Introduction
F5 Insight for ADSP, a key component of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), helps teams monitor and secure apps that are spread across hybrid, multi-cloud and AI environments. In this article, I’ll highlight some of the new features introduced in F5 Insight v2.0.
Demo Videos
Upgrading BIG-IP with F5 Insight for ADSP
PQC Readiness Visibility with F5 Insight for ADSP
Application Workload & Security Intelligence in F5 Insight
What’s new in Observability?
F5 Insight for ADSP version 2.0 has both new and enhanced Observability features. The overall user experience has been simplified and improved. The AI-powered Scorecard enables you to evaluate and improve the security posture of apps and infrastructure. Application workload identification via the AI Data Fabric gives more context for performance, security, and troubleshooting. The ability to forward telemetry to SIEM and tools like Datadog and Splunk streamlines troubleshooting and Root Cause Analysis (RCA). The Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Readiness Dashboard allows you to view and evaluate the status of your PQC capabilities. RBAC and authentication via LDAP and directory groups has been improved.
What’s new in Fleet Management?
F5 Insight for ADSP version 2.0 has both new and enhanced Fleet Management capabilities. You can now manage and upgrade BIG-IP software versions, including minor versions (e.g. 17.X to 17.Y or 21.X to 21.Y). Software ISO cleanup in upgrade workflows make it easier to manage and save disk space. Software rollback to known good status is supported with a few clicks. Device Backup and Restore can be done manually or scheduled to run on a regular basis. F5 Insight can also help manage and validate your BIG-IP licenses.
Simplified User Experience
F5 Insight v2.0 enhances the overall customer experience with improved UI workflows, Dashboards and filtering/search capabilities.
An example of this is the AI Audit Console which can be filtered to display the data customers are looking for:
Another example is the AI Assistant which saves the Chat History so customers can review and reuse it:
Data Access and Automation
F5 strives to meet our customers where they are. That means not having to choose how to present intelligence or abandon tools they’re already using. Customers have to juggle an increasing number of monitoring tools, nobody needs a new tool that demands a rip-and-replace exercise.
F5 Insight v2.0 enables customers to export time-series metrics to platforms like Datadog and Splunk, so they can correlate F5 data with the rest of their telemetry. Customers can choose what metrics and data points are exported, which can help customers to easily meet corporate policies.
Exporting time-series metrics to external analytics platforms can help streamline troubleshooting and Root Cause Analysis (RCA).
Export Telemetry Data to Splunk:
Export Telemetry Data to Datadog:
Security & PQC Readiness
Preparing for Post Quantum Cryptography (or Q Day) is a top-of-mind concern for many customers. The biggest challenge is determining what cryptographic assets are in place across devices. Many customers don’t know where to begin, so migration planning stalls. The new PQC Readiness Dashboard works at the virtual-server level. For each virtual server and its Client SSL profile, it shows whether PQC is supported, configured, in use, or configured but not in use, plus cryptographic dependencies and gaps.
With federal mandates pushing PQC readiness sooner rather than later, public sector agencies get clear visibility into where they stand and a defensible starting point for building and improving crypto agility.
Insights Scorecard
F5 Insight v2.0 also makes the Insights Scorecard generally available. This intuitive view adds a 0–100 score and A–F grade per application, and shows its work, making the evidence behind every finding available to operators. This operational intelligence is invaluable for prioritizing resources and acting quickly.
The Insights Scorecard enables you to:
- Summarize security posture in an actionable scorecard.
- See configuration risks, protection gaps, and areas for improvement.
- Enable teams to prioritize remediation and track progress over time.
Security Scorecard:
Clicking the Review security issues link drills into specific details:
Application Workload Identification
With F5 AI Data Fabric integration, F5 Insight v2.0 automatically identifies and categorizes application workloads, such as AI/ML, healthcare, finance, and IAM. It works from traffic signals Insight already collects—customers will just need to share meta data with F5 to process it securely. Each detection carries a confidence score, and you can confirm, rename, or reject it.
F5 AI Data Fabric integration enables you to:
- Identify and group application workloads across BIG-IP virtual servers, pools, and backend services.
- Connect infrastructure to the applications it supports.
- Get more context for performance, security, and troubleshooting.
Application Workloads on the Home screen:
View of all Applications Workloads:
Authentication & RBAC Enhancements
Access, authentication, and RBAC have all been improved: administrator, operator, and viewer roles work with SAML SSO, map LDAP directory groups to Insight roles, and ensure visibility into interactions with an AI audit log for accountability—all of which enable better enterprise governance.
Create a Custom Role or Clone an existing one.
Assign granular permissions for any Role:
These enhancements help customers create consistent role-based permissions and support least-privilege access.
