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snsit1_86284's avatar
snsit1_86284
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Sep 03, 2013

iControl Web Page to amend iRules assigned to Virtual Servers

Guys,

 

Has anyone come across a way of having a web page interact with an F5 to change an irule assisgned to a virtual server ? i am looking to have a web page with options to either change the irule assisgned to my virtual server to be either irule-a or irule-b depending on where i want to send traffic to at any given point. The current work around is just to assign the required irules via the F5 GUI under the virtual server, I would like to pass off this automated task to an operater to easily switch the irule in use on the Virtual server from either a Radio button or drop down list and then click on submit which in turn sends the command to the F5 to amend the irule assigned to the Virtual Server.

 

Any Help really appreciated.

 

devops
iControl
management

4 Replies

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  • Joe_Pruitt's avatar
    Joe_Pruitt
    Sep 03, 2013

    I've heard of lots of customers who have done things like this. The implementation would depend on the platform you are using. Building an ASP app would be a snap as you can just plugin the iControl Assembly (iControl.dll) into the project. Java is almost as easy but you'll have to include the other 3rd party libraries in the iControl Library for Java (iControl.jar) download.

     

    The biggest issue I see customers face is with the topic of username/password security. You can store the credentials on your app server (in code, file system, or database) and make it a no-auth operation for your users or you can require them to login to your app and either use passthru authentication or do a authentication proxy where you map web server credentials to BIG-IP credentials.

     

    -Joe

     

  • Brent_West_7733's avatar
    Brent_West_7733
    Historic F5 Account
    Sep 03, 2013

    I have written apps that apply/remove an iRule for maintenance using PHP. The nice thing about PHP is that the GUI coding becomes trivial if you are familiar with it. That said, the code share in devcentral doesn't have a lot of examples for PHP, and so it's possibly more difficult to work with from an iControl standpoint.

     

    • Joe_Pruitt's avatar
      Joe_Pruitt
      Sep 04, 2013
      Brent - we'd love to have some of your code samples for the wiki! B-)
  • Christian_15126's avatar
    Christian_15126
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Sep 04, 2013

    I too am looking for PHP configuration examples on how to automate or at least abstract confiuraton tasks from the f5 locally. Unfortunatly I'm a noob to PHP and iControl so I'm having some trouble getting started. Does anyone know of any good getting started examples for using PHP and icontrol to perform basic administrative tasks? Should I create a new topic regarding this question? Thx!