Manage BIG-IP vCMP Systems

You can manage a BIG-IP using Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (vCMP) with the F5 Integration for OpenStack Neutron LBaaS.

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Prerequisites

  • Licensed, operational BIG-IP chassis with support for vCMP.
  • Licensed, operational BIG-IP vCMP guest running on a vCMP host.
  • Administrative access to the vCMP host(s) and guest(s) you will manage with F5 LBaaSv2.
  • F5 Agent and F5 Driver installed on the Neutron controller.
  • Knowledge of BIG-IP vCMP configuration and administration.

Caveats

  • VLAN and FLAT are the only network types supported for use with vCMP.

Configuration

Edit the Device driver/iControl Driver settings and L2 Segmentation Mode settings sections of the F5 Agent configuration file.

  1. Add the icontrol_vcmp_hostname. Multiple values can be comma-separated.

    #
    icontrol_vcmp_hostname = 1.2.3.4
    #
    
  2. Configure the icontrol_hostname parameter with the IP address(es) of the vCMP guest(s):

    #
    icontrol_hostname = 10.11.12.13, 14.15.16.17
    #
    
  3. Set advertised_tunnel_types to vlan or flat, as appropriate for your environment.

    Tip

    Leave the advertised_tunnel_types setting empty (as in the example below) if the ML2 plugin provider:network_type is FLAT or VLAN.

    #
    advertised_tunnel_types =
    #
    

Learn more

Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing lets you run multiple instances of BIG-IP software on a single hardware platform. The vCMP host allocates a share of the hardware resources to each vCMP guest. Each guest has its own management IP address, self IP addresses, virtual servers, and so on. Each guest can receive and process application traffic with no knowledge of other guests on the system. vCMP allows you to delegate management of BIG-IP instances, meaning users who need to manage LBaaS objects don’t need to have full administrative access to the BIG-IP device.

Use Case

The F5 Agent can manage one (1) or more vCMP hosts with one (1) or more guests per host. You can configure vCMP hosts as a device service cluster. [1] If a vCMP host fails (taking its guests with it), another vCMP host in the cluster can take over managing its traffic.

Footnotes

[1]See Device Service Clustering for vCMP Systems