Setup guide

Best practices for deploying BIG-IP VE on VMware
When deploying BIG-IP
®
Virtual Edition (VE) on a VMware host, use these best practices.
RecommendationIssue
Run the two units of an active/standby pair on
separate physical hosts. You can accomplish this in
Redundant system conguration
two ways: either manually create a virtual machine
peer on each host, or, if you are using VMware
Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS), create a DRS
rule with the option Separate Virtual Machine that
includes each unit of the BIG-IP
®
VE redundant pair.
Perform live migration of BIG-IP VE virtual
machines on idle BIG-IP VE virtual machines only.
Live migration of BIG-IP VE virtual machines
Live migration of BIG-IP VE while the virtual
machine is processing trafc could produce
unexpected results.
In DRS environments, perform live migration of
BIG-IP VE virtual machines (using VMware
VMware DRS environments
vMotion
™
) on idle BIG-IP VE virtual machines only.
Live migration of BIG-IP VE while the virtual
machine (VM) is processing trafc could produce
unexpected results. Disable automatic migrations by
adjusting the DRS Automation Level to Partially
Automated, Manual, or Disabled on a per BIG-IP
VE basis.
By default, BIG-IP VE is deployed with a 2000 or
4000 MHz CPU and 2, 4, or 8 GB of memory
Resource reservations
reservation. Together, these reservations typically
prevent system instability on heavily loaded hosts
and are considered minimal. The CPU reservation
can be up to 100 percent of the dened virtual
machine hardware. For example, if the hypervisor
has a 3 GHz core speed, the reservation of a virtual
machine with 2 CPUs can be only 6 GHz or less.
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Deployment Best Practices