Manual Chapter : Completing Post-Upgrade Tasks

Applies To:

  • BIG-IQ Centralized Management

    7.1.0

Updated Date: 07/07/2026

Completing Post-Upgrade Tasks

After you upgrade your F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management systems in an HA configuration, you can re-associate the standby BIG-IQ with the active BIG-IQ.

Add the standby BIG-IQ to the primary BIG-IQ to re-establish the manual failover high availability configuration.

  1. Log in to active BIG-IQ system with your administrator user name and password.

  2. At the top of the screen, click System.

  3. On the left, click BIG-IQ HA.

  4. Click the Add Standby button.

  5. In the IP Address field, type the discovery address you want to set up as the standby BIG-IQ.

    This is the same IP address the peers in a high availability configuration use to communicate.

    Note: IPv6 short form addresses are not supported.

  6. Type the local administrative Username and Password for the system.

  7. Type the Root Password for the system.

  8. Click the Add button to add this device to this high availability configuration.

Even though you can log in to the standby BIG-IQ after the you re-establish the HA configuration, the system continues some database re-indexing processes in the background. For larger configurations, that can take up to an hour. If you perform any searches on objects before it’s done re-indexing, BIG-IQ might not return the expected results.

After the HA configuration is re-established, you’ll be automatically logged out of the active BIG-IQ for a few minutes while the standby BIG-IQ restarts.

After the standby BIG-IQ restarts, you can log back into the primary BIG-IQ.

After you upgrade, the devices in your DCD cluster and the BIG-IQ primary and secondary system will automatically undergo post-upgrade automatic processing. If the system does not do so automatically, you need to complete the post-upgrade processing on the primary BIG-IQ system.

Important: Before you begin ensure you perform this task on the primary BIG-IQ system.

  1. From BIG-IQ, at the top of the screen, click System, then, on the left, click BIG-IQ DATA COLLECTION and then select BIG-IQ Data Collection Devices.

    The first time you access this screen after performing an upgrade, it triggers a dialog box that prompts you to start the post upgrade processing tasks.

  2. Click Continue.

    The BIG-IQ system is returning the devices in your DCD cluster to their pre-upgrade state. This includes restoring the data snapshot. If you have a substantial amount of data, data snapshot restoration takes an extended amount of time.

  3. Once the post upgrade processing is complete, click System > BIG-IQ DATA COLLECTION > BIG-IQ Data Collection Devices and confirm that each service you had enabled before the upgrade is still enabled. If there are any services that are not enabled, re-enable them now.

    1. To activate the services you want to monitor on each DCD, on the BIG-IQ Data Collection Devices screen, in the Services column, click Add Services.

      The Services screen for the data collection device opens.

    2. For the service you want to add, confirm that the Listener Address specifies the correct self IP address on the data collection device, and then click Activate.

      Note: For Web Application Security, you can resolve insecure connection issues between devices and the Centralized Policy Builder. To establish a secure connection, click Enable under the Secure Policy Builder field.

      When the service is successfully added, the Service Status changes to Active.

Once your cluster is back online, rediscover your devices and re-discover their services to complete the upgrade.

After you upgrade F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management, you must re-discover and re-import services for your managed devices so you can start managing those devices with the new features introduced in this release. You can do this in bulk, or you do it for each device and service individually.

Regardless of which option you choose, you specify how to handle any conflict between objects in the BIG-IQ system’s working configuration.

  • When you re-discover and re-import in bulk, all conflicts are resolved the in the same way.
  • When you re-discover devices and re-import services manually, you specify how to resolve conflicts on an individual basis.

Important: Before you proceed to rediscover your devices, you need to update the BIG-IQ iApp to prevent BIG-IP CPU spikes. If your BIG-IQ or BIG-IP setups include one of the following conditions, and you have upgraded to a version earlier than 7.1.0, follow the procedure in the AskF5 article K53001642 on support.f5.com.

After you upgrade F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management, you must rediscover and re-import services for your managed devices so you can start managing those devices with the new features introduced in this release. Use this procedure to re-discover and re-import services in bulk. You’ll have the option to decide how to manage any conflict between objects in the BIG-IQ system’s working configuration and objects in the same way for each type of object.

  1. At the top of the screen, click Devices.

  2. On the left, click

  3. Select the check box next to the devices for which you want to rediscover and reimport services.

  4. Click the More button and select Re-discover and Re-import.

  5. In the Name field, type a name for this task.

  6. To create a snapshot of the BIG-IQ configuration before importing services, select the Snapshot check box.

    Important: Clear this check box if you are adding devices that are in an access group you just created. If you don’t, BIG-IQ won’t be able to add the device(s).

