Automating ACMEv2 Certificate Management on BIG-IP

Introduction While we often associate and confuse Let's Encrypt with ACMEv2, the former is ultimately a consumer of the latter. The "Automated Certificate Management Environment" (ACME) protocol de...
Updated May 12, 2025
Version 2.0
ACME
ACMEv2
certificate
Let's Encrypt
security
Kevin_Stewart's avatar
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Joined March 16, 2006
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Christ Follower, Husband, Father, Technologist. I love community and I especially love THIS community. My background is networking, but I've dabbled in all the F5 iStuff, I'm a recovering Perl guy, and am very much a python enthusiast. Learning alongside all of you in this accelerating industry toward modern apps and architectures.
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KarimBenyelloul
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May 19, 2025

Hello, is there a way to automate the renewal of the management BIG-IP device certificate in a similar manner?

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Kevin_Stewart
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May 19, 2025

By virtue of the http-01 validation process, the cert subject has to be resolvable by public DNS, and that resolved IP has to have an HTTP:80 listener on the public Internet that the ACMEv2 server can get to. And since a BIG-IP mgmt. UI should never be exposed to the Internet, it really isn’t practical to renew device certs this way. That said, there are at least two options worth mentioning:

  • Manage the cert in the traffic certs section, do dns-01 validation (doesn’t require an Internet HTTP:80 listener), and then use a separate script on the BIG-IP to move that updated cert from traffic certs section to device cert. Kojot would behave the same, you’d just need this additional script to move the new cert to device.
  • Host an internal ACMEv2 service and dns-01 – this solves for the public Internet access issue with http-01. You’d still need the script to move from traffic certs to device.