Applies To:
Show Versions
BIG-IP AAM
- 11.5.2
BIG-IP APM
- 11.5.2
BIG-IP GTM
- 11.5.2
BIG-IP Link Controller
- 11.5.2
BIG-IP Analytics
- 11.5.2
BIG-IP LTM
- 11.5.2
BIG-IP AFM
- 11.5.2
BIG-IP PEM
- 11.5.2
BIG-IP ASM
- 11.5.2
Summary:
BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) is a version of the BIG-IP system that runs as a virtual machine. Supported modules include Local Traffic Manager, Global Traffic Manager, Application Security Manager, Access Policy Manager, Application Acceleration Manager, Policy Enforcement Manager, Application Firewall Manager, and Analytics. BIG-IP VE includes all features of device-based BIG-IP modules running on standard BIG-IP TMOS, except as noted in release notes and product documentation.
Contents:
- Supported platforms
- User documentation for this release
- New in 11.5.2
- New in 11.5.1
- New in 11.5.0
- Fixes in 11.5.2
- Fixes in 11.5.1
- Fixes in 11.5.0
- Behavior changes in 11.5.2
- Behavior changes in 11.5.1
- Behavior changes in 11.5.0
- Local Traffic Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
- Global Traffic Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
- Application Security Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
- Access Policy Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
- Application Acceleration Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
- Policy Enforcement Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
- Application Firewall Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
- Analytics-Virtual Edition known issues
- Contacting F5 Networks
- Legal notices
Supported platforms
This version of the software is supported in the following configurations. For a list of VE hypervisor support, see the Virtual Edition and Supported Hypervisors Matrix
Memory: 12 GB or more
All licensable module-combinations may be run on BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) guests provisioned with 12 GB or more of memory.
Memory: 8 GB
The following guidelines apply to VE guests configured with 8 GB of memory.
- No more than three modules should be provisioned together.
Memory: Less than 8 GB and more than 4 GB
The following guidelines apply to VE guests provisioned with less than 8 GB and more than 4 GB of memory.
- 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.
Memory: 4 GB or less
The following guidelines apply to VE 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.
User documentation for this release
For a list of Virtual Edition (VE) hypervisor support, see the Virtual Edition and Supported Hypervisors Matrix.
- BIG-IP LTM / VE 11.5.2 Documentation
- BIG-IP GTM / VE 11.5.2 Documentation
- BIG-IP ASM / VE 11.5.2 Documentation
- BIG-IP APM / VE 11.5.2 Documentation
- BIG-IP AAM / VE 11.5.2 Documentation
- BIG-IP PEM / VE 11.5.2 Documentation
- BIG-IP AFM / VE 11.5.2 Documentation
- BIG-IP Analytics / VE 11.5.2 Documentation
New in 11.5.0
Reduced Disk Size Options
With this release, there are 3 new disk size options available.
| Disk Size | Modules Supported | Features Supported |
|---|---|---|
| 7 GB | LTM only on a single slot | You cannot install upgrades or hotfixes to this version. |
| 31 GB | LTM only on two slots | This option can be extended and upgraded with new versions and hot fix updates. It does not allow installing any modules besides LTM, GTM, or LTM + GTM. |
| 100 GB | Supports all modules | This option can be extended and upgraded with new versions and hot fix updates. It allows installing any combination of other modules supported by the current version of BIG-IQ VE software. |
Extensible disk size
After you deploy the BIG-IP VE, if the hypervisor supports it, you can now expand the disk size to provide additional space for VE log, trace, config, and core files. Instruction for this task varies depends on your hypervisor type and is documented in the BIG-IP VE Setup Guide for your hypervisor.
High-Performance 10Gbps VE configuration for virtual appliance
This release provides high-performance 10Gbps VE configuration for virtual appliance deployments using VMware.
Increased Max SSL throughput
This release provides increased Max SSL throughput to 4Gbps for 10 GB BIG-IP LTM VE deployments.
25Mbps throughput license
25Mbps throughput license for high-density deployments with individual applications, a small number of applications, or a single tenant on all major hypervisors and AWS.
Updated hypervisors and Linux distributions
This release provides support for updated hypervisors and Linux distributions. For a list of VE hypervisor support, see the Virtual Edition and Supported Hypervisors Matrix.
