How to add F5 BIGIP Load Balancer to Eve-ng

Today, F5 BigIP is the most widely used for load balancing from small industries to large Enterprises. This post will help you step-by-step to add F5 BIGIP load balancer to Eve-ng. Eve-ng is a tool where you can practice for any exam, simulate lab up to CCIE, use it for client presentation, and a lot more.

We will follow the below steps to add F5 BIGIP load balancer to Eve-ng and you can watch the below video for reference and help. If everything works fine for you, I request you to share the post and comment below.

Content
1 How to install Eve-ng on vmware in windows
2 Download F5 BIGIP Load balancer Images.
3 Preparing Eve-ng for F5 BIGIP Load balancer .
4 Making F5 working with telnet instead of vnc.
5 Adding Node and Starting F5 BIGIP .

To install Eve-ng on Vmware follow our complete guide or to download Pre Loaded Eve-NG with all the images click here.

1. F5 BIGIP Images used in eve-ng.

EVE Image NameDownloaded FilenameVersionvCPUsvRAM
bigip-11.6.0BIGIP-11.6.0.0.0.401.ALL.qcow2.zip11.6.022048

2. Download F5 BIGIP Images for Eve-ng.

To download F5 BIGIP image directly from F5 site follow the below link.
Download

No worries, if you do not have access to Cisco Website you can download the image from the below alternate link.
Alternate Link
Download

Images provided above are strictly for educational purposes and are not hosted on the www.networkhunt.com server. We are just indexing the links found on the internet for educational purposes only. Once you download the image then we are going to go for the next step.

3. Preparing Eve-ng for F5 BIGIP Load balancer

Upload the downloaded image to the EVE using for example FileZilla or WinSCP. Then login as root using SSH protocol and uncompress it:

create the abc directory and upload the image in the directory using FileZilla or WinSCP and then decompress the image.

Upload the downloaded image to the EVE using for example FileZilla or WinSCP. Then login as root using SSH protocol and uncompress it:
mkdir abc
cd abc
unzip BIGIP-11.6.0.0.0.401.ALL.qcow2.zip

it will take some time to unzip the files, once files get uncompressed you can see two files in the directory, to view files you can use ls command in the same directory.
1. BIGIP-11.6.0.0.0.401.DATASTOR.ALL.qcow2
2. BIGIP-11.6.0.0.0.401.qcow2

Now we need to create a folder for HDD images and we will move it to the correct directory.
mkdir -p /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/bigip-11.6.0 mv BIGIP-11.6.0.0.0.401.qcow2 virtioa.qcow2 mv BIGIP-11.6.0.0.0.401.DATASTOR.ALL.qcow2 virtiob.qcow2 mv virtioa.qcow2 /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/bigip-11.6.0 mv virtiob.qcow2 /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/bigip-11.6.0

Now we don’t need abc directory and we will clean and fix the permission.
cd ..
rm -rf abc
/opt/unetlab/wrappers/unl_wrapper -a fixpermissions

Credential for F5 BIGIP first use-
The default username is root with password default.

4. Making F5 working with telnet instead of vnc.

SSH to EVE and perform next steps:
cd /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/bigip-11.6.0
rmmod nbd modprobe nbd max_part=16 /opt/qemu/bin/qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 hda.qcow2 mount /dev/nbd0p1 /mnt/ sed -e 's/ \(console=tty0 \)\([^c]\)/ \1 console=ttyS0 \2/' -e 's/\(^splashimage.*\)/#\1\nserial --unit=0 --speed=9600\nterminal --timeout=8 console serial\n/' -i /mnt/grub/grub.conf umount /mnt/ /opt/qemu/bin/qemu-nbd -d /dev/nbd0 rmmod nbd

5 Adding Node and Starting F5 BIGIP .

We have completed all the steps so the last part is just to add the node and start it.
Once you add the node in Eve-ng and start it, it will take time to start as it depends on the CPU and Memory available as it took almost 2-3 minutes for my eve-ng but once it starts you can do what you want in F5 BIGIP LB.
Enjoy.
Do not forget to share and comment below.

if you want to add a License key to F5 BIGIP load balancer follow below post-
How to add License to F5 BIGIP.

15 thoughts on “How to add F5 BIGIP Load Balancer to Eve-ng”

  1. hi sir, can u give me the command by step by step . I just copy paste these command on my Pc. But i am getting a Error.

    Reply
      • Hello Team, can you help me with the following.
        Making F5 working with telnet instead of vnc – Tried this step, but this didn’t go through properly. I entered the syntax as shown, but i found couple of errors – nbd.c:nbd_init():L723: Failed to set NBD socket and special device /dev/nbd0p1 does not exist. Not sure if there is a fix to it but the steps don’t work. I have tried looking for solution but i couldn’t find anything.
        Hence need to know if we have any solution or working syntax which actually works for F5 images in EVE

        Reply
  2. Making F5 working with telnet instead of vnc – This didn’t work for me. I tried all the steps but i encountered error which are as follows: nbd.c:nbd_init():L723: Failed to set NBD socket and special device /dev/nbd0p1 does not exist. I tried to find answers but couldn’t find one and hence overall, i have to get inside vnc. So, would like to know how to overcome these things and get a proper solution or whether the steps provided for telnet does actually work and has been tested. If so what are the correct steps to make it work.

    Reply
  3. Making F5 working with telnet instead of vnc – Tried this step, but this didn’t go through properly. I entered the syntax as shown, but i found couple of errors – nbd.c:nbd_init():L723: Failed to set NBD socket and special device /dev/nbd0p1 does not exist. Not sure if there is a fix to it but the steps don’t work. I have tried looking for solution but i couldn’t find anything. Hence need to know if we have any solution or working syntax which actually works for F5 images in EVE

    Reply
  4. I am trying to perform step 4 but its giving me an error i copied the following command via ssh and here is error.

    root@eve-ng:/opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/bigip-11.6.0# pwd
    /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/bigip-11.6.0
    root@eve-ng:/opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/bigip-11.6.0# /opt/unetlab/wrappers/unl_wrapper -a fixpermissions^C
    root@eve-ng:/opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/bigip-11.6.0# rmmod nbd modprobe nbd max_part=16 /opt/qemu/bin/qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 hda.qcow2 mount /dev/nbd0p1 /mnt/ sed -e ‘s/ \(console=tty0 \)\([^c]\)/ \1 console=ttyS0 \2/’ -e ‘s/\(^splashimage.*\)/#\1\nserial –unit=0 –speed=9600\nterminal –timeout=8 console serial\n/’ -i /mnt/grub/grub.conf umount /mnt/ /opt/qemu/bin/qemu-nbd -d /dev/nbd0 rmmod nbd
    rmmod: invalid option — ‘c’

    Reply

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