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.1.6KViews6likes2CommentsBIG-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.265Views3likes8Comments