F5 LTM VE–Setting up basic load balancing (CLI!)

So since I’m such a huge CLI guy I thought that I’d go back through my previous F5 LTM VE posts and do it all through the CLI.  To be honest, Im brushing up on the topic so that I can someday sit the F5 exams.  Not sure when that will be but I’m hoping soon.  So, I deployed the OVA template into VMWare again and I’m going to do the full setup again.  Not as much explanation this time but I’ll walk through it.

Management IP
Boot the VM up, log in with default credentials, launch the config wizard, setup your management IP.

License
Fire up a SSH connection to the management IP you configured.  At the command prompt enter the following command…

get_dossier –b <Your Registration Key>

This will kick out the dossier file.  Copy the dossier, browse over to activate.f5.com, select the activation method you are looking for, and enter your dossier.  After accepting the terms you should get a license file kicked back to you that looks something like this…

image

Copy the entire text contents of the text box and head back to your SSH session.  Edit the contents of /config/bigip.license with vi…

vi /config/bigip.license

Its a new file so go into insert mode and past the contents.  Write the file and then issue the following command to restart the BigIp processes

bigstart restart

You should notice that your prompt changed from ‘NO LICENSE’ to ‘INOPERATIVE’ after the restart.  That’s a good sign.

image

Hostname
tmsh modify sys global-settings hostname LTM2.interubernet.local

Create VLANs
tmsh create net vlan external interfaces add {1.2}
tmsh create net vlan internal interfaces add {1.1}

Create Self IPS
tmsh create net self 10.20.20.40/24 vlan external
tmsh create net self 192.168.1.40/24 vlan internal

Create HTTP_POOL Pool
tmsh create ltm pool HTTP_POOL load-balancing-mode round-robin members add {192.168.1.41:80 192.168.1.42:80 192.168.1.43:80}

Create HTTP_TEST Virtual Server
tmsh create ltm virtual HTTP_TEST destination 10.20.20.40:80 profiles add {tcp http} pool HTTP_POOL snat automap

Save the config
tmsh save sys config

And that’s it!  You should be able to hit 10.20.20.40 and see round robin traffic between the three web servers.

4 thoughts on “F5 LTM VE–Setting up basic load balancing (CLI!)

  1. arun

    hi i am new to F5 installed when i login from browser fron GUi interface it gives me error.
    i have installed LTM Ve F5 ver 13 on vmware 10 with 18 gb of HDD and 2 gb RAM

    Big IP has counetered a configration problem that may prevent the configuration from functioning properly ”

    “To prevent advesrse affect on the system , F5 network recomends you restrict your use of the configuration utility to to critical tasks onlyuntil the problem is resolved, beware that attempting to modeifty your configuration in this state with the configuration utility may cause your configuration to be overwritten..””

    Reply
  2. Praveen

    Hi I have some experience on GUI but not in command line. If possible can you explain how to write script to migration or creating Vips ,pools,monitors ? I know only few commands to troubleshoot ? Can you guide me in the right way.

    Thanks,
    Praveen

    Reply
  3. Hardik Bhut

    Hi, As you have created external vlan with ip address 10.20.20.40/24 and you are using that ip in virtual server destination path. I m in only one network. I don’t have any external network. How can I configure it in one network without using any external IP ? I am in one LAN network.

    Reply

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