Forum Discussion

Stefan_Klotz's avatar
Stefan_Klotz
Icon for Cumulonimbus rankCumulonimbus
May 10, 2023

BIG-IQ Automatic Configuration-Discovery and -Import

We are currently using the BIQ-IQ not as single source of truth, meaning all configurations will still be done directly on the BIG-IPs. The BIG-IQ will only be used for management and monitoring purposes.

But to still have the latest configuration from all managed BIG-IPs on the BIG-IQ, I'm wondering if there is any possibility to perform the Configuration-Discovery and -Import task automatically, e.g. via a script or cronjob? Is there any documentation available for this? And what about potential import conflicts? Can I force the known options in this script?

Thank you!

Regards Stefan 🙂

BIG-IQ
devops

3 Replies

Sort By
  • Brian_Van_Lieu's avatar
    Brian_Van_Lieu
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    May 17, 2023

    As noted, BIG-IQ is an API based app, and the TMOS shell you see is there as a control plane only, with no BIG-IQ CLI to speak of. 

    That being said, all the discovery/rediscovery actions done via the GUI can be automated via REST. This example may help get you started as you basically want to run rediscover/reimport actions. 

    https://clouddocs.f5.com/products/big-iq/mgmt-api/v6.0.1/HowToSamples/bigiq_public_api_wf/t_discover_ltm.html

    I don't have any personal examples of rediscovery as my use of BIG-IQ is with it as the source of truth and any re-discovery is done via the GUI, but plenty of other tasks have been done via Python or if you are um, seasoned, like me, Perl using the REST api 🙂 

    • Stefan_Klotz's avatar
      Stefan_Klotz
      Icon for Cumulonimbus rankCumulonimbus
      Jun 07, 2023

      Thanks Brian_Van_Lieu  for the link to the API-documentation with some examples.
      I got the time today to spend some efforts and playing a little bit with Postman. I could successfully start/trigger a re-discover process for one of our managed BIG-IPs. Next step would be the re-import, but with these basics this shouldn't be a problem. Once I'm finished including the final script, I can provide it her.

      Regards Stefan 🙂

  • Paulius's avatar
    Paulius
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    May 11, 2023

    Stefan_Klotz I have looked around for something similar but I have not found anything promising. It is important to note that when you are in CLI, where you would create a cronjob, is actually the BIG-IP OS rather than the BIG-IQ and the BIG-IQ GUI runs as a seperate GUI only interface. Some things do carry over from CLI to BIG-IQ GUI but not much really. If I had to venture a guess you might have to find a custom script that will run this process on a regular interval.