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aali86
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Nov 29, 2022
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F5 APM Home lab setup

Dear Experts,

I am looking for setup F5 APM home lab, can you please guide me how to prepare it what are the backend server required if any one of you done kindly share the list of the coustomize backend server anything please

  • Hi aali86,

    The list of backend servers really depend on what you want to test or how your solution should look like. 

    A getting started lab should at least include a User-Repository of your choice (e.g. AD, LDAP, Radius, SAML, RSA) and a webserver who could serve a couple independent sample websites.

    To test every aspect of APM in your lab (that will be a huge life lession), you may end with one or more backend servers hosting lots of different services to cover the sheer endless APM usecases... 

    If you have never worked with APM before then take a look to some APM class instructions, they may give you some hints what could be done with APM written for starters:

    https://clouddocs.f5.com/training/community/iam/html/archived/class9/module2/module2.html

    Cheere, Kai

     

     

  • Hi,

    Depending on what do you need to experiment:

    Basic beginner setup

    Any setup with any web application hosted behind APM can help you learn lot of things like:

    • Portal Access + Network Access
    • ACLs
    • VPE flows and macros
    • Client side and server side security checks
    • Portal customization
    • ...

    Advanced setup

    A more advanced setup I would recommend will include:

    • APM
    • Windows AD (with NPS) + RDP access
    • A web application supporting AD/Radius authentication (lot of ready to use are available, I personnally tested nextcloud VM, you can go also with Exchange server which is widely required on APM projects)

    With this you can test:

    • AD/Radius authentication
    • AD queries
    • RDP (although you may need a signed certificate but this is out of topic)
    • SAML
    • Dynamic ACLs
    • ...

     

2 Replies

  • Hi aali86,

    The list of backend servers really depend on what you want to test or how your solution should look like. 

    A getting started lab should at least include a User-Repository of your choice (e.g. AD, LDAP, Radius, SAML, RSA) and a webserver who could serve a couple independent sample websites.

    To test every aspect of APM in your lab (that will be a huge life lession), you may end with one or more backend servers hosting lots of different services to cover the sheer endless APM usecases... 

    If you have never worked with APM before then take a look to some APM class instructions, they may give you some hints what could be done with APM written for starters:

    https://clouddocs.f5.com/training/community/iam/html/archived/class9/module2/module2.html

    Cheere, Kai

     

     

  • Hi,

    Depending on what do you need to experiment:

    Basic beginner setup

    Any setup with any web application hosted behind APM can help you learn lot of things like:

    • Portal Access + Network Access
    • ACLs
    • VPE flows and macros
    • Client side and server side security checks
    • Portal customization
    • ...

    Advanced setup

    A more advanced setup I would recommend will include:

    • APM
    • Windows AD (with NPS) + RDP access
    • A web application supporting AD/Radius authentication (lot of ready to use are available, I personnally tested nextcloud VM, you can go also with Exchange server which is widely required on APM projects)

    With this you can test:

    • AD/Radius authentication
    • AD queries
    • RDP (although you may need a signed certificate but this is out of topic)
    • SAML
    • Dynamic ACLs
    • ...