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BIG-IQ Cloud
- 4.2.0
Summary:
This release note documents version 4.2.0 of BIG-IQ Cloud.
Contents:
- Product description
- Supported platform
- Screen resolution requirement
- Browser support
- User documentation for this release
- Software installation
- Preparing BIG-IQ Cloud high availability systems for upgrade
- Upgrading a BIG-IQ system
- New features
- Fixes
- Known issues
- Removing BIG-IQ system services from a BIG-IP device
- Contacting F5 Networks
- Legal notices
Product description
Cloud administrators can use BIG-IQ Cloud to supply tenants with on-demand access to resources such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services. These cloud resources can be located on BIG-IP devices in a private local network, a public third-party cloud service, or a combination of both.
Each tenant has restricted and dedicated access to resources based on their tenant role and user account. Cloud space can be expanded, retracted, and reallocated to tenants as needed, providing flexible resource balancing.
Screen resolution requirement
To properly display, the BIG-IQ system requires that your screen resolution is set to 1280x1024 or higher.
Browser support
BIG-IQ Cloud supports the following browsers and versions:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer version 9 and later
- Mozilla Firefox version 18.x and later
- Google Chrome version 18.x and later
User documentation for this release
For a comprehensive list of documentation that is relevant to this release, refer to the BIG-IQ 4.2.0 Documentation page.
Software installation
For procedures about specifying network options and performing initial configuration, refer to the BIG-IQ System: Licensing and Initial Configuration guide.
Preparing BIG-IQ Cloud high availability systems for upgrade
Upgrading a BIG-IQ system
Before you can upgrade the BIG-IQ system, you must perform the following tasks:
- Reactivate your current license to ensure that you have a valid service check date.
- Download the .iso file for the upgrade from F5 Downloads to /shared/images on the BIG-IQ system. If you need to create this directory, use the exact name /shared/images.
- Using the management port, log in to the system and boot into an installation location other than the target for the installation.
- Locate the user configuration set (UCS) in the /var/local/ucs directory on the source installation location, and copy the UCS file to another system for safe keeping.
New features
Active-active high availability support
BIG-IQ Cloud now supports high availability configurations in an active-active pair.
Improved VMware integration
This release of BIG-IQ Cloud includes integration with VMware NSX version 6.0 and VMware vCloud Networking and Security version 5.5.
Device inventory
Starting in this release, you can view details 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.
Enhanced statistics and performance monitoring
You can now view the individual statistics and performance trends of traffic to your applications and your application servers.
OpenStack support
This release includes management tools for OpenStack private cloud resource integration. This management includes discovering, creating, starting, and stopping BIG-IP VE virtual machines and application servers running in the private cloud.
Automated Amazon EC2 elasticity
You can now configure BIG-IQ Cloud to automatically provision and deploy resources based on tenant-specified capacity thresholds, ensuring that traffic to applications is not interrupted when volume to customer's applications unexpectedly increases. When short-term volume increases subside, resources are easily retracted. This feature is not compatible for BIG-IP devices running 11.4.1 and earlier.
Licensing pools
The BIG-IQ system now helps you manage resource usage in a dynamic application environment through the use of license pools. Each license pool is limited to a specific number of licenses. After you perform the initial license activation, the BIG-IQ system automatically grants and revokes licenses for the BIG-IP virtual edition systems as resource demands change. This gives you the flexibility to license devices only as needed, keeping your operating costs fixed. You can also use different license pools for different applications, allowing for flexible provisioning options. This feature is not compatible for BIG-IP devices running 11.4.1 and earlier.