Backup & Restore
F5 Insight v2.0 lets you back up BIG-IP and F5OS instances across your fleet from a single, centralized console. You can use these features to capture a point-in-time copy of device configuration and state, protect against accidental changes or hardware failure, and support planned maintenance workflows.
Key capabilities include:
- Create backups on demand for individual instances or across a fleet.
- Store backups on F5 Insight and/or on network storage (NFS or SMB).
- Download backups for offline retention.
- Schedule backups to run automatically.
- Backup & Restore the BIG-IP Master Key*
- As Part of a Software Installation — backups can be created as part of the software installation process.
*When Retain and Encrypt Master Key is checked, the BIG-IP master key is retrieved from the device and stored securely in F5 Insight’s vault. The master key is associated with the backup and is required to restore encrypted objects such as SSL certificates and passphrases. If the master key is not retained at backup time, encrypted objects cannot be decrypted during a restore onto a different or rebuilt device.
Create a Backup Job:
Create a Restore Job:
Software Installation Rollback
F5 Insight v2.0 lets you rollback a software installation to the previous software version when an upgrade does not go as expected.
Not every device in an installation job is eligible for rollback. Only devices that reached the REBOOT phase (or later) in the target installation execution are eligible — these are the devices that booted to a new volume and may need to be reverted.
Rollback is HA-Pair aware, and therefore will rollback the Standby BIG-IP first, then do a failover, and then rollback the other BIG-IP. Any Pauses that were configured in the original installation job will also occur in the rollback.
Rollback option when upgrading HA Pair:
Confirm Rollback for HA pair:
Rollback option when Standalone Instances:
License Management
F5 Insight v2.0 provides centralized license management for BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) instances and license re-activation for both BIG-IP and F5OS instances across your fleet.
Registration Key Pools
A Registration Key Pool is a named collection of BIG-IP VE registration keys managed by F5 Insight. Pooling registration keys allows F5 Insight to assign, re-assign, revoke, and re-activate licenses on BIG-IP VE instances from a single location.
Adding Licenses to a Registration Key Pool:
Creating a Registration Key Pool:
The Assign option allows you to assign the license to a specific BIG-IP:
License re-activation is also part of software the installation workflow:
Upgrade Enhancements
Software image management in F5 Insight lets you upload, store, and organize software images and their associated validation files for TMOS and F5OS-A platforms. These images are used by Software Distribution and Software Installation jobs to deploy and activate software across your fleet. Fleet management capabilities in F5 Insight v2.0 have been expanded to minor version upgrades (17.X or 21.X).
Example: upgrade all instances of BIG-IP version 17.x to 17.5.1.10:
Verify success with pre & post flight snapshots:
Post-Upgrade Readiness Check:
License Re-activation as part of a Software Installation Job
When configuring a Software Installation job, the License Re-activation section controls how F5 Insight handles device licenses during the installation process.
Configure the Re-activation Preference:
- Re-activate all instances — All instance licenses are re-activated during the installation, regardless of their current license status.
- Conditionally re-activate instances — (Default) Licenses are re-activated only if the license is expired or based on the License Check Date and Service Check Date comparison. This is the recommended setting for most environments.
- Do not re-activate instances — Licenses are not re-activated. Use with caution — this may prevent the installation from executing if a license check is required.
Re-activating a license will cause a traffic interruption on the instance. If the instance being re-licensed is an F5OS instance or vCMP Host, guests and tenants will also experience traffic interruption.
BIG-IP Configuration Backup as part of a Software Installation Job
Edit the Backup Properties of a Software Installation Job to specify how and what to Backup prior to installing new software.
The following options are available:
- Backup Enabled
- Include Private Keys
- Encrypt Backup Files
- Retention Policy
- Include Master Key
- Storage Location
Software ISO Cleanup
Delete unused software images as part of the Software Distribution Jobs:
Both the base ISO and any associated Engineering Hot Fix (EHF) are taken into account — an image is only removed if it is not needed by any currently running software or by this distribution job. This keeps target instances from accumulating unused images over time, freeing up disk space for future distributions.
The Readiness Checks (step 10) report which images will be removed from each instance before the distribution runs, so you can review the cleanup impact before committing.
Conclusion
The latest version of F5 Insight for ADSP offers expanded functionality for fleet management workflows and use cases. The PQC Readiness Dashboard provides much needed insight into the PQC capabilities of your F5 BIG-IP Fleet.
Upgrade today to the latest version of F5 Insight for ADSP and enjoy the following benefits:
- New PQC Readiness Dashboard
- Expanded BIG-IP software upgrade options
- Application Workload and Security Intelligence
- Export Data to External Analytics Platforms like Splunk and DataDog.
- Intelligently manage disk space with Software ISO Cleanup
- BIG-IP Configuration Backup & Restore
Related Content
F5 Insight for ADSP Product Page
Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) solutions