Fixes in 11.5.1
| ID Number | Description |
|---|---|
| ID 448299 | The emulated IDE storage driver has been replaced with PV (para-virtualized) SCSI storage driver. PV SCSI driver gracefully handles disk I/O timeouts and recovers from them. |
Fixes in 11.5.0
| ID Number | Description |
|---|---|
| ID 367759 | On BIG-IP VE, modifying an interface's VLAN configuration from tagged to untagged, or untagged to tagged, can result in unavailability of traffic on that interface. Restarting the tmm with "bigstart restart tmm" will correct this condition, as will deleting and recreating the VLAN with desired tagging attributes. |
| ID 427415 | AWS instances with core counts (vCPUs) higher than 4 is able to license and operate in the expected way. |
| ID 428612 | "In order to make Intel SR-IOV work out-of-box, Intel VF's MTU has been reduced to 1500 in BIG-IP VE. VF's MTU has to be changed to be equal to or greater than its VLAN's MTU to support jumbo frame. A new feature is provided to make it happen. Steps to increase Intel VF's MTU in BIG-IP VE: - Append the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/f5-platform-virtual-applicance.conf file options unic max_mtu=<max_mtu_size> - reboot BIG-IP VE - OR, run: bigstart stop tmm rmmod unic modprobe unic bigstart start tmm" |
| ID 430655 | Improved debugging on TMM to include DB variable provision. |
Behavior changes in 11.5.2
There are no Virtual Edition-specific behavior changes specified for this release.
Behavior changes in 11.5.1
There are no Virtual Edition-specific behavior changes specified for this release.
Local Traffic Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
| ID Number | Description |
|---|---|
| ID 224507 | When VE is deployed on VMware, the management port might not correctly reflect the uplink port speed of the vSwitch that it is connected to. This should have no adverse affects on actual management port traffic. Workaround: |
| ID 324960 | "big3d daemon on Services screen (CR134045, ID 324960) The big3d daemon appears on the Services screen of the BIG-IP Configuration utility even though the daemon is not installed on the system." Workaround: |
| ID 346083 | "When you remove an interface from all VLANs, and then add the same interface, the interface status remains UNINITIALIZED, and you can only access the system from the console. To recover, manually edit bigip_base.conf, deleting the entries and running the command: 'load sys config'. An entry appears similar to the following: net interface 1.3 { media-fixed 10000T-FD }" Workaround: |
| ID 351199 | When importing an OVA into XenServer, CPU priority is not set. It is recommended that a higher priority be set on the VM. Using XenCenter, click on the General tab of the VM. Then click Properties. On the CPU and Memory tab, the VCPU priority should be configured at the highest value. Workaround: |
| ID 351367 | OVF import fails. This occurs when using XenCenter. XenCenter OVF wizard's Run Operating System Fixups option blocks appliance import. XenCenter OVF wizard's Run Operating System Fixups option blocks appliance import. Workaround: When importing the OVA into XenCenter, make sure Run Operating System Fixups is unchecked. |
| ID 351538 | "F5 Networks strongly recommends that the host system use CPUs with AMD-V or Intel-VT technology. This might require adjusting the systems BIOS or Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) configuration. For specific hypervisors, hardware assisted virtualization technologies might be required in order to boot BIG-IP VE. For detailed system requirements, see the hypervisor's documentation." Workaround: |
| ID 352456 | Host-based time synchronization can last a few minutes in order to align the clocks. Workaround: |
| ID 352856 | Errors occur when migrating SCF files between different BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) hypervisor software. This occurs on BIG-IP VE. "The configuration does not load, and the system posts the following error: BIGpipe interface creation error: 01070318:3: 'The requested media for interface 1.1 is invalid.'" Workaround: To work around this, remove the entire line that contains 'media fixed' statements for each interface. When the media capabilities are removed from the SCF before load, no error occurs. |
| ID 358355 | When deployed as a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine, BIG-IP VE must be configured with Static Memory Allocation. The use of Dynamic Memory Allocation is unsupported and might cause issues. Workaround: |
| ID 364704 | Taking a snapshot of the virtual machine's memory often pauses the virtual machine and may produce undesired results. To correct this problem on VMware hypervisors, do not include the virtual machine's memory when snapshots are taken. Workaround: |
| ID 366403 | After modifying the BIG-IP system configuration by adding or removing Network Interfaces, the interface numbering might appear out of order and NICs may appear that are no longer present. If the virtual interfaces on the BIG-IP VE system are changed after a binary MCPD database has been created, the system may not detect the change even after a subsequent reboot. To ensure that the system properly detects the new or removed interfaces, type the command "rm /var/db/mcpd*" at the BIG-IP VE command prompt, and reboot the system. TMM-to-vSwitch interface mapping can be viewed by comparing the MAC addresses of the interfaces displayed in the BIG-IP Configuration utility to those displayed in the hypervisors configuration. The interfaces may need a simple adjustment to map to the correct networks. Workaround: |
| ID 367862 | Network Interface Port Mirroring is not supported by BIG-IP VE with this release. Workaround: |
| ID 370367 | On BIG-IP VE only, changing the interface used by a VLAN from one to another might show degraded performance in the event that both interfaces are configured to participate on the same broadcast network. Restarting the TMM with "bigstart restart tmm" will restore performance and resolve the issue. Workaround: |