  7. If BIG-IQ detects a conflict for services between the working configuration on BIG-IQ and the current configuration on BIG-IP, select a conflict resolution policy option for each object type.

    • Use BIG-IQ : Keep the object settings in the BIG-IQ working configuration. The next time you deploy a configuration to that BIG-IP device, BIG-IQ overwrites the object settings to match the settings defined on BIG-IQ.
Use BIG-IP
Use the object settings from this BIG-IP device’s configuration to replace the object in the BIG-IQ working configuration. The next time you deploy a configuration to your BIG-IP devices, BIG-IQ replaces that object settings for all of your managed BIG-IP devices to match the object settings on this BIG-IP device.
Create Version
For LTM monitors or profiles only, you can create and store a copy of the BIG-IP device’s object(s), specific to the software version on that BIG-IP device. The next time you deploy a configuration, BIG-IQ replaces that object for all the managed BIG-IP devices running that specific version with the object on this BIG-IP. You can store multiple versions of LTM monitors or profiles. BIG-IQ deploys the appropriate stored version to your managed devices. BIG-IQ automatically resolves conflicts against the appropriate version the next time it imports services that contain LTM monitors or profiles.

After the services re-import, devices displays in the BIG-IP Devices inventory list with their services. You can now manage these BIG-IP devices from BIG-IQ.

After you upgrade F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management, you must re-discover and re-import services for your managed devices so you can start managing those devices with the new features introduced in the new release.

  1. At the top of the screen, click Devices.

  2. Select the check box next to the BIG-IP device you want to re-discover and re-import services for.

  3. Click the More button and select Re-discover and Re-import.

  4. Type a name for this task and then select the conflict resolution options you want to use if BIG-IQ finds differences between its working configuration and the configuration on the BIG-IP device.

    The BIG-IQ conflict resolution policy options are:

    Use BIG-IQ
    Keep the object settings specified in the BIG-IQ working configuration. The next time you deploy a configuration to that BIG-IP device, BIG-IQ overwrites the object settings to match the settings defined on BIG-IQ.
    Use BIG-IP
    Use the object settings specified in the BIG-IP device’s configuration to replace the object settings in the BIG-IQ working configuration. For shared objects, the next time you deploy a configuration to a managed device, BIG-IQ replaces the settings for that object on the target device.
    Create Version
    For LTM monitors and profiles only: You can create and store a copy of the BIG-IP device’s object(s), specific to the software version on that BIG-IP device. For shared objects, the next time you deploy a configuration to a managed device, BIG-IQ replaces the settings for that object if that BIG-IP device is running that specific version. This option allows you to store multiple versions of LTM monitors or profiles knowing that BIG-IQ will deploy the appropriate stored version to your managed devices. The next time you import services that contain LTM monitors or profiles, BIG-IQ automatically resolves conflicts against the appropriate version.

  5. From the Available list, select the device you want to re-discover and re-import services for and move them to the Selected list.

  6. Click the Create button.

If you have a VMware service scaling group (SSG) associated with a vCenter certificate that is self-signed or untrusted, after you upgrade BIG-IQ Centralized Management, you’ll need to re-add the vCenter host root certificate. For this procedure, you must have root access to the BIG-IQ system’s command line.

Providing BIG-IQ the vCenter host root certificate ensures secure communication between BIG-IQ and the vCenter.

  1. From the BIG-IQ system’s command line, copy the root certificate from the vCenter host cert /etc/vmware-sso/key/ssoserverRoot.crt file to the BIG-IQ system’s /config/ssl/ssl.crt file.

  2. Type this command to create a symbolic link to this certificate using the certificate’s hash: ln -s ssoserverRoot.crt openssl x509 -hash -noout -in ssoserverRoot.crt.0.

  3. Type this command to restart gunicorn: bigstart restart gunicorn

If, prior to the upgrade, DCD statistics data collection retention or aggregation, these custom settings were not automatically retained over the upgrade process. Manually configure these data retention and aggregation settings, once your upgrade is complete.

  1. Go to System > BIG-IQ DATA COLLECTION > BIG-IQ Data Collection Cluster > CONFIGURATION > Statistics Data Collection.

  2. To configure previous retention settings, click Configure Retention.

    Once you complete this step, make sure to click Save & Close.

  3. To configure previous aggregation settings, click Configure Aggregation.

    Once you complete this step, make sure to click Save & Close.

If the version of AS3 software that was running on the BIG-IQ before you upgraded was newer than the AS3 software version post upgrade, then you need to perform additional steps to restore full AS3 functionality to the upgraded BIG-IQ.

These additional steps are detailed in an F5 knowledge base article K54909607. Please refer to this article if you are upgrading a BIG-IQ for which a newer version of AS3 software was installed prior to the upgrade.