up from the web interface to Proxmox. It will take a while to boot. Once it does it will show the IPv4 and IPv6 address (if enabled) on the console. In my setup, I assign a static dhcp address to the node here, and then reboot again. Note: it appears that CM does NOT support DUID and/or dhcpv6. You can login on the console or ssh into the box using admin/admin and proceed as in the VMware docs. Note: you will need samba or nfs "External Storage" or setup will fail. The "Share Path" needs to start with a "/". Once CM setup is complete, or while you're waiting for it to do so, download: Group: BIG-IP_Next Product Line: Virtual Edition (VE) Version: 20.1 File: BIG-IP-Next-20.1.0-2.279.0+0.0.75.ova unpack it as above: mkdir Next cd Nex tar xvf ../BIG-IP-Next-20.1.0-2.279.0+0.0.75.ova qm importovf 1100 BIG-IP-Next-20.1.0-2.279.0+0.0.75.ovf local-zfs qm set 1101 -net0 virtio,bridge=vmbr0 Again, you might want to use a vm id of other then 1101 and/or storage other than local-zfs. This takes less time as it's only importing 80G of data. Again, for me, no network interfaces were created, so I create two. If you have different subnets, you may want your first interface on your management network and the second on a traffic network. I then assign a static address in DHCP and reboot again. When I create both network interfaces, the services on port 5443 don't seem to start up. As above, you may also want to change the SCSI controller to virtio SCSI as it's a bit more efficient. After the system boots, the instructions say to login as admin. This did NOT work for me. Instead, I use curl to change the admin credentials: curl -kX PUT https://next-ip:5443/api/v1/me \ -u admin:admin \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"currentPassword": "admin", "newPassword": "Welcome123!"}' On my.f5.com request a license for BIP-IP Next, copy the JWT and paste it in to activate the license. Now that I've re-installed everything, I can't get the license to take again, so it might be a one-time-use.
F5 VE on Proxmox
Has anybody been successful running F5 BIG-IP VE on Proxmox? Proxmox: Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) Kernel: Linux 5.0.18-1-pve Architecture: x86-64 F5 VE: virtual edition 14.1.2.2 from downloads.f5.com I tried both qcow2 and .ova(scsi) licensing with trial license obtained from F5 single NIC mode According to https://clouddocs.f5.com/cloud/public/v1/matrix.html, Debian should be supported distribution. Following instructions on https://techdocs.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/bigip-ve-setup-linux-kvm-13-0-0/1.html. Creating new VM in Proxmox: OS: guest OS Linux, 2.6 Kernel, no media for OS Hard Disk: bus SCSI, VirtIO SCSI, NFS storage, QEMU format (qcow2), 100GB CPU: 4 sockets Memory: 8GB Network: bridge vmbr0 openvswitch with appropriate vlan tag, VirtIO, no firewall VM is created replacing just created qcow2 on remote storage with downloaded F5 qcow2 image. VM is started I am able to get prompt in Proxmox console, log in with default root account. But then mcpd keeps on restarting - constantly every few seconds. Logs show errors caused by permission errors. For some reason F5 is complaining that it cannot create "/shared/.snapshots_d/" because of permission problem. However permissions of "/shared" are OK. When I create .snapshots_d folder manually as root, mcpd no longer restarts, no more console errors... I run config utility to setup management IP/mask/gateway. As expected in single NIC mode, https port is automatically configured to 8443. I am able to reach GUI configuration utility and login as admin. Up until now everything looks fine. When trying to license the VM, I am able to generate dossier, also receive the generated license file from F5. But when I apply the license to the VM and click next, it acts as if nothing has happened. GUI keeps showing VE is not yet licensed. LTM logs says: err mcpd: License file open fails, Permission denied. "/config/bigip.license" has read permission for all and write for tomcat. Those are expected permissions for the license file. Funny though, content of /config/bigip.license is now actually populated with the correct new license. But "Registration Key" in "tmsh show sys hardware" is empty. There are several other file system related warnings or errors in logs.. so I suspect that the whole issue is with how F5 VE is accessing file system on Proxmox. But I don't know what to check or fix further. Is it even possible to run F5 VE on Proxmox? (although F5 clearly states it should be.) thx.
