Lab 3.1: Update our Cloud Environment

When we deploy or scale-out a SSG. The provisioned instances will rely on the information specified in the Cloud Environment to know what it needs to deploy.

In the (Module1)Lab 1.2: Define your Cloud Environment, we defined the Cloud Environment used by our SSG SSGClass2

This Cloud Environment specifies a few information:

• vCenter credentials
• VMWare specific information like Datacenter name, resource pool, folder, …
• VM image template to clone and start as a new SSG instance
• Networking setup for the new VM image

The key component for the upgrade/scale-up use cases is the VM Image field. This field specifies the VM Template we need to clone as our new instance. What is important is that when we created this template we:

• used a specific F5 Virtual edition image that will enforce the version to use
• we allocated compute resources to it: vCPUs, Memory, Datastore to it.
• we specified the number of interfaces to attach to our Virtual edition

Here is the configuration of the VM template we use in our existing SSG SSGClass2

Here we can see that we use:

• 2 vCPUs
• 8 Gb of Memory
• BIG-IP version 13.1.1

You can also check the BIG-IP version by selecting the device part of the SSG.

If we need to upgrade AND/OR scale-up our SSG, we just need to do the following:

• Deploy a new F5 Virtual Edition image as a template with the relevant version
• Update (or not) the resources allocated to it if we want to scale up (more vCPUs, memory)

Note

we could also scale down a SSG if we realized we allocated too much compute to it

In this lab, we already have another VM template available to test this: BIGIP-14.1.0.5-0.0.5.ALL_1SLOT_template

We can review the configuration of this VM template:

• 4 vCPUs
• 8 Gb of Memory
• BIG-IP Version 14.0.0

So if we switch from our previous template to this one, we will UPGRADE our environment AND SCALE-UP:

• upgrade from 13.1.1 to 14.1.0
• add more vCPUs to the instances (2 -> 4 vCPUs)

In your BIG-IQ UI, Go to Applications > Environments > Cloud Environments, Select SSGClass2VMWareEnvironment to edit it.

Update the VM Image field to use the new VM Template: BIGIP-14.1.0.5-0.0.5.ALL_1SLOT_template

Warning

make sure the VMware tool are installed on the VM Image. Look at Create a BIG-IP VE clone template in BIG-IQ Knowledge Center for more details.

Click Save & Close. Now that our Cloud Environment is updated, we can upgrade our SSG.

Note

bear in the mind that from now on, if our SSG need to scale-out, it will use this new VM Template also