Lab 7.2: Device Onboarding with BIG-IQ

Note

Estimated time to complete: 15 minutes

Lab environment access

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

Tasks

Prerequisites to this module:
  • A BIG-IP available that you would like to target with F5 Declarative Onboarding
  • Connectivity to/from the BIG-IQ (CM/DCD) and the BIG-IP if you are going to onboard the BIG-IP into BIG-IQ
  1. From the VE Creation in BIG-IQ, choose Onboard:
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Note

Although you can start BIG-IP onboarding from multiple locations, we selected our VMWare instance from the VE Create screen.

  1. Build our Declarative Onboarding configuration

F5 Declarative Onboarding like Application Services 3 utilizes Classes as configuration objects. If you were to build DO without BIG-IQ, you would need to structure the Classes into a payload that can be sent at a BIG-IP. From the BIG-IQ Onboard Properties screen, we can see the DO classes available to us, which will form the payload to be sent at a targeted BIG-IP.

The two main differences between DO native and BIG-IQ with DO are the BIG-IQ Settings, and the License classes.
  • The BIG-IQ settings class is used to replace the Discovery and Import process of traditional BIG-IPs into the BIG-IQ platform.
  • The License class can be used to license the BIG-IP VE with a regKey directly or utilizing a licensePool from either the Current BIG-IQ or a different BIG-IQ
Required Parameters for DO with created VMWare instances
  • Target Host
  • Target Username
  • Target Passphrase
  • Onboard Class License
  • Onboard Class User

Declarative Onboarding for VE in VMWare can be the most complex deployment of the 3 different styles. It requires two sets of admin credentials in three different DO Classes. The default admin credentials are used to access the BIG-IP from BIG-IQ, and then to license it, however, the third set of admin credentials are needed. BIG-IP deployments 14+ require an admin password change the first login, so under the User Class, we will be required to change the password.

Warning

If using a pool license when onboarding a BIG-IP VE device running version 14.+, you must supply the BIG-IP admin and user names, same as the ones entered for the `User` Class.

Warning

In TMOS versions 14+ the root account is set to the same password as the Admin account when changed, if you do not want this specify a different password for the root account in Declarative Onboarding.

Note

You do not need to have created the BIG-IP VE from BIG-IQ to send Declarative Onboarding payloads. If you did create the VE from BIG-IQ, it would show up in the BIG-IP VE drop-down list; if you did not create it, you would need to specify the Target information.

Configure Declarative Onboarding for our VMWare BIG-IP VE

Device  
BIG-IP VE bigipvm01
Target Host 10.1.1.237
Target Port  
Target Username admin
Target Passphrase admin
Target Ssh Key  
Target Timeout  
Hostname vmware-ve.example.com
Label  
BIG-IQ Settings  
Snapshot Working Config UNCHECKED
Fail Import On Conflict UNCHECKED
Conflict Policy USE_BIGIQ
Device Conflict Policy USE_BIGIP
Versioned Conflict Policy KEEP_VERSION
Cluster Name  
Use BIG-IQ Sync UNCHECKED
Deploy When DSC Changes Pen.. UNCHECKED
Stats Config default
Access Module Properties  
License  
Name myLicense
License Type licensePool
License Pool Current BIG-IQ byol-pool
Overwrite UNCHECKED
SKU Keyword1  
SKU Keyword2  
Unit Of Measure yearly
Hypervisor vmware
BIG-IP Username admin
BIG-IP Password u7BnD@4f5
BIG-IQ Host  
BIG-IQ Username  
BIG-IQ Password  
BIG-IQ Password URI  
Reachable CHECKED
Revoke From Current BIG-IQ byol-pool

Warning

In the License class, you must supply the same BIG-IP admin username and password as the ones entered for the User class. Also the Hypervisor needs to be selected only if reachable = false.

Provision  
Name myProvision
AFM  
AM  
APM  
ASM nominal
AVR nominal
DOS  
FPS  
GTM  
ILX  
LC  
LTM nominal
PEM  
SWG  
URLDB  
DNS  
Name myDns
Name Servers 8.8.8.8
Name Servers 8.8.4.4
Search example.com
NTP  
Name myNtp
Servers time.google.com
Timezone America/Los_Angeles
USER  
Name admin
User Type regular
Keys  
Password u7BnD@4f5
Shell tmsh
Partition Access all-partition role:admin
VLAN  
Name internal-vlan
MTU  
Tag  
Interface 1.2 Select…
VLAN  
Name external-vlan
MTU  
Tag  
Interface 1.1 Select…
Self IP  
Name internal-self
Address 10.1.20.237/24
Traffic Group traffic-group-local-only
VLAN internal-vlan
Allow Service default
Self IP  
Name external-self
Address 10.1.10.237/24
Traffic Group traffic-group-local-only
VLAN external-vlan
Allow Service default
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With the configuration, set click the Onboard button.

Similar to Application Templates and AS3 Templates, Declarative Onboarding has a Sample API request to see what this payload would look like being sent programmatically into the BIG-IQ.

image12

BIG-IQ gathers all the needed pieces from our DO options. These are sent to the BIG-IP VE target API for configuring our device.

image16

Once onboarding is complete, the BIG-IP VE will be a managed BIG-IP within BIG-IQ and can be used for Application and Service Deployments.

image17

Utilizing the Jump host, we can login to the newly created BIG-IP with our newly created credentials from DO and see objects, and the BIG-IP is ready for use.

Note

Because we used the BIG-IQ DO Class our BIG-IP was added to our BIG-IQ under a managed device

image23

Warning

In case you get following error: “Task Failed: Failed to complete onboarding task: Unexpected response from declartive onboarding: code: 404, message: Please confirm Declartive Onboarding (DO) is running on BIG-IQ. See log for details.”, restart restnoded on the BIG-IQ CM. SSH the BIG-IQ CM server and execute bigstart restart restnoded.