Manual Chapter : Upgrading BIG-IQ with a Data Collection Device from Version 6.X with Minimal Downtime

Applies To:

  • BIG-IQ Centralized Management

    7.0.0

Updated Date: 07/07/2026

Upgrading BIG-IQ with a Data Collection Device from Version 6.X with Minimal Downtime

The minimal downtime upgrade process (also referred to as rolling upgrade) significantly reduces the amount of time your system is offline while you are upgrading to the latest version. The degree to which your BIG-IQ system and DCD cluster can maintain complete online function during upgrade depends on which BIG-IP services you manage, and what kind of data you collect.

  • Operators using the BIG-IQ system to review alerts and events might notice slightly slower performance during the upgrade. Data might take a bit longer to refresh, and searches might take a little more time to run.
  • You should not lose any ASM events or FPS alerts during the upgrade.
  • You should maintain almost all of your AFM events during the upgrade.
  • Statistics data is not collected during the upgrade.
  • There is a brief downtime (approximately 5 seconds) when the primary BIG-IQ system is upgraded.
  • There is another short downtime (less than a minute) when the secondary BIG-IQ is paired with the primary BIG-IQ.

The following upgrade process to BIG-IQ Centralized management version 7.0.0 is for system setups that currently have version 6.0.x installed, and include a data collection device cluster with at least three devices. If your system is not currently running version 6.0.x and does not include a data collection device cluster with three or more devices, refer to Supported Upgrade Processes to BIG-IQ Version 7.0.0?.

This figure represents BIG-IQ in a high-availability (HA) configuration with a data collection device (DCD) cluster. The DCD cluster continues to collect data until you start the upgrade process. Data collection for all BIG-IP devices resumes only after all devices in the DCD cluster are upgraded and restarted. For this example, there are three data collection devices: one has already completed the upgrade to version 7.0, one is undergoing an upgrade to version 7.0, and one is collecting data as version 6.0.x.

Note: This upgrade procedure with minimal downtime supports BIG-IQ configuration that include a minimum of three data collection devices. However, if the BIG-IQ system you are upgrading includes multiple zones, then in addition to the three DCD minimum, there must also be at least two DCDs in each zone before you can perform a rolling upgrade procedure

Before upgrading F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management, complete these tasks.

Tasks

Additional information

Download the BIG-IQ software image and Pre-upgrade Check tool from the F5 Downloads site.

downloads.f5.com

Run the pre-upgrade check script on the primary BIG-IQ by typing the following command: preUpgradeCheck.

This script verifies the following for BIG-IQ:- Disk assessment and partition size.

  • Health checks

  • Licensing verification.

  • CPU and memory assessment.

Deploy any staged configuration changes to your managed BIG-IP devices.

When addressing configuration conflicts for each BIG-IP device, F5 recommends you use BIG-IP to override the configuration settings stored on BIG-IQ.

Decide which disk volume you want to install the BIG-IQ software on. You must have at least two volumes to upgrade BIG-IQ.

If you don’t have two volumes and are upgrading from versions 5.2 or 5.3, refer to: K17406: Using the tmsh utility to create a new software volume for installing a new image or hotfix on the BIG-IQ system at:https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K17406. If you are upgrading from version 5.4 or later, you can add the second volume as part of the upgrade.

If you are currently using a self-IP address for device discovery, make a note of that IP address.

You’ll need to enter that IP address when you perform setup after you upgrade and reboot the BIG-IQ system.

Upgrade all managed BIG-IP devices to version 12.1 or later.

For you to manage BIG-IP devices from BIG-IQ Centralized Management, the BIG-IP devices must be running version 12.1 or later.

Before you install or upgrade BIG-IQ Centralized Management, it’s important to take inventory of the status of the running daemons. Then after you upgrade, you can verify that they’re in the same state, and make any necessary modifications. To view the daemons, type the following command: admin@(ip-10-1-1-4)(cfg-sync Standalone)(Active)(/Common)(tmos)# show /sys service.

Daemon Example of status
admd down, Not provisioned
alertd run (pid 6579) 22 hours
apmd down, Not provisioned
asm down, Not provisioned
autodosd down, Not provisioned
avrd down, Not provisioned
bigd run (pid 5338) 22 hours
bigiqsnmpd run (pid 5035) 22 hours
captured down, Not provisioned
cbrd run (pid 6117) 22 hours
chmand run (pid 5678) 22 hours
clusterd down, Not required
cman cluster is running
corosync (pid 22585) is running 22 hours
csyncd run (pid 5038) 22 hours
datasyncd down, Not provisioned
dnscached down, Not provisioned
dosl7d down, Not provisioned
dosl7d_attack_monitor down, Not provisioned
dwbld down, Not provisioned
elasticsearch run (pid 5041) 22 hours
errdefsd run (pid 6112) 22 hours
eventd run (pid 5043) 22 hours
evrouted run (pid 6583) 22 hours
f5_update_checker down, No action required
fpuserd down, Not provisioned
fslogd down, Not provisioned
grafana run (pid 6107) 22 hours
gtmd down, Not provisioned
guiserver run (pid 6105) 22 hours
gunicorn run (pid 6587) 22 hours
hwpd down 22 hours, normally up
icontrolportald run (pid 5337) 22 hours
iprepd run (pid 6113) 22 hours
istatsd run (pid 6109) 22 hours
lacpd down, not required
lind run (pid 6116) 22 hours
mcpd run (pid 6110) 22 hours
merged run (pid 6938) 22 hours
mgmt_acld down, Not provisioned
monpd run (pid 6578) 22 hours
named run (pid 4855) 22 hours
nokiasnmpd down, Not enabled
ntlmconnpool run (pid 6111) 22 hours
pabnagd down, Not logging node
pacemakerd (pid 23004) is running 22 hours
pccd down, Not provisioned
pgadmind run (pid 7310) 22 hours
pkcs11d down, Not required
restjavad run (pid 4853) 22 hours
rethinkdb run (pid 15058) 21 hours, 1 start
scriptd run (pid 5344) 22 hours
sdmd down, sdmd is not provisioned
searchd run (pid 5343) 22 hours
sflow_agent run (pid 6937) 22 hours
shmmapd down, Not provisioned
snmpd run (pid 5674) 22 hours
sod run (pid 4810) 22 hours
statsd run (pid 5336) 22 hours
syscalld run (pid 6939) 22 hours
tamd run (pid 5679) 22 hours
tmipsecd run (pid 5341) 22 hours
tmm run (pid 6581) 22 hours
tmrouted run (pid 6581) 22 hours
tokumond run (pid 7311) 22 hours
tokumx run (pid 6580) 22 hours
webd run (pid 6941) 22 hours
wr_urldbd down, Not provisioned
zrd down, Not provisioned
zxfrd run (pid 5034) 22 hours

