Lab 7.1: VMWare BIG-IP VE Creation

Note

Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

Lab environment access

If you have not yet visited the page Getting Started, please do so.

Tasks

Prerequisites to this module:
  • None
  1. Verify your BIG-IQ “Cloud Provider” for VMWare

Navigate to Applications > Environments > Cloud Providers

image01

View the Cloud Provider object with your vCenter Hostname.

image02
  1. Verify your BIG-IQ “Cloud Environment” for VMWare

Navigate to Applications > Environments > Cloud Environments

image03

Settings for our already created Cloud Environment should be left unchanged.

image04

Warning

Several parts of the Cloud Environment you may not want to be configured because you are planning on using F5 Declarative Onboarding.
  • Device Templates are used for Service Scaling Groups, not a single or cluster of BIG-IP.
  • Ensure the IP Pool Alias Mapping: IP Pool is set to “None”.
  • VM image: Follow K44134742 to install VMware tools on the VM template (required).
  1. Creating your BIG-IP in VMWare

Navigate to Devices > BIG-IP VE Creation > and choose Create

image05

Fill in the Create BIG-IP VE Options.

BIG-IP VE Creation  
Task Name Deploy BIG-IP VE in VMWare
BIG-IP VE Name bigipvm01
Description Created with BIG-IQ
Cloud Environment VMWare-environment
Address DHCP
Number of BIG-IP VE to Create 1

Once all the attributes are configured Create the VE.

image06

BIG-IQ gathers all the needed pieces from our Provider, Environment, and Creation options. This configuration is sent to the VMWare API for building the instance.

image07

To verify the creation of the BIG-IP VE, you can login to the vCenter server

image08

Note

vCenter credentials are administrator@vsphere.local / Purpl3$lab, and you MUST login to the Jump host to access vCenter

BIG-IP VE Creation is complete from here we can see BIG-IQ harvested the DHCP IP address.

image09 image11

Lab 2 of this module will cover Onboarding the newly created VMWare VE.

Note

If you try to open BIG-IP web interface, to bypass the Google Chrome “Your connection is not private” Warning, just type in blindly thisisunsafe.

See Class 2 Module 1 Lab 4 for help with Troubleshooting.