Applies To:
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BIG-IP PEM
- 11.5.1
Summary:
This release note documents the version 11.5.1 release of BIG-IP Policy Enforcement Manager (PEM).
Contents:
- Supported platforms
- Configuration utility browser support
- User documentation for this release
- Fixes in 11.5.1
- Fixes in 11.5.0
- New in 11.5.1
- New in 11.5.0
- Behavior changes in 11.5.1
- Behavior changes in 11.5.0
- Known issues
- Contacting F5 Networks
- Legal notices
Supported platforms
This version of the software is supported on the following platforms:
| Platform name | Platform ID |
|---|---|
| BIG-IP 5000s, 5200v, 5050 | C109 |
| BIG-IP 7000s, 7200v, 7050 | D110 |
| BIG-IP 10000s, 10200v | D113 |
| VIPRION B2100 Blade (for evaluation only) | A109 |
| VIPRION B2150 Blade | A113 |
| VIPRION B2250 Blade | A112 |
| VIPRION C2400 Chassis | F100 |
| VIPRION B4200, B4200N Blade (for evaluation only) | A107, A111 |
| VIPRION B4300, B4340N Blade | A108, A110 |
| VIPRION C2200 Chassis | D114 |
| VIPRION C4400, C4400N Chassis | J100, J101 |
| VIPRION C4480, C4480N Chassis | J102, J103 |
| VIPRION C4800, C4800N Chassis | S100, S101 |
| Virtual Edition (VE) | Z100 |
These platforms support various licensable combinations of product modules. This section provides general guidelines for module support.
Most of the support guidelines relate to memory on the platform or provisioned guest. For vCMP support and for Policy Enforcement Module (PEM), and Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT), the following list applies for all memory levels:
- vCMP supported platforms
- VIPRION B2100, B2150, B2250, B4200, B4300, B4340N
- BIG-IP 5200v, 7200v, 10200v
- PEM and CGNAT supported platforms
- VIPRION B2150, B2250, B4300, B4340N
- BIG-IP 5200v, 7200v, 10200v
- BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) (Not including Amazon Web Service Virtual Edition)
- PEM and CGNAT may be provisioned on the VIPRION B4200, but it is not recommended for production, only for evaluation. PEM may be provisioned on the VIPRION B2100, but it is not recommended for production, only for evaluation. Use the B4300 or B4340N instead.
Memory: 12 GB or more
All licensable module-combinations may be run on platforms with 12 GB or more of memory, and on VE and vCMP guests provisioned with 12 GB or more of memory. Note that this does not mean that all modules may be simultaneously provisioned on all platforms with 12 GB or more of memory. The BIG-IP license for the platform determines which combination of modules are available for provisioning.
Memory: 8 GB
The following guidelines apply to the BIG-IP 2000s, 2200s, 3900, 6900 platforms, to the VIPRION B4100 and B4100N platforms, and to VE guests configured with 8 GB of memory. (A vCMP guest provisioned with 8 GB of memory has less than 8 GB of memory actually available and thus does not fit in this category.)
- No more than three modules should be provisioned together.
- On the 2000s and 2200s, Application Acceleration Manager (AAM) can be provisioned with only one other module.
- Note that Global Traffic Manager (GTM) and Link Controller (LC) do not count toward the module-combination limit.
Memory: Less than 8 GB and more than 4 GB
The following guidelines apply to platforms, and to VE and vCMP guests provisioned with less than 8 GB and more than 4 GB of memory. (A vCMP guest provisioned with 8 GB of memory has less than 8 GB of memory actually available and thus fits in this category).
- No more than three modules (not including AAM) should be provisioned together.
- Application Acceleration Manager (AAM) cannot be provisioned with any other module; AAM can only be provisioned standalone.
- Note that GTM and LC do not count toward the module-combination limit.
- Analytics (AVR) counts towards the two module-combination limit (for platforms with less than 6.25 GB of memory).
Memory: 4 GB or less
The following guidelines apply to the BIG-IP 1600 and 3600 platforms, and to VE and vCMP guests provisioned with 4 GB or less of memory.
- No more than two modules may be configured together.
- AAM should not be provisioned, except as Dedicated.
vCMP memory provisioning calculations
The amount of memory provisioned to a vCMP guest is calculated using the following formula: (platform_memory- 3 GB) x (cpus_assigned_to_guest/ total_cpus).
As an example, for the B2100 with two guests, provisioned memory calculates as: (16-3) x (2/4) ~= 6.5 GB.
Configuration utility browser support
The BIG-IP Configuration Utility supports these browsers and versions:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.x and 9.x
- Mozilla Firefox 15.0.x
- Google Chrome 21.x
User documentation for this release
For a comprehensive list of documentation that is relevant to this release, refer to the BIG-IP PEM / VE11.5.1 Documentation page.
Fixes in 11.5.1
| ID number | Description |
|---|---|
| 432950 | The BIG-IP GUI and QoS model uses uplink, downlink, total terminology which corresponds to input, output and total terms respectively, defined by RFC 4006. |
Fixes in 11.5.0
| ID number | Description |
|---|---|
| 403154 | When updating signatures,/classification_base.conf is now manually updated from the tmsh. |
| 404047 | The BIG-IP system comes with a publisher called local-db-publisher. This publisher can now be used as hsl endpoint for reporting. |
| 406311 | Wait for 2 or more flows for the connection to not reset while dropping. After that, the user will not see any resets on that specific connection. |
| 408153 | Now, diameter messages (CCR and RAA messages) generated by the BIG-IP system, have the P bit (proxy-able) set. |
| 419729 | The auto-sync works for syncing the custom-created SPM (PEM) profiles with PEM policies. |
| 422993 | PEM is now listed as a module and can be provisioned in platform B4340N. |
| 425821 | No crash occurs when invalid classification ID is skipped. |
New in 11.5.0
Gy Support and Quota Management
This release provides support for quota management and prepaid charging per subscriber, or application with PEM and communication with the OCS in the mobile network using the 3GPP Gy interface. This is a license-based feature.
