Despite the majority of my day-to-day work being centred around the VMware platform and Microsoft Exchange, I often have to work with other technologies. One example are F5 appliances, as these often provide the load-balancing to View and Exchange installations.
I have just acquired four F5 virtual edition licences for my lab, and before I get started with APM and various shenanigans, I want to make sure I’ve backed up my user configuration file (UCS).
The UCS includes the following:
- Configuration files
- Licence keys
- Local user accounts
- SSL certificates and key pairs
Logon to the F5 and in the sidebar, navigate to System and then Archives:
On the right-hand side, click Create:
Give the file a name and click Finished. I have opted to go without encryption as the file will be stored on an encrypted partition anyway.
When the backup is complete, you will receive a message like the following:
SSH to your device to retrieve it for safekeeping.
To generate a UCS from the command line, first SSH to your device and then run the Traffic Management Shell:
tmsh
Use the following to generate the file (substitute accordingly):
save /sys ucs /var/local/ucs/20151007_f5-1.ucs
Again, store the file locally for safekeeping.
virtualhobbit 