Forum Discussion

Debizzle_184925's avatar
Debizzle_184925
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Mar 06, 2015

BIG-IP in VirtualBox

Hey I wondering have any of you guys and girls tried converting the ova. file to the .ovf using the ovf tool from VMware then running the ovf through virtualbox?

 

I have not tried to see if this works because I dont want to screw my license up if I cant get it to run. Decided to come here first.

 

  • Hamish's avatar
    Hamish
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus

    Just create a new guest and install from ISO. Then apply a license.

     

    H

     

  • Hamish's avatar
    Hamish
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus

    The OVA is a pre-configured VM. It's created by F5 to make it easy for you to take it and drop it onto VMWare (It's what you'd call a software appliance).

     

    However you also have the ability to just install from the ISO on a VM of your own choosing. Because at the end of the day, it's 'just' another Linux host running some rather clever software.

     

    Once it's installed in a VM (With the appropriate compatible drivers etc) as far as the host is concerned, it's just a slightly different sized & specced BigIP.. (e.g. You can vary HDD size, numbers and types of virtual network interfaces, CPU's, memory etc).

     

    H

     

  • Ok Hamish Im confused I only want to run this in lab enviroment to learn F5 using perhaps virtualbox. I chose virtualbox so I can maybe use it in gns3 as well. From what I have read, people are unable to get it running on the virtualbox so I was asking had someone set it up that particular way.

     

  • Hamish's avatar
    Hamish
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus

    Don't be confused.

     

    I've never tried virtualbox, but as long as virtualbox is capable of emulating an x86_64 server with something like e1000 ethernet cards, you can just grab the installable ISO image (DVD image - from the same place as you got the OVA - i.e. tech.f5.com downloads) and boot the virtualbox from that ISO image and do a BigIP install.

     

    I find it's generally easier and usually quicker than trying to translate the VMWare appliance images to another format.

     

    H

     

  • Dear Hammish,

     

    Kindly post the procedure to use the ISO within VM and how to set and access it.

     

    Best Regards, ROUF

     

    • nathe's avatar
      nathe
      Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
      no probs at all. mark up if happy