F5 Cloud Services Lab Now on GitHub

As Developers and DevOps we strive to optimize and simplify app delivery. But staying on top of all of the new technologies and also getting hands-on experience can be challenging!

With that in mind, we just published to GitHub a new free interactive hands-on lab that takes you through the several core F5 Cloud Services. It allows you to set up and manage a globally-distributed DNS infrastructure and web application security services -- all applied to a set of live deployed app instances.

We provide you with a number of live web apps, and also a handy Lab service API that creates and updates DNS entries for your own lab instance, so that you can run through multiple scenarios with a live DNS service and real applications. This makes it easy to “kick the tires” on everything you need to get some quality face time with cutting-edge DNS technologies and security best practices!

Here are the Top 3 Reasons Why You Should Check Out This Lab:

1) Set up DNS Failover: While frequently forgotten, DNS is the first step to your apps getting in front of your customers. Not only can you add DNS redundancy with the F5 DNS Cloud Service, but you can also take advantage of our global points of presence and built-in DDoS protection – all in just a few API calls. This will ensure your apps will happily resolve and push traffic to the right app endpoint lightning fast! 

2) Configure Global DNS Load Balancing: From multi-cloud to geo-proximity rules the F5 DNS Load Balancer Cloud Service provides an easy way to create a true advanced 2-Tier load balancer architecture. We provide a set of global application endpoints, which you configure into load-balancing pools, add health checks, and finally push DNS records to ensure that traffic from specific regions flows to the designated endpoints.

3) Hack and protect a live app: You can test your hand at “hacking” one of our web facing apps, which was intentionally built to be vulnerable! Then you can stand up your own Web Application Firewall (WAF) instance using F5 Essential App Protect Service and run some automated attacks against that instance using the Lab Service API. We provide you a live environment to both attack and protect, so that you can explore various options available to users of this awesome new service.

Finally, this lab is a quick way to get familiar with the best practices for deploying DNS and web application firewall without touching your own DNS or productions applications. You will have a handy reference and a library of useful API calls for when you’re ready to do something with your own apps & services. 

Check out the free F5 Cloud Services Lab on GitHub, and give it a try today!