Manage F5 BIG-IP FAST with Terraform (Intro)

Patrick_Gouband · ‎12-Dec-2022

In this article, i will present a suite of use cases using the F5 BIG-IP Application Services Templates (FAST) Terraform resources introduced on the F5 BIG-IP Terraform Provider on version 1.16.

Introduction
Requirements
Best Practices
Description
What is Terraform?
F5 BIG-IP Application Service Templates
F5 BIG-IP Application Service Templates resources
Resources
Article Series

Introduction

Requirements

It requires F5 BIG-IP FAST latest version (1.22) because we use the F5 BIG-IP Application Service Templates.
Terraform version +0.11 (see minimal requirements)
F5 BIG-IP AS3 installed on F5 BIG-IP device F5 BIG-IP AS3
F5 BIG-IP FAST installed on F5 BIG-IP device F5 BIG-IP FAST

Best Practices

Increasing the memory allocation for AS3 and increasing the timeout for REST API is recommended F5 BIG-IP AS3 Best Practices You can apply the following steps and/or adapt it to your environment:

tmsh modify sys db provision.extramb value 512
tmsh modify sys db restjavad.useextramb value true
tmsh save sys config
tmsh modify sys db icrd.timeout value 180
tmsh modify sys db restjavad.timeout value 180
tmsh modify sys db restnoded.timeout value 180
tmsh modify sys db icrd.timeout value 180
tmsh save sys config
tmsh restart sys service restjavad
tmsh restart sys service restnoded

Description

The current version is 1.16 and it gives the capability to :

Create an UDP application
Create a TCP application
Create a HTTP application
Create a HTTPS application
Create multiple applications in the same tenant
Create an application using existing items on F5 BIG-IP device
Manage multiple AWAF policies and pools based on HTTP criteria
Manage Canary testing of AWAF policies

What is Terraform?

“HashiCorp Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool that lets you define both cloud and on-prem resources in human-readable configuration files that you can version, reuse, and share. You can then use a consistent workflow to provision and manage all of your infrastructure throughout its lifecycle. »

https://www.terraform.io/intro

"… but wait! Terraform is not a Configuration Management tool. I should use Ansible for that!”

True.

Terraform is not a config management tool and I would say: “use whatever you feel comfortable and happy working with”… but keep also that in mind:

We keep a record of the state created in the past and can easily track security changes who did what and when.
If your underlying infrastructure is Public Cloud, you may already use Terraform for any other cloud services. You may want to reduce automation tool sprawl, to keep a consistent end-to-end state and reduce the learning and adoption curves.

F5 BIG-IP Application Service Templates

F5 BIG-IP Application Services Templates (FAST) provides a way to streamline deployment of applications on F5 BIG-IP using templatized AS3 declarations. FAST enables users to deploy templated AS3-based configurations via a declarative API (with AS3 as the first use-case), as well as via a self-generated forms-based GUI.

The FAST Extension provides a toolset for templating and managing AS3 Applications on BIG-IP.

FAST is:

A flexible and powerful templating system
An effective way to deploy applications on the BIG-IP system using AS3
Seamless integration and insertion into CI/CD pipelines

The documentation of F5 BIG-IP Application Services Templates (FAST) is located here.

F5 BIG-IP Application Service Templates resources

The F5 BIG-IP Terraform resources leverage our F5 BIG-IP Application Service Templates.

The bigip_fast_udp_app resource will create and manage FAST UDP applications on BIG-IP from provided JSON declaration.
The bigip_fast_tcp_app resource will create and manage FAST TCP applications on BIG-IP from provided JSON declaration.
The bigip_fast_http_app resource will create and manage FAST HTTP applications on BIG-IP.
the bigip_fast_https_app resource will create and manage FAST HTTPS applications on BIG-IP.

F5 BIG-IP Application Service Templates resources allows to create a new item in the virtual server configuration like a pool or a monitor but also to reuse existing items.

Here an example of bigip_fast_https_app resources:

resource "bigip_fast_https_app" "this" {
  application               = "myApp4"
  tenant                    = "scenario4"
  virtual_server            {
    ip                        = "10.1.10.224"
    port                      = 443
  }
  tls_server_profile {
    tls_cert_name             = "/Common/app4.crt"
    tls_key_name              = "/Common/app4.key"
  }
  pool_members  {
    addresses                 = ["10.1.10.120", "10.1.10.121", "10.1.10.122"]
    port                      = 80
  }
  snat_pool_address = ["10.1.10.50", "10.1.10.51", "10.1.10.52"]
  load_balancing_mode       = "least-connections-member"
  monitor       {
    send_string               = "GET / HTTP/1.1\\r\\nHost: example.com\\r\\nConnection: Close\\r\\n\\r\\n"
    response                  = "200 OK"
  }
  depends_on          = [bigip_ssl_certificate.app4crt, bigip_ssl_key.app4key]
}