Applies To:
Show Versions
BIG-IQ Cloud
- 4.4.0
About OpenStack integration
BIG-IQ Cloud provides you with the tools to manage OpenStack versions 2013.1 (Grizzly) and 2013.2 (Havana) resources required to run applications. Management tasks include discovering BIG-IP VE virtual machines and discovering, creating, starting, and stopping OpenStack application servers running in the private cloud. You can use this feature to accommodate seasonal traffic fluctuations by periodically adding and retracting devices and application servers as needed. Additionally, you can provide tenants access to self-deployable iApps through OpenStack integration.
To provide access to these services for OpenStack tenants, you configure communication between OpenStack products, and BIG-IQ Cloud. Then, you associate an OpenStack cloud connector with a device, and create a catalog entry for a corresponding OpenStack service profile. The tenants to whom you give access to the catalog entry see it in their applications panel. From there, they can use it to self-deploy their own iApps.
Network requirements for communication with OpenStack cloud services
Before you can manage devices residing in an OpenStack private cloud, you must establish proper communication between the BIG-IQ Cloud and the OpenStack controller node. Generally, this means defining a network route between the BIG-IQ Cloud internal VLAN and the public Internet, or the OpenStack private cloud endpoint.
The BIG-IQ Cloud connector for OpenStack parses the OpenStack cloud's network naming convention as follows:
- Any network that contains the name mgmt, management, internal, or external is assumed to indicate a network type (always-on management network, internal network, and external network, respectively). If there are multiple networks, BIG-IQ Cloud uses the first network it finds with those names to communicate with the OpenStack cloud.
- If there are no networks with those names, BIG-IQ Cloud assigns the network type based on the order in which the network was discovered. For example, if BIG-IQ Cloud discovers networks 10.10.10.0/24, 20.20.20.0/24, and 30.30.30/24, it assigns them as follows:
- Management network 10.10.10.0/24
- External network 20.20.20.0/24
- Internal network 30.30.30.0/24
This is important to know, because when you create a new application server in OpenStack through BIG-IQ Cloud, you are allowed to select the internal or external network, but not the management network.
OpenStack Compute edits required to use BIG-IP VE systems
Before you create BIG-IP VE systems in an OpenStack environment, you must edit a file on each OpenStack Compute node. If you do not edit this file, any BIG-IP VE system you configure fails to start.
Discovering devices located in the OpenStack cloud
After you license and perform the initial configuration for the BIG-IQ system, you can discover BIG-IP devices running version 11.3 or later. For proper communication, you must configure each F5 device you want to manage with a route to the BIG-IQ system. If you do not specify the required network communication route between the devices, then device discovery fails.
For devices located in a third-party cloud, you must know the internal self IP address (For OpenStack or VMware cloud) or the external self IP address for Amazon EC2. You also must configure BIG-IQ Cloud with DNS so it can resolve the endpoint by name. To access this setting, log in to BIG-IQ System, select the BIG-IQ system you want to modify, and click the gear icon.