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Richard_Parry_2's avatar
Richard_Parry_2
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Jan 11, 2016

F5 Big IP 8900 Series License Recovery

Hi All,

 

We have an F5 Big IP 8900 LTM which we purchased used a couple of years ago. It was running v11.3 and used primarily in our office lab environment for load testing servers we setup for customers.

 

Unfortunately one of the HDD's died recently and despite it being a supposed mirrored pair it wouldn't boot properly. I replaced both HDD's with brand new supported Western Digital 1TB RE Drives and installed v11.6 from scratch - system is all back up and running, but minus the license.

 

I never did a backup of the system before it died, so I don't have the original license. The unit is out of warranty in 2014.

 

I used the serial number from the front of the system to obtain the base license code online - got an email from F5, but the base license key it sent is just the first 7 characters and not the rest, with the hyphens etc, which is weird.

 

We do have a much older Big IP 2400 LTM (pretty old from 2006) running 9.1 in the office too, and I tried the same online tool with the system license, but for this system it still sent just the beginning part of the base license code.

 

Any ideas how we can obtain the base license code?

 

I did speak to one of our F5 suppliers, AVNET, but they think we have to pay around $50,000 to get a new support contract, to then be able to "ask the question" of whether we can get a license key or not. Crazy!

 

Thanks ever so much for your help.

 

application delivery
BIG-IP

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  • Richard_Parry_2's avatar
    Richard_Parry_2
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jan 12, 2016

    Hi,

     

    Thanks very much for the reply.

     

    Unfortunately despite my best efforts I couldn't get any data from the one remaining drive. Somehow I think it must have corrupted. I tried various things on the actual system, as well as connecting it up to an existing Linux system. It just wouldn't talk with the drive. The other drive had actually completely failed and won't spin up.

     

    Thanks. Richard

     

  • Richard_Parry_2's avatar
    Richard_Parry_2
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jan 12, 2016

    Unfortunately I have nothing at all stored.

     

    I did try the portal system, and it set through the info. But it sent a 8 character license code and not the full license code. I tried it on another F5 system we have here and it did the same.

     

    The response for the 8900 LTM is;

     

    Base Key for F5 Product BIG-IP v9.x for XXXXXXXX (I have blanked the code to the 8 character just in case)

     

    From what I have read the format should be like this;

     

    AAAAA-BBBBB-CCCCC-DDDDD-EEEEEEE

     

    So even if it were just the first section, I don't know why the code comes through as 8 digits, when the usual format is only 5 digits for the first part of the key.