| ID 371458 | On a XenServer Host, all interfaces are expected to show up as 100TX-FD within tmsh. All application traffic handling interfaces will be shown with a media speed of 100 and an Active Duplex of half in the GUI for this release. This speed rating is simply cosmetic and not actually reflective of the speeds and duplex for BIG-IP VE on a XenServer host. The actual link is a high speed internal connection via a Virtual Network Interface within the hypervisor at speeds greater than 100Mbps. Workaround: |
| ID 371631 | BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) may incorrectly report the interface media duplex settings as none. The General Properties may show an incorrect Active Duplex setting when you navigate to Network :: Interfaces, and then click the interface. The output from the tmsh show network interface all-properties command may show incorrect information in the Media column. Running the command 'show net interface all-properties'. You are unable to confirm the current duplex setting of an interface. Workaround: To work around this issue, you can determine the interface media duplex setting for VE configurations not involving SR-IOV by running the following command: tmsh list net interface. Note: This workaround is valid only for VE configurations and only reports the VE's reported link state. A VM cannot determine any vSwitch's upstream link state via its own link state. VE knows about the link between it and the vSwitch, except in SR-IOV deployments, where there is no vSwitch and the link is direct. |
| ID 372540 | Migration of BIG-IP VE, whether live or powered off, will commonly incur an innocuous warning message similar to this on vSphere hypervisors: Virtual Ethernet card 'Network adapter 1' is not supported. This is not a limitation of the host in general, but of the virtual machine's configured guest OS on the selected host." This message is benign and can safely be ignored. Workaround: |
| ID 374064 | Import verification of the .ova may fail when using the XenCenter 5.6. OVA import wizard. It is suggested that XenCenter 5.6 users verify the .ova file signature as described on AskF5. Workaround: |
| ID 388118 | For IPv6 to work on KVM using a macvtap interface, the IFF_ALLMULTI setting must be enabled on the host interface. This is done by using "ifconfig <name of interface> allmulti". Workaround: |
| ID 390961 | Using certain NICs does not work to handle traffic and management operations. This occurs when using non-VIRTIO NICs to handle traffic and management operations. License becomes inoperative. This is a results of shifting MAC addresses on ethx interfaces. Workaround: Use only Virtio NICs for traffic and management. |
| ID 394817 | "VADC now supports CMP (that is, multiple TMMs running on the same box). For a rate limited license, the limit is divided by the number of TMMs, so each TMM is capped at a fraction of the total licensed limit. For example, if a 200M license with one connection has a throughput of 180Mbits/s before enabling CMP, then for two TMMs the expected throughput would be 90 Mbits/s, and with four TMMs, the expected throughput would be 45 Mbit/s." Workaround: |
| ID 404628 | BIG-IP Virtual Edition hosted on XenServer cannot have more than six network interfaces configured in the virtual machine definition for this release of software. Workaround: |
| ID 413587 | "The customer will see an extra interface when a Big-IP Virtual Edition is deployed on Citrix XenServer 6.1. This extra interface will have the same MAC address as the VE instance's management interface. The shell command 'ip list' will show one more interface that the user has configured through the hypervisor, and two of those interfaces shown will have the same MAC address." Virtual Edition deployed on Citrix XenServer 6.1 The management interface may be exposed to the TMM as a traffic interface. Workaround: A customer should use SR-IOV interfaces for VE instances deployed on Citrix XenServer 6.1. |
| ID 416201 | Community Xen: Only 2 PCI pass-through interfaces can be seen on the guest. This is an issue in the CentOS domain 0, and not the BIG-IP guest. Workaround: |
| ID 420092 | Non TCP packets from Linux host exceeds MTU need to be fragmented. Workaround: Disable tm.tcpsegmentoffload. |
| ID 495523 | MCPd goes into a restart loop after a change to the AWS Instance Type. This occurs in Virtual Edition (VE) after changing the underlying instance hardware in AWS, which is not supported behavior. The instance is not usable. There is no error message to indicate the failure. Workaround: Users can save the configuration on the BIG-IP system, instantiate a instance of the desired type, and apply the saved configuration. |
Global Traffic Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
There are no known issues specific to Global Traffic Manager/Link Controller-Virtual Edition.
Application Security Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
There are no known issues specific to Application Security Manager-Virtual Edition.
Access Policy Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
There are no known issues specific to Access Policy Manager-Virtual Edition.
Application Acceleration Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
There are no known issues specific to Application Acceleration Manager-Virtual Edition.
Policy Enforcement Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
There are no known issues specific to Policy Enforcement Manager-Virtual Edition.
Application Firewall Manager-Virtual Edition known issues
There are no known issues specific to Application Firewall Manager-Virtual Edition.
Analytics-Virtual Edition known issues
There are no known issues specific to Analytics-Virtual Edition.
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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