Introduction to vCMP in F5

--> vCMP stands for Virtualized Clustered Multiprocessing.

--> vCMP is a hypervisor in F5 which allows you to divide one physical high powerful F5 device into multiple independent virtual F5 devices.

--> vCMP allocates CPU, memory, and storage for every logical or virtual BIG IP device.

--> We can create a number of instances of BIG IP system depend upon the configuration of the F5 hardware chasis.

--> vCMP uses built-in flexible resource allocation feature.

--> By using flexible resource allocation, We can allocate the separate size of resources to every BIG IP virtual instance according to the requirement.

--> vCMP provides the resources to every virtual instance in the form of cores to it.

--> Each core contains a portion of CPU and memory assigned to it.

--> vCMP is not supported in all of the BIG IP devices.

--> vCMP is supported in some of VIPRION chassis and BIG IP Devices such as,

i) VIPRION B2100, B4200, B4300, B4340N

ii) BIG IP 5200v, 7200v,10200v

--> With vCMP we have the following components,

i) vCMP host

--> This is the hypervisor which allows you to create and configure BIG IP Instances.

--> This Instances are known as vCMP guests.

--> For every guest, vCMP host allocates CPU and memory to it.

ii) vCMP Guest

--> vCMP Guest is the BIG IP instance which is created on vCMP host.

--> Each and every vCMP Guest is allocated BIG IP Modules such as LTM, GTM, ASM and APM to process the traffic.

--> Every Guest contains its own self IP Address, Management IP Address, and list of Virtual Servers.

--> Every Guest act as separate BIG IP device without having the knowledge of other BIG IP instances are present on vCMP host.

--> Each Guest can be divided by using Route domains and Partitions.

--> Each Guest can have different BIG IP version and different modules compared to other Guests in vCMP host.

iii) Virtual Disk

--> Virtual Disk is the storage area for the vCMP guest on the vCMP host.

--> Each Virtual Disk is configured as an image file with .img extension.

--> If vCMP Guest is allocated in two slots of vCMP host then the system creates and assigns two virtual disks to the guest.

iv) Cores

--> A Core is the Portion of CPU and system memory allocated to a guest.

--> The Amount of CPU and System memory that core contains depends upon the hardware platform.

--> CPU's in the core remain idle if the Core is not assigned to any host.

Note: There are two types of Administrators would come into picture when we use vCMP.

i) vCMP host Admin: 

--> used for creating guests and assigning the resources to the guests.

ii) vCMP guest Admin:

--> used for assigning and provisioning the BIG IP modules within the guest.

Ref: F5.com

Md.Kareemoddin,

CCIE# 54759