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MOHIT_125417's avatar
MOHIT_125417
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Apr 08, 2016
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Where to Study about BIG-IP LTM VE

Dear Experts,

 

My company is planning to buy BIG IP LTM VE.Can someone explain me where to study about LTM VE from baiscs.

 

application delivery
LTM
  • Seth_81884's avatar
    Seth_81884
    Apr 08, 2016

    Hello MOHIT,

     

    That is a pretty big question.

     

    I will make an attempt to break it down into two parts.

     

    Learning the basics of “BIG-IP LTM VE”.

     

    If you are familiar with BIG-IP on Hardware, you’re in luck, it operates in much the same way. The same GUI, same commands and for the most part, the same features are available. (Some exclusions of course, hardware cards etc.) If you are new to BIG-IP, F5 University has free training https://f5.com/education and DevCentral has Lots of VE centric articles, guides and a place to ask questions.

     

    If you are more of a video learner, check out the “F5 DevCentral” channel on YouTube.

     

    If you have the BIG-IP part down and are looking for general VE guidance. The first decision is to determine which Hypervisor your organization is going to use or has access too. Supported types can be found here. https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/ve-supported-hypervisor-matrix.html?sr=52979658

     

    Each type has pluses and minuses, the cost of licensing is the first hurtle. I would try and use what your organization may already have in house, so you have inside help if needed. From there, the vendor of choice probably has the best guidance on deploying the hypervisor. It may be easier to start on local equipment but BIG-IP is also available in both AWS and Azure clouds.

     

    To give you a very “basic” configuration of a test bed running BIG-IP VE. Once you have the Hypervisor installed, you should configure it with 4 virtual networks: management, external, internal, HA. The management network can be real and used for licensing and connectivity. The others can be virtual and not connected to anything. (They will only talk to things on the same vSwitch)

     

    Now you’re ready to deploy a BIG-IP.

     

    General guidelines are: The guest needs a minimum of 2vCPU and 4Gb of memory. For the disk space, it should be “Thin Provisioned” so you can use only what you need at the time.

     

    We have guides available for each type of hypervisor. Here is the one for VMware: https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/bigip-ve-setup-vmware-esxi-12-0-0/3.html?sr=52979966

     

    Enjoy!

     

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  • Seth_81884's avatar
    Seth_81884
    Historic F5 Account
    Apr 08, 2016

    Hello MOHIT,

     

    That is a pretty big question.

     

    I will make an attempt to break it down into two parts.

     

    Learning the basics of “BIG-IP LTM VE”.

     

    If you are familiar with BIG-IP on Hardware, you’re in luck, it operates in much the same way. The same GUI, same commands and for the most part, the same features are available. (Some exclusions of course, hardware cards etc.) If you are new to BIG-IP, F5 University has free training https://f5.com/education and DevCentral has Lots of VE centric articles, guides and a place to ask questions.

     

    If you are more of a video learner, check out the “F5 DevCentral” channel on YouTube.

     

    If you have the BIG-IP part down and are looking for general VE guidance. The first decision is to determine which Hypervisor your organization is going to use or has access too. Supported types can be found here. https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/ve-supported-hypervisor-matrix.html?sr=52979658

     

    Each type has pluses and minuses, the cost of licensing is the first hurtle. I would try and use what your organization may already have in house, so you have inside help if needed. From there, the vendor of choice probably has the best guidance on deploying the hypervisor. It may be easier to start on local equipment but BIG-IP is also available in both AWS and Azure clouds.

     

    To give you a very “basic” configuration of a test bed running BIG-IP VE. Once you have the Hypervisor installed, you should configure it with 4 virtual networks: management, external, internal, HA. The management network can be real and used for licensing and connectivity. The others can be virtual and not connected to anything. (They will only talk to things on the same vSwitch)

     

    Now you’re ready to deploy a BIG-IP.

     

    General guidelines are: The guest needs a minimum of 2vCPU and 4Gb of memory. For the disk space, it should be “Thin Provisioned” so you can use only what you need at the time.

     

    We have guides available for each type of hypervisor. Here is the one for VMware: https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/bigip-ve-setup-vmware-esxi-12-0-0/3.html?sr=52979966

     

    Enjoy!