Fixes
| Issue | Description |
|---|---|
| 418899 | Applications that a tenant creates now properly display in the catalog panel for the cloud administrator. |
| 418490 | In previous releases, VMware vSphere hypervisor returned TMM restart messages when using the four-core configuration option. This issue is resolved and the errors no longer occur. |
Known issues
| Issue | Description | Workaround (if available) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 441286 | If you start manually activating a license pool and the process is interrupted (either by closing or navigating away from the screen), BIG-IQ Cloud saves the license pool in a partially complete state. To change the license pool's name, you must complete the license pool activation process, or delete the incomplete pool and start again. | ||
| 441278 | The elasticity settings and pool license features introduced in this release do not support BIG-IP versions 11.4.1 and older. | ||
| 441064 | After performing an upgrade to BIG-IQ Cloud version 4.2, previously discovered BIG-IP devices display with a 404 REST error on the properties screen of the Device panel. If you attempt to re-discover a BIG-IP device, BIG-IQ Cloud returns a "Device not found" error message. | To successfully re-discover BIG-IP devices, contact the device's tenants and have them remove their applications. Once the applications are removed, re-discover the BIG-IP devices. | |
| 441053 | When BIG-IQ Cloud is configured with server elasticity enabled, the deployed application does not always populate with the proper number of servers for the tenant in the Servers panel when expansion is required. | ||
| 441049 | If you restart the BIG-IQ system, health statistics no longer display for the Device panel. | To recover and display the health statistics, re-discover managed BIG-IP devices. | |
| 440945 | When you hover on a server that displays in an error state in the Servers panel, it does not display the reason for the error as it should. | View the /var/log/restjavad.0.log or /stats "health.summary" to view the reason for the error. | |
| 440944 | If a cloud administrator creates a catalog entry and does not specify that the Cloud Connector is tenant property tenant selectable, server elasticity options do not display for the application in the tenant's view. | To provide server elasticity options to a tenant, you must leave the Cloud Connector setting as Tenant Selectable. | |
| 440863 | If you delete a BIG-IQ peer from a high availability active-active pair, and then you add the deleted BIG-IQ system as a standby in an active-standby pair (or again as an active system in an active-active pair), the BIG-IQ peer does not successfully back up the primary BIG-IQ system. | After you delete a BIG-IQ system from a high availability active-active pair, create a BIG-IQ system UCS backup for disaster recovery. Then reset the system to factory settings by typing the following command on that device: bigstart stop restjavad && rm -rf /var/config/rest && bigstart start restjavad You can add it back to a high availability pair and they will properly synchronize. | |
| 440821 | When an elasticity threshold is met for either expansion or contraction of resources, a Pool Expanding notification displays in the Activities panel with the benign message, "The name of the threshold is null". | ||
| 440531 | If a query times out, the BIG-IQ user interface may become unresponsive. | To work around this issue, refresh your browser. | |
| 440333 | If you delete a BIG-IQ peer from a high availability active-active pair, then add the same BIG-IQ system back to the same, or to another high availability pair, data between the devices no longer synchronizes. | After you delete a BIG-IQ system from a high availability active-active pair, create a BIG-IQ system UCS backup for disaster recovery. Then reset the system to factory settings by typing the following command on that device: bigstart stop restjavad && rm -rf /var/config/rest && bigstart start restjavad You can add it back to a high availability pair and they will properly synchronize. | |
| 439026 | The BIG-IQ system cannot search for IPv6 addresses within a subnet. Queries for addresses contained within a subnet will return incomplete results. | When searching for IPv6 addresses, you must specify an explicit address ranges as a substitute for CIDR notation. | |
| 437741 | If you have not configured an internal VLAN and an associated self IP address on the BIG-IQ system or a managed BIG-IP device, you will receive the following message (logged to the BIG-IP restjavad.0.log) every minute for each system and device. [8100/shared/identified-devices IdentifiedDevicesWorker][failed] java.net.ProtocolException: Status code:401 | You must configure an internal VLAN and self IP address for the BIG-IQ system and all managed devices. | |
| 434930 | You cannot use a host name to add a device. | When you discover a new device, you must use its IP address. | |
| 431398 | When booting the BIG-IQ system, it may display the following warning in the console or logs: "SKIPPING unix_config_httpd: /defaults/config/templates/xui.tmpl doesn't exist!!!" This message is benign and has no impact on the BIG-IQ system's functionality. | You can ignore this benign message. | |
| 428071 | When you install the required BIG-IQ components on BIG-IP devices running on a VIPRION system with more than one blade, the components load only on the primary blade. | To install the required components on the remaining blades, for each blade, run the update_bigip.sh script, then disable the blade through TMUI. After you run the script on all blades, re-enable them through TMUI. | |
| 426720 | If you discover BIG-IP devices running version 11.3 and then later discover devices running version 11.4, BIG-IQ Cloud deploys applications only to the devices running BIG-IP version 11.3. The BIG-IQ Cloud catalog does not currently include different iApps versions. The supported version of iApps is determined by the first device managed by BIG-IQ Cloud. |
Removing BIG-IQ system services from a BIG-IP device
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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