Pfsense on F5 BIG-IP 1600?
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Been lurking around this forum for quite some time & been searching the web, but have been unable to find a definitive answer to my question.
To keep things short, I've acquired an F5 BIG-IP 1600 security appliance recently. It's complete with original hard drive, factory resetted, but the OS is still on the drive. Since there is no license on it, I'd like to install pfsense to it instead. Is this even possible?
Best I can find online is the below page on Reddit, to which someone indicated that installing Pfsense to this hardware should be possible, but does not really go into any significant detail as to how to accomplish it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/5pyljm/anyone_using_f5_appliances_for_pfsense/
So does anyone know for 100% certain, if it's even possible or not? I'd rather not spend a ton of time trying to get this to work for my homelab, if it's simply not going to work.
Any input on this matter would be greatly appreciated...
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I think the only thread I've seen about a similar appliance resulted in failure.
IIRC it was mostly unsupported custom hardware. I think only one port had a detected NIC.Replace the drive with one that has pfSense installed already. Boot it and see what happens.
Steve
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@stephenw10 Thanks for the feedback. I had a feeling that was going to be the case.
As to pre-installing Pfsense to a hard drive & then swap that with the original HD in the F5, that was pretty much what I was thinking about doing; since I can't see any way online for how to boot the F5 straight from USB device (at least not one that wasn't specially created for rebuilding the F5's original OS). If it does not work, I noticed this F5 has a CF card slot. I've read that some other security devices required the CF card to initially boot the device, then after that it could be removed, so the hardware knows it can then boot from the HD. Who knows, maybe it will work. I'll need to try playing with the F5 tonight to see what happens & report back my findings. And if you happen yo have any other to try, let me know. Thanks again... -
@turajb
I did this with a Nokia ip530 about 10 years ago. It had a CF card that, in stock form, would boot the IPSO OS then work with the installed HDD for rules, logs, etc. Back then, pfSense had a nanobsd version that would run from CF. I used that, but later installed pfSense to a HDD in a slave machine then transferred it to the Nokia (with the CF removed). It was fine with it. As long as you have serial console access (and it boots), you should be able to do the initial reconfig of the new interface hardware (if they're supported). At any rate, worth the adventure. But it looks like it might be pretty power hungry from the specs. Best of luck.https://worldtechit.com/f5-products/f5-big-ip-1600-3600-3900-hardware-datasheet/
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https://forum.netgate.com/topic/149988/installing-pfsense-on-f5-big-ip-5050
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/154364/pfsense-on-f5-big-ip5050-series
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/66067/f5-networks-big-ip-1500
All tails of failure!
