F5 rSeries System Architecture

F5 rSeries System Architecture Overview

1. Introduction

• The F5 rSeries system is an appliance that runs F5OS-A software, which is a derivative of the F5OS-C software.
  • As an appliance, the F5 rSeries system does not have system controllers and blades.
  • Consequently, there is no concept of chassis and partition in the F5 rSeries system.
• The “confd process”
  • It provides the configuration engine for the system.
    • Supports the use of IPv4/IPv6 (or both) for management IP address
    • Configuring and managing the system via web GUI, CLI, and REST API
  • It manages configuration and allows viewing of operational status for areas including, but not limited to, the following:
    • Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA)
    • Product licensing
    • Appliance mode enabling and disabling
    • System diagnostics
    • DNS and NTP configurations
    • System images
    • Tenant Images and configuration
    • Logging
    • Layer 2 networking configurations

Note: F5OS-A is not based on TMOS; the config and tmsh utilities are not available to configure the rSeries platform.

2. F5OS-A

• The F5OS-A is the operating system software for the F5 rSeries system and comprises the Base OS and Service components.
  • The Base OS component includes the following software:
    • CentOS Linux
    • Docker
    • Ansible
    • KubeVirt-appliance
    • K3s
  • The Service component comprises mostly F5-produced software and platform-specific packages such as the following:
    • qkview
    • tcpdump_daemon
    • fpgamgr
    • dagd-service
    • fips-service
    • webUI

Note: The F5 rSeries system does not support failover across rSeries platforms at the F5OS-A software layer. If you require high availability (HA) failover between your BIG-IP tenants, you should configure HA on your BIG-IP tenants.

3. Display the F5OS-A software version

• Display the F5OS-A version using the webUI
  • SYSTEM SETTINGS > General : Properties
  • The Base OS and Service versions
• Display the F5OS-A version using the CLI
  • show system image state os
  • show system image state services
• Display the F5OS-A version using the REST API
  • curl -X GET -sku <username:password> -H “Content-Type: application/yang-data+json” https://<management IP address>/api/data/openconfig-system:system/f5-system-image:image/state/os
  • curl -X GET -sku -H “Content-Type: application/yang-data+json” https:///api/data/openconfig-system:system/f5-system-image:image/state/services

4. F5OS-A Tenant

• An F5OS-A tenant is a guest system deployed in an F5 rSeries system.
  • An F5 rSeries system can have zero or more tenants
  • Limited to its available amount of computing resources (CPU/memory/network).
• When you create a tenant, the system leaves the tenant in the Configured state, by default.
  • In the Configured state, the tenant’s configuration exists on the system;
  • However, the system does not allocate any hardware resources to the tenant,
  • And the tenant does not run in this state.
• When you change the tenant from the Configured to the Provisioned state, the system does the following:
  • Assigns computing resources to the tenant
  • Creates virtual disks for the tenant
  • Installs the image on the virtual disk
  • During this process, the system reports the status of the tenant as Provisioning.
  • When this process completes, the system reports the status of the tenant as Provisioned.
• When you change the tenant from the Provisioned to the Deployed state:
  • The system starts up the tenant and the system reports the status of the tenant as Running.
• When you want to shut down a tenant, configure the state of the tenant to Provisioned.
  • For more information refer to K21121803.

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