F5 BIG-IP Edge Client Now Supported in Apple macOS Sierra and iOS 10

F5 BIG-IP Edge Client and other F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) client features are now supported in Apple macOS Sierra (10.12) as of Tuesday, September 20, 2016 – the same day as the macOS Sierra was released!   

AND, BIG-IP Edge Client also supports Apple iOS 10 as of September 13, 2016 – the same day as it was released!

Compatibility matrices for BIG-IP versions – only for those versions that still have active Software Development support – have been updated for support for both iOS 10 and macOS Sierra. The EPSEC release for macOS Sierra (release 450) is targeted for availability by this Friday, September 23, 2016. 

macOS Sierra related known issues – some issues were found which might affect some BIG-IP Edge Client and BIG-IP APM customers. Those changes are: 

1. When used with Java 8, Java RDP freezes after using Caps Lock, Alt, Shift or Ctrl keys (611478). This issue will need to be addressed by Oracle.
2. “Internal error” messages have been seen when using app tunnel on Safari 10 (611327)
3. BIG-IP Edge Client customizations are not applied on macOS Sierra (611669). F5 will issue Engineering Hotfixes to address this issue in the short term if there are customer support requests (CSRs). 

iOS 10 related changes – some behavior changes were also discovered with iOS 10 that customers may wish to know that relate to BIG-IP Edge Client and VPN use:

• When a user uses a per-app VPN configuration, that VPN connection is usually indicated with a VPN icon on the device status bar (at the top of the screen). In iOS 10, when an application that uses the per app VPN tunnel is not in the foreground, the VPN icon is not displayed on the status bar.  In addition, when Safari is in the foreground and uses the per-app tunnel, the VPN icon is not displayed. This is a change in the OS, and not on Edge Client.  Note: The behavior has not changed for a full device VPN initiated by On-Demand VPN or if the user manually uses Edge Client to establish a VPN connection.  For these configurations, the VPN icon is always displayed when the VPN connection is active, as long as the connection has not been disconnected.   

iOS 10 known issues – the following are identified issues on iOS 10 that may affect the BIG-IP Edge Client, depending on the use case:  

•Previous settings from the Client Proxy Autoconfig Script are used and not refreshed until Safari is restarted (612997)

•BIG-IP Edge Client fails to establish a layer 3 connection when layer 4 per-app VPN is already established. The following error is displayed: "Server unreachable. Please check your network connectivity and server address” (611923)

The above behavior changes are due to changes in macOS or iOS 10 and not due to Edge Client changes. 

An AskF5 solution with this information and more specifics on the issue, additional minor issues, and possible workarounds for customers should be available shortly. 

For further information on currently supported versions of BIG-IP software, please see the following article:

SOL8986: F5 software life cycle policy

https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/8000/900/sol8986.html and the F5 Access and Edge Apps Compatibility Matrix.