You can get a trial of the F5 Big-IP device from their website, it provides
a full Big-IP device (with the LTM module) for up to 90 days from the date of
activation. I am looking to load balance Exchange 2016 and VMware View through
a pair of Big-IP's with the LTM module so I thought I would spin it up and get
it working in my lab prior to doing it for real. The Big-IP is much like Citrix
NetScaler in the sense that it's an Application Delivery Controller, therefore
many of the concepts are the same. I am using VMware Workstation, the Virtual
Appliance is available for VMware, Citrix and Hyper-V. I have found the OVA
hardware spec is a little low, the box seems to be pretty slow if you leave it
at 2Gb of memory, I would recommend upping it to 4Gb.
Import the OVA into either vSphere or VMware Workstation.
Configure the Network Interfaces
·
vmnet0 - bridged (mgmt)
·
vmnet1 - host only (int)
·
vmnet2 - host only (ext)
·
vmnet 3 - host only (ha)
Your network topology could of course be
different, I am choosing to build a topology close to the one I will be
deploying the devices into in live. Obviously if you are deploying physical
appliances instead of putting interfaces on to logical networks in VMware, you
would have each of your interfaces in the corresponding VLAN's.
The default credentials for the vAppliance are
root/default.
Type "config" at the initial prompt to
launch the initial configuration utility. You can use native Linux commands
such as ifconfig to set the mgmt address etc, but this way is easier.
In VMware I have found that the F5 sometimes
screws up the order of the vnic's that are attached to the VM. Therefore I would
recommend attaching a single vnic to the appliance, configuring your mgmt
address then attaching the other vnics when you know what interface the F5 is interpreting as it's mgmt interface.
If you are having issues with the order of your
network interfaces use the netstat -i to display all the physical
interfaces that F5 has. In F5 TMOS mgmt IP's are also known as Self IP's, these
are the much like NSIP's on the NetScaler platform.
The web interface has a different set of
credentials admin/admin out of the box.
Before you can do anything you have to license the F5. Under Setup
Utility and click Next.
Select the method of activation that suits you best. My F5 did not have a
route to the Internet at this stage so I opted for the manual method. The
Registration Key is the code F5 provide to you within an e-mail at the time you
download a trial.
After a minute of so the verification will complete and you are free to
start configuring some of the F5 features. The trial license comes with the
Local Traffic (LTM) and Application Visibility and Reporting modules.
Problem
After bouncing my F5 a couple of times I started
getting this when I logged in via the web interface "The Big-IP system has encountered a configuration problem that may prevent the configuration utility
from functioning properly". I never managed to work out why, other that
the F5 was shut down incorrectly. I just re provisioned another F5 device.
