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Manual Chapter : Device Discovery

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BIG-IQ Cloud

  • 4.5.0
Manual Chapter
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About device discovery and management

You use the BIG-IQ system to centrally manage resources located on BIG-IP devices in your local network, in a public cloud like Amazon EC2, or in combination.

The first step to managing devices is making the BIG-IQ system aware of them through the discovery process. To discover a device, you provide the BIG-IQ system with the device IP address, user name, and password. Alternatively, you can upload a CSV file to discover a large number of devices. When you discover a device, you place it into a group. These groups help you organize devices with similar features, like those in a particular department or running a certain software version.

After you discover devices, you can view and export inventory details about those devices for easy asset management, and you can modify device configurations as required without having to log in to each device individually.

Discovering BIG-IP devices in your network

After you license and perform the initial configuration for the BIG-IQ system, you can discover BIG-IP devices running version 11.5 or later. For proper communication between the managing BIG-IQ system and the devices it manages, you must configure the BIG-IQ system with a route to each F5 device you want to manage. If you do not specify the required network communication route between the devices, then device discovery fails.

You can discover a device by providing the BIG-IQ system with the device's IP address, user name, and password.

  1. Log in to BIG-IQ Device with your administrator user name and password.
  2. Hover over the Devices header, click the + icon when it appears, and then select New Device. The Devices panel expands to show the New Device screen.
  3. In the IP Address field, type the IP address of the device. The preferred address for discovering a BIG-IP device is its management IP address.
  4. (This step applies only when the BIG-IQ system is hosted on AWS version 4.4 or later.) If the BIG-IQ system and the BIG-IP device are on different subnets, then you need to log in to the BIG-IQ system using SSH to specify an IP route between them.
    • If the BIG-IQ system and the BIG-IP device communicate using the management IP address, then there must be a default route specified. If there is no default route, issue a route command.
      1. Use SSH to log in to the BIG-IQ system's management IP address as an admin user.
      2. Type the following command: run /util bash
      3. Type the following command: route <route name> {gw <x.x.x.x> network default}
    • If the BIG-IQ system and the BIG-IP device use something other than the management IP address to communicate, then issue a tmsh route command.
      1. Use SSH to log in to the BIG-IQ system's management IP address as an admin user.
      2. Type the following command: create net route <route name> {gw <x.x.x.x> network default}
      Note: Where <route name> is a user-provided name to identify the new route, and <x.x.x.x> is the IP address of the default gateway for the internal network.
  5. (This step applies only if the BIG-IQ system is not hosted on AWS version 4.4 or later.) If the BIG-IQ system and the BIG-IP device are on different subnets, then you need to log in to the BIG-IQ system using SSH to specify an IP route between them.
    • If the BIG-IQ system and the BIG-IP device communicate using the management IP address, then there must be a default route specified. If there is no default route, issue a route command.
      1. Use SSH to log in to the BIG-IQ system's management IP address as the root user.
      2. Type the following command: route <route name> {gw <x.x.x.x> network default}
    • If the BIG-IQ system and the BIG-IP device use something other than the management IP address to communicate, then issue a tmsh route command.
      1. Use SSH to log in to the BIG-IQ system's management IP address as the root user.
      2. Type the following command: tmsh create net route <route name> {gw <x.x.x.x> network default}
      Note: Where <route name> is a user-provided name to identify the new route, and <x.x.x.x> is the IP address of the default gateway for the internal network.
  6. To change the root user name, type a new name in the Root User Name field.
  7. Type a password for the root user in the Root Password field.
  8. In the User Name and Password fields, type the administrator user name and password for the managed device.
  9. For the Auto Update Framework setting, select the Update Automatically check box to direct the BIG-IQ system to perform any required REST framework updates on the BIG-IP device. For the BIG-IQ system to properly manage a BIG-IP device, the BIG-IP device must be running the most recent REST framework.
    Important: When you update the REST framework for BIG-IP devices running version 11.6 or earlier, the traffic management interface (TMM) restarts. Before you update the REST framework on a BIG-IP device, verify that no critical network traffic is targeted to that device. Additionally, In any system upgrade scenario, the potential exists for unexpected errors. Because there is not currently an automatic recovery and rollback feature, if an upgrade fails, it is conceivable that a BIG-IP device would not be left in the pre-discovery state. If you want to roll back the upgrade due to an error or any other reason, the recommended recovery for this situation is to perform a partition restore (restoring both the pre-discovery management components and any related configuration).
  10. Click the Add button.
The BIG-IQ system populates the properties of the device that you added, and displays the device in the Devices panel. Its configuration files display in the Configuration panel.

Viewing and exporting device inventory details

You can view detailed data about the managed devices in your network. Information includes associated IP addresses, platform type, license details, software version, and so forth. In addition to viewing this information, you can also export it to a CSV file and edit the data as required to create reports for asset management.

  1. Log in to BIG-IQ Device with your administrator user name and password.
  2. At the top of the screen, click Configuration.
  3. In the Devices panel, click the gear icon next to the device you want to view, and then select Properties. The panel expands to display device properties.
  4. To export the data to a CSV file, click the Export button. You can modify the report as required in Microsoft Excel.
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