Dynamic Service Chaining
- The ability to add/skip different VAS endpoints through policy-based, forwarding endpoint selection.
- Perform header insertion/removal per leg of the VAS chain depending on the policy.
- The ability to include a sideband VAS in the service chain using ICAP as the protocol (multiple ICAP sideband connection per service chain).
Classify IP protocols
This feature includes support for several non-TCP/non-UDP protocols like IPsec, GRE, IPinIP, ICMP and SCTP. When upgrading from a previous release, the virtual server for all protocols does not include the IPOther profile.
Steering on Response
This feature supports the ability to analyse the response message and apply steering policy action for the flow, or for transaction when the policy decision cannot be made based on only the request message, and it requires both the request and response messages.
Statistics and Debuggability
This feature adds improvements to the debuggability, health monitoring, and troubleshooting features in previous releases. This release includes subscriber-level stats, more Gx stats, Gy stats, RADIUS stats, and HSL stats. Statistics for specific subscribers is available for detailed troubleshooting to show flows, classification results, policy, and action.
Transactional Classification and Policy Enforcement
URL Categorization
This feature provides the ability to enforce policies configured as part of the subscriber profile based on the URL category type. The URL categorization is obtained by querying an internal repository. Also, the URL categorization is transaction-aware and is a licensed feature.
Behavior changes in 11.5.0
| ID umber | Description |
|---|---|
| ID 424209 | The default bandwidth control policy is not created automatically when the first bandwidth control policy is created, and is not deleted by default when the last bwc policy is deleted. The default-bwc-policy is treated similarly to other bandwidth control policies. You can create a bandwidth control policy by this name and use it as required. |
Known issues
| ID number | Description |
|---|---|
| 397397 | When multiple static subscriber information is loaded from a .csv file, the subscriber information is lost if enter or CRLF is not entered at the end of each record line. To workaround this issue, press the Enter key or insert the CRLF character at the end of each row in the .csv file. |
| 398416 | In this release, volume threshold is supported. However, time threshold does not qualify for Gx reporting as it is not specified in the standard. To workaround this issue, do not use time threshold. |
| 398922 | Only a single instance of the diameter-endpoint profile is supported in this release: the system-supplied default gx-endpoint profile. As a result, diameter-endpoint profiles cannot be created or deleted in the GUI or in tmsh. |
| 399119 | If a policy rule matched with flow filters drop or redirect the traffic, that traffic will not match other policy rules that use classification filters. |
| 400372 | The protocol msn_video is used by MSN Messenger for video conversations and is supported for MSN Messenger 8 and earlier. |
| 400893 | The .csv file for uploading static subscribers has multiple lines with Mac end-of-line. To work around this issue, convert the file into WIN file format and upload from the GUI or tmsh. This resolves the issue. |
| 403374 | On rare occasions, when a policy is installed with 15 rules and reporting is configured on them, only 14 of the reports are generated when multiple flows (traffic) are sent matching all of them. Maximum usage reports per subscriber is supported. |
| 406311 | If gate status disabled action is enforced while using profile FastL4, the client will see unwanted connection resets. To work around this issue, set the srDB using the db var tmm.pem.srdb.entry.step to 240. |
| 406349 | If the dynamic_spm_bwc_policy is not created, dynamic PCC rules are not applied. To work around this issue, ensure that the dynamic_spm_bwc_policy is configured with proper parameters prior to getting dynamic PCC rules from the PCRF. |
| 409201 | If you change the SPM (PEM) profile of a virtual during a certain flow, the flow will not get policy reevaluation. Instead, only new flows will be using the new policies that are attached to the profile. |
| 410763 | If the monitoring key is longer than 1053 characters, an error message is issued. To work around this issue, use monitoring keys fewer than 1053 characters. |
| 417139 | Modifying Session state through iRules may cause issues over Gx. To work around this issue, do not modify the session state if session is active. |
| 427429 | No statistics are available for troubleshooting with the new "show pem irule" stats command. |
| 427844 | Any tunneling traffic such IPsec, GRE, and IPIP cannot be steered by the BIG-IP system to a different endpoint. This is because the traffic is encapsulated and targets only the destination endpoint. |
| 428178 | All IP addresses that are identified as frequent are not stored in the database, and thus are not categorized. |
| 428420 | Some IP addresses are categorized as unknown on the BIG-IP system, even though they are categorized in the cloud database of webroot. |
| 430344 | A URL categorization limitation is that a small set of URLs are categorized as unknown on the BIG-IP system, even though they may get categorized in the cloud database of webroot. |
| 435596 | The CEC hitless upgrade does not sync files between active-standby setup, using device group. To work around this issue, change standby to active to do CEC hitless upgrade. |
| 438549 | If you turn on the SNAT pool or SNAT Automap on IPOther virtual, no traffic passes through in most cases. In some cases, the traffic passes but the out stats (packets and bytes) is zero. To workaround this, do not turn on SNAT pool or SNAT Automap on IPOther virtual that processes IPsec traffic. |
Contacting F5 Networks
| Phone: | (206) 272-6888 |
| Fax: | (206) 272-6802 |
| Web: | http://support.f5.com |
| Email: | support@f5.com |
For additional information, please visit http://www.f5.com.
Additional resources
You can find additional support resources and technical documentation through a variety of sources.
- The F5 Networks Technical Support web site: http://www.f5.com/support/
- The AskF5 web site: http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us.html
- The F5 DevCentral web site: http://devcentral.f5.com/
- AskF5 TechNews
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