Provision BIG-IQ (VMware)

Description:

In this lab, we will deploy both BIG-IQ CM and DCD in VMware ESXi. Refer to below AskF5 link for official documentation.

Step 1: VMware ESXi Requirements

The vSphere virtual machine guest environment for the BIG-IQ Virtual Edition (VE), at minimum, must include:

4 virtual CPUs
16 GB RAM
- Important: When you provision the amount of RAM allocated to the virtual machine, it must match the amount of reserved RAM.
1 VMXNET3 virtual network adapter
1 virtual network adapter
At least 128GB disk

Follow below steps to deploy 2 BIG-IQ CM devices. You can repeat these same steps to deploy your BIG-IQ DCD device(s).

Important

DCD is required to use analytics, application dashboard, and other visualization features.

Download the BIG-IQ Centralized Manager ova file from downloads.f5.com

Note

Use the LARGE (500GB) footprint image for your BIG-IQ DCD devices.
From the ESXi Host Client, click Create / Register VM
Select Deploy a virtual machine from an OVF or OVA file, click Next
Next, drag and drop the ova file you downloaded earlier, enter in a name for the instance and click Next
Select your desired storage location and click Next
Confirm the EULA by clicking I agree and then click Next
Select your management and Internal networks (External is optional), select Thick provisioning, then click Next

Note

In this lab we will use a separate Internal network for communication with the DCD
Confirm your settings then click Finish
When provisioning is complete, you will see BIG-IQ appear in the list of virtual machines
After BIG-IQ boots, click on the instance, click Console and choose a method to open the console
Log in using the root/default credentials and type in config to configure the management ip.
Access the management IP over HTTPS and log in using the default credentials (admin/admin).