F5 and Ansible Integration webinar

F5 and Ansible have been working together for some time now, with the goal to make application deployments easy through automation. For those wanting an introduction to the integration between F5 & Ansible, I recommend that you check out getting-started-with-ansible – a blog by my colleague Tim Rupp. Over the past few months there has been improvements to the existing F5 modules as well as the addition of new F5 modules which provide greater flexibility to manage and configure the BIG-IP platforms. Based on customer interest, we added modules for creation and configuration of Virtual servers, SNMP, VLANS, GTM configurations, etc. We will be addressing use-cases like onboarding and networking the BIG-IP, application deployment, pool-member monitoring and state, etc.

To learn more Join F5 and Ansible for our webinaron Tuesday March 28th, 2017 from 2PM to 3PM EST where we will:

  • Explain F5 and Ansible integration
  • Cover Existing F5 modules for Ansible and the current development work
  • Show how to use Ansible playbooks to bootstrap F5 BIG-IP and webservers
  • Configure F5 BIG-IP to securely load balance applications using Ansible F5 modules 

Don't miss out! We are looking forward to sharing with you.

Published Mar 20, 2017
Version 1.0
Ansible
BIG-IP
devops
iControlREST
LTM
  • sdejongh's avatar
    sdejongh
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Mar 23, 2017

    Hi, Is there a version requirement to be able to use ansible with F5 Big-IP? I keep getting errors about missing modules when trying to connect to our 11.6.x machines: Error: ansible requires the stdlib json or simplejson module, neither was found!

     

  • ManiGadde's avatar
    ManiGadde
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Mar 23, 2017

    Most Ansible code is written for v12. If you are using 11.6 you will have to set 'gather_facts: no'

     

    and always use 'delegate_to: localhost'

     

    The error you see should go away if you use the delegate_to

     

  • Nazir_52641's avatar
    Nazir_52641
    Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
    Mar 30, 2017

    Hi,

     

    We use uri module and iControl rest API to create any object in F5 using ansible.

     

    To make the iControl object creation idempotent following can be done:

     

    1) Use GET to check the object exist.

     

    2) If the object does not exist create the object using POST method

     

    3) If the object exist modify/update the object using PUT/PATCH

     

    We do end to end automation for virtual server creation including

     

    a) Create Monitor

     

    b) Create Pool

     

    c) Create Rule

     

    d) Create required profiles (TCP/HTTP/One-connect) for the Virtual server

     

    e) Create SNAT Pool if required

     

    f) Create Virtual server

     

    g) Import ASM policy and assign to VS.

     

    Using uri module with iCOntrol REST API we are not limited by the bigip_ansible modules.

     

    Hopes this make life simple for end to end automation of Virtual server creation in F5

     

    Thanks

     

    Syed Nazir

     

  • ManiGadde's avatar
    ManiGadde
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Mar 30, 2017

    @Nazir, you are right. We also talked about using the URI module in the webinar.