Manual Chapter : OpenStack Deployment Overview

Applies To:

  • BIG-IQ Centralized Management

    7.0.0, 6.1.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.0

Updated Date: 07/07/2026

OpenStack Deployment Overview

Before you can deploy a BIG-IQ VE in the OpenStack environment, you must have the following environmental elements in place:

  • A tenant (or admin) user account with virtual machine deployment privileges.
  • Privileges to create images (that is you must be able to upload QCOW2 files). Contact your system administrator for assistance if your account lacks the requisite permissions.
  • Sufficient free remaining computational (CPU, RAM) and disk storage quota for each BIG-IQ VE instance you plan to deploy.
  • At least one network, to be used for management access.
  • Security groups (firewall rule-sets), for control of inbound and outbound network traffic.
  • Pre-defined Flavors (virtual hardware profile definitions).

In addition, you might wish to define the following optional environmental elements:

  • Key-pairs, for SSH access (recommended).
  • Floating IP addresses, for each tenant network interface that will be externally accessible.
  • Additional networks for internal, external, and high-availability traffic as necessary.

Before you can deploy a BIG-IQ VE in the OpenStack environment, you must have the following environmental elements in place:

  • A tenant (or admin) user account with virtual machine deployment privileges.
  • Privileges to create images (that is you must be able to upload QCOW2 files). Contact your system administrator for assistance if your account lacks the requisite permissions.
  • Sufficient free remaining computational (CPU, RAM) and disk storage quota for each BIG-IQ VE instance you plan to deploy.
  • At least one network, to be used for management access.
  • Security groups (firewall rule-sets), for control of inbound and outbound network traffic.
  • Pre-defined Flavors (virtual hardware profile definitions).

In addition, you might wish to define the following optional environmental elements:

  • Key-pairs, for SSH access (recommended).
  • Floating IP addresses, for each tenant network interface that will be externally accessible.
  • Additional networks for internal, external, and high-availability traffic as necessary.

To successfully deploy and run the BIG-IQ VE system, the host system must satisfy minimum requirements.

The host system must include these elements:

  • OpenStack on Linux distribution with the native KVM package as its compute (hypervisor) node.

    Note: The BIG-IQ Virtual Edition and Supported Hypervisors Matrix, published on support.f5.com identifies the Linux versions currently supported.

  • The OpenStack Horizon Dashboard

    Note: Power users might prefer to use the OpenStack command line or APIs to deploy and configure the BIG-IQ VE. Consult the OpenStack API documentation for your distribution for details on how to use these APIs.

  • Connection to a common NTP source (this is especially important for each host in a redundant system configuration).

Important: The hypervisor CPU must meet the following requirements:

  • Use a 64-bit architecture.
  • Have support for virtualization (AMD-V or Intel VT-x) enabled.
  • Support a one-to-one thread-to-defined virtual CPU ratio, or (on single-threading architectures) support at least one core per defined virtual CPU.
  • Intel processors must be from the Core (or newer) workstation or server family of CPUs.