r/f5networks

Hi, I'm looking for some advice regarding an F5 LTM i5800 that we're trying to recover for local lab/testing purposes only.

Current situation:

* Model: F5 LTM i5800

* License: NFR

* Support expired on 12-Apr-2024.

* Because the support contract has expired, I'm unable to open an F5 Support case for this appliance.

* The system is BIOS password locked.

* I have already read and tried the steps described in the https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K13214365 article, but it did not resolve the issue.

or context, we are an authorized F5 reseller, but this appliance is only intended for local, non-production testing in our lab.

Since opening a support case isn't an option due to the expired support contract, I'm hoping someone in the community may have experience with this situation.

Specifically, I'm trying to determine whether there is any legitimate way to:

* Reset or remove the BIOS password.

* Recover or reinstall the appliance after the drive has been wiped.

* Restore the hardware for lab use without an active support contract.

I understand if the official answer is that this requires F5 Support, but I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has dealt with a similar issue or knows whether there are any supported recovery options.

Thanks in advance.

We have been transitioning over to the XC and the more I implement, the less I like.

We were told it will do everything we do but better, except for APM, oh and iRules, oh and this and that and another.

Now I'm having to bridge on premise BIG IP virtuals (1g versions and constantly hitting the limit) behind HTTP load balancers on the XC. Not pleasant, but manageable.

And now after a few months of use, we were informed that we are exceeding usage limits. Limits that I had no clue were in place. Limits that are not identified. How is malicious user detection API security without telling me that it is part of that. Why is there no documentation on Rate Limits that tell me that we only get 1 million requests per month?

Has anyone else had similar experiences with the lack of documentation and communication? We have been using services that put us over the limit for 4-6 months and now we are being told? Is this a sales technique that gets us hooked on the services and now that we like them, we have no choice but to pay extra?

Don't get me wrong, I've been a fanboy for years, but it doesn't feel like F5 is heads and tails better than the competition anymore. Feels like CloudFlare is coming for F5 big time.

Opening a ticket right now but... sometimes find better/quicker answers here.

We have had a pair of VEs latest 17.1 running in the same vcenter for years, recently migrated one over to a new/separate vcenter in same data center.

I don't know all the details of how that is configured, as I don't run the vcenter env but I do have read access.

From what I can see , I think that we have promiscuous, forged transmits and mac address changes all set to reject/deny on both the old and new platform. However, failover has always worked perfectly on the old platform where both Units sat side by side on the same vcenter datacenter.

Now after the migration, the 2nd unit's mgmt IPs work fine, self IPs are fine, every indication that it is up and healthy is there, except when we go to fail over, I would say the IPs aren't "moving" and we just end up dropping traffic. As soon as I make the old unit active again it's fine.

We do not use mac Masqerading and haven't used it since we went virtual (if I recall correctly... when we migrated to virtual, the mac masq was removed either by the conversion process or by an individual, I don't know if that is the best practice or not).

Wanted to see if anyone had any quick input while I wait for F5 feedback?

Is there a way we can get lab licenses for personal use or for research purposes