Last Modified: Sep 13, 2023
Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP All
Known Affected Versions:
11.6.0, 11.6.1, 11.6.2, 11.6.3, 11.6.3.1, 11.6.3.2, 11.6.3.3, 11.6.3.4, 11.6.4, 11.6.5, 11.6.5.1, 11.6.5.2, 11.6.5.3, 12.1.0 HF1, 12.1.0 HF2, 12.1.1 HF1, 12.1.1 HF2, 12.1.2 HF1, 12.1.2 HF2
Fixed In:
12.0.0
Opened: May 28, 2015 Severity: 3-Major
When the systems FPGA is provisioned with firmware not supported for use with vCMP guests, the guests may incur problems with deployments.
Deployment problems, host and guest instability. vCMP should not be used with l7-intelligent-fpga or l4-performance-fpga.
A system with FPGA firmware provisioned to a type other than standard-balanced-fpga, such as l7-intelligent-fpga or l4-performance-fpga. A BIG-IP system provisioned vCMP
With FPGA system provisioned, the FPGA firmware cannot normally be reprovisioned. To avoid the process of provisioning ltm, incurring a system reboot, provisioning the FPGA back to standard-balanced-fpga and then provisioning back to FPGA and incurring another reboot, this workaround can be performed. it involved editing bigip_base.conf on the primary and loading the configuration when guests are not deployed 1) 11.6.0 only, 12.0.0 suggested: move all guests to a configured state so that none are provisioned or deployed. tmsh modify vcmp guest all state configured 2) save the current configuration tmsh save / sys config 3) On the primary blade, remove the entire fpga configuration stanza from /config/bigip_base.conf The two stanzas that won't work are: sys fpga firmware-config { type l4-performance-fpga } or sys fpga firmware-config { type l7-intelligent-fpga } 4) the modified bigip_base.conf will be distributed to the cluster members. if not (11.6.0 base), distribute it by scp. 5) load the entire system configuration (do not issue just a base load) tmsh load / sys config At this point: All cluster members will reload their FPGA firmware to standard-balanced-fpga. vcmpd will restart. guests may now be safely deployed.
Guests can no longer be deployed on systems where FPGA provisioning is not supported for FPGA provisioning. They will fail to startup, turn red and be in the condition "Non-default FPGA firmware is loaded"