To ensure that your upgrade goes smoothly, F5 recommends that you perform a few system checks. Perform this test at least a day or so before you upgrade in case you discover any issues that take longer than expected to resolve. Going through this list ahead of time gives you a chance to resolve any issues before the clock is ticking on your upgrade window.

  • Verify that you have completed the pre-upgrade tasks. These are detailed in the article Tasks to complete before you start the upgrade process on support.f5.com.)

  • Verify that the software version of the BIG-IP devices managed by the BIG-IQ you are updating are at or beyond the minimum supported version. (For details on how to do this, refer to the AskF5 article K34133507 on support.f5.com.)

  • If you plan to gather performance Analytics data for the BIG-IP devices managed by the BIG-IQ you are updating confirm that the managed devices are at or beyond version 13.1.1, and provisioned with the AVR service.

  • If you have custom settings for the DCD statistics data collection retention or aggregation, these custom settings are not automatically retained over the upgrade process. Save your data retention and aggregation settings before you begin the upgrade, so you can manually enter your custom settings, once your upgrade is complete. See System > BIG-IQ DATA COLLECTION > BIG-IQ Data Collection Cluster > CONFIGURATION > Statistics Data Collection.

  • Check that you have sufficient disk space for the upgrade. To calculate the disk space you need, make sure you include the space your current installation consumes and the extra amount needed for the upgrade.

    Note: If the var partition for any of the devices in your cluster was extended before you upgraded, you must extend the var partition for that device before the upgrade can succeed.

    (For details on how to do this check, refer to Check the volume sizes on your current BIG-IQ installation and Check the volume sizes required by the software you want to install in F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management Disk Space Management on support.f5.com. For details on how to extend a disk volume, refer to Resizing VE Disk Volume Workflows in F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management Disk Space Management on support.f5.com).

  • Verify that your BIG-IQ VE has sufficient memory and CPUs for the configuration that you plan to deploy. (For details on how to do this, refer to Determine the resources required for deployment in Planning and Implementing a BIG-IQ Centralized Management Deployment on support.f5.com).

  • Examine the health of the devices you plan to upgrade. Make sure to inspect the BIG-IQ primary and secondary devices as well as each DCD in the cluster. (For details on how to do this, refer to Check the health of devices in a DCD cluster in Planning and Implementing a BIG-IQ Centralized Management Deployment on support.f5.com).

  • Re-activate the licenses on the devices you plan to upgrade to make sure that the service contract date is up to date. Make sure to do this for the BIG-IQ primary and secondary devices, as well as each DCD in the cluster. (For details on how to do this, refer to the F5 Knowledge Center article K15365 on support.f5.com).

  • Confirm the zone configuration of the DCDs that you plan to upgrade and for the devices managed by the BIG-IQ systems you plan to upgrade. If a device is configured to be in a zone that does not have DCDs in it, statistics for that device will not be collected after the upgrade.

    Note: If the BIG-IQ system you are upgrading includes multiple zones, then in addition to the three DCD minimum, there must also be at least two DCDs in each zone before you can perform a rolling upgrade procedure.

    • To view the zone configuration for a DCD, navigate to System > BIG-IQ DATA COLLECTION > BIG-IQ Data Collection Devices and note the zone.
    • To view the zone configuration for a device, navigate to Devices, click the name of the device, then click STATISTICS COLLECTION and note the zone.

Important: The upgrade process can take up to several hours depending on how many BIG-IP devices you are managing.

The rolling upgrade process consists of the following phases, where each phase includes a series of tasks.

Preparing for an upgrade:

  • Download the BIG-IQ software image from the F5 Downloads site.
  • Upload the BIG-IQ software image to BIG-IQ.
  • Confirm alerts and events can be sent to an alternative device in the Data Collection Device cluster.

Upgrade the BIG-IQ systems and Data Collection Devices to the latest version:

  • Upgrade the primary BIG-IQ and the data collection devices to the latest version.
  • Upload the software image to the secondary BIG-IQ system.
  • Manually upgrade the secondary BIG-IQ system.

Complete post-upgrade process

  • Add the secondary BIG-IQ system back to the primary BIG-IQ system.
  • Re-discover devices and re-import services.
  • If you plan to deploy applications to a VMware cloud environment, install the vCenter host root certificate on BIG-IQ.