BIG-IQ needs the credentials and parameters for your VMware cloud provider and cloud environment so that it can communicate with the BIG-IP devices it manages in your service scaling group.
Specify VMware credentials
required to connect to a vCenter server
Before you can create a cloud provider,
you must know the vCenter host name.
You create a new VMware cloud provider so that you can
specify the VMware credentials required to connect to the vCenter
server. You can use this connector to communicate from BIG-IQ to the
VMware cloud environments connected to that server.
At the top of
the screen, click
Applications
then, on the left, click
ENVIRONMENTS
Cloud Providers
.
Click
Create
.
The New
Cloud Provider screen opens.
After you name this new cloud
provider, from the
Provider
Type
list, select
VMware
and supply the provider details.
Before you can use this provider to create BIG-IP VE devices in, you need to specify the cloud environment details.
Provide your VMware cloud environment details for an SSG
Before you can specify the details for the
VMware cloud environment that supports your service scaling group, you must have
either a template or a snapshot for a 1-slot, BIG-IP virtual machine (VM) in your
VMware cloud. Requirements for this VM depend on the services required by the
applications you deploy.
Software Version
13.1.0.5 and later
CPUs
LTM only:
2
LTM and ASM: 4
RAM
LTM only:
4GB
LTM and ASM: 8GB
Disk Space
LTM only:
9GB
LTM and ASM: 82GB
BIG-IP VE devices in a
VMware cloud environment require only one disk, but some default images from
downloads.f5.com
, include two. If your image includes two
disks, F5 recommends that you remove the second (20 GB) disk from the
template or snapshot before creating BIG-IP VE devices in the cloud
environment.
The user account that you specify to
provide the BIG-IQ access to the vCenter server must provide full privileges
for the following categories:
Datastor
Resource
Virtual Machine
vApp
You define a new cloud environment to
specify the parameters the BIG-IQ needs so it can communicate with vCenter to
manage the BIG-IP VE devices created in the VMware cloud environment.
At the top of
the screen, click
Applications
then, on the left, click
ENVIRONMENTS
Cloud Environments
.
Click
Create
.
After you provide a
Name
and optional
Description
for this cloud environment, from the
Device
Template
list, select the device template you want
to use to define the new BIG-IP VE devices created for this SSG.
From the
Cloud Provider
list, select the name of the VMware provider you want to use for this
environment.
The VMware Properties fields
display.
Specify the VMware properties.
Select an option to identify
the VMware destination to which you want new BIG-IP VE
devices to deploy:
If you
identify the destination using a cluster name, the
VMware host must have DRS enabled before you try to
deploy BIG-IP VE devices, or the deployment will
fail. If you use the ESXi hostname, the DRS setting
is optional.
Select
Cluster
, and type the name of the
cluster.
Select
ESXi
Hostname
, and type either the IP
address or the FQDN of the ESXi host.
If you want to include an
Annotation
that will appear in the
notes section of the virtual machine summary for the
BIG-IP VE devices, type one in.
Type the name of the vSphere
Datacenter
that houses the VMware
resources on which the BIG-IP VE devices will
reside.
If you want to specify a
Resource Pool
, type the name of the
resource pool the ESXi host uses.
If you want to specify a
Folder
, type the name of the shared
folder the ESXi host uses.
Specify how you want VMware to
create the virtual machines it uses when it creates a
BIG-IP device.
To use a VMware template, in
the
VM Image
field, type the name of the
template.
To use a VM snapshot:
For
VM
Image
, type the name of the BIG-IP
image used to create the snapshot.
For
Linked
Clone
, select
Yes
, and then type the name of the
snapshot you created for this image in
Snapshot name
for Linked Clone
.
When you set up the VM image
that you want to create your clone from, it must
reside on storage that is accessible to all ESXi
hosts for that cluster.
Details about creating a
virtual machine in your VMware environment are
provided in the
BIG-IP
Virtual Edition 13.1.0 and VMware ESXi:
Setup
guide on
support.f5.com
If you want to use
an IP pool to set the Management IP for the devices
in your SSG, the BIG-IP VE in vCenter must have
VMware tools installed on it. After you deploy the
BIG-IP VE to vCenter, use the procedure in the
article:
https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K44134742
to install the VMware tools.
Type the
User
name and
Password
for the vCenter user that you
configured for this VMware SSG.
In the
Network Interface
Mapping
fields, specify the network
interface mappings for the BIG-IP VE devices the SSG
creates.
The mappings you
specify must match the settings that were used when the
virtual machine network interfaces were defined as part of
the BIG-IP VE deployment to your VMware environment.
For additional detail on NIC
configuration, refer to the
BIG-IP Virtual Edition
13.1.0 and VMware ESXi: Setup
on
support.f5.com
.
You can click
+
if you want to specify additional
NICs for this environment.
For
IP Pool Alias
Mapping
, if the device template for this environment
includes an IP pool alias and you want to map the alias to a specific
IP pool for this environment, type the name of the alias, and then
select the name of the IP pool that you want the alias to use in this
environment.
You can click
+
if you want to
specify additional aliases for this environment.
If the alias you specify here conflicts
with the alias specified in the device template, the alias you
specify here takes precedence.
Click the
Save & Close
button at the bottom of the screen.
BIG-IQ creates the
new cloud environment. You can now use this environment when you
create an SSG.
