F5 BIG-IP Multi-Site Dashboard v1.7
A comprehensive real-time monitoring dashboard for F5 BIG-IP Application Delivery Controllers featuring multi-site support, DNS hostname resolution, member state tracking, and advanced filtering capabilities. A 170KB modular JavaScript application runs entirely in your browser, served directly from the F5's high-speed operational dataplane. One or more sites operate as Dashboard Front-Ends serving the dashboard interface (HTML, JavaScript, CSS) via iFiles, while other sites operate as API Hosts providing pool data through optimized JSON-based dashboard API calls. This provides unified visibility across multiple sites from a single interface without requiring even a read-only account on any of the BIG-IPs, allowing you to switch between locations and see consistent pool, member, and health status data with almost no latency and very little overhead. Think of it as an extension of the F5 GUI: near real-time state tracking, DNS hostname resolution (if configured), advanced search/filtering, and the ability to see exactly what changed and when. It gives application teams and operations teams direct visibility into application pool state without needing to wait for answers from F5 engineers, eliminating the organizational bottleneck that slows down troubleshooting when every minute counts. https://github.com/hauptem/F5-Multisite-Dashboard
How are memory and disk allocated to different modules on bigip appliance?
hi, when doing "Resource Provisioning", the memory and disk space are auto allocated to LTM and ASM are shown as below. The amount of Memory and disk is minimum requirement, right? When a huge number of virtual server will be created later, will appliance auto allocate more spare memory and disk to the module? And what is he management module responsible for? Is it responsible for packet forwarding? should we set "Provisioning" to "Medium" or "Large" if the throughput is larger than 1Gbps? Can someone please advise? thanks in advance!
Best approach to serve maintenance page
Hi, We need to put website under maintenance for about 6 hours. Traffic flow: Clients -->Akamai--->F5-->Backend servers. We have maintenance page hosted in AWS cloud Front. which approach is better? DNS Change – Temporarily point our domain (via CNAME) to CloudFront by adjusting the TTL to 2 minutes. F5 Configuration – Issue a 302 redirect from F5 to CloudFront or forward (reverse proxy) traffic from F5 to CloudFront by modifying the Host header. This keeps the browser on our domain and returns a 200 OK. Main concerns : Avoiding browser/edge caching issues (we can clear Akamai cache if needed). Ensuring a quick rollback after maintenance. Which approach would be best? Could you advise on the correct implementation?SNI Routing with BIG-IP
In the previous article, The Three HTTP Routing Patterns, Lori MacVittie covers 3 methods of routing. Today we will look at Server Name Indication (SNI) routing as an additional method of routing HTTPS or any protocol that uses TLS and SNI. Using SNI we can route traffic to a destination without having to terminate the SSL connection. This enables several benefits including: Reduced number of Public IPs Simplified configuration More intelligent routing of TLS traffic Terminating SSL Connections When you have a SSL certificate and key you can perform the cryptographic actions required to encrypt traffic using TLS. This is what I refer to as “terminating the SSL connection” throughout this article. When you want to route traffic this is a chicken and an egg problem, because for TLS traffic you want to be able to route the traffic by being able to inspect the contents, but this normally requires being able to “terminate the SSL connection”. The goal of this article is to layer in traffic routing for TLS traffic without having to require having/knowing the original SSL certificate and key. Server Name Indication (SNI) SNI is a TLS extension that makes it possible to "share" certificates on a single IP address. This is possible due to a client using a TLS extension that requests a specific name before the server responds with a SSL certificate. Prior to SNI, the other options would be a wildcard certificate or Subject Alternative Name (SAN) that allows you to specify multiple names with a single certificate. SNI with Virtual Servers It has been possible to use SNI on F5 BIG-IP since TMOS 11.3.0. The following KB13452 outlines how it can be configured. In this scenario (from the KB article) the BIG-IP is terminating the SSL connection. Not all clients support SNI and you will always need to specify a “fallback” profile that will be used if a SNI name is not used or matched. The next example will look at how to use SNI without terminating the SSL connection. SNI Routing Occasionally you may have the need to have a hybrid configuration of terminating SSL connections on the BIG-IP and sending connections without terminating SSL. One method is to create two separate virtual servers, one for SSL connections that the BIG-IP will handle (using clientssl profile) and one that it will not handle SSL (just TCP). This works OK for a small number of backends, but does not scale well if you have many backends (run out of Public IP addresses). Using SNI Routing we can handle everything on a single virtual server / Public IP address. There are 3 methods for performing SNI Routing with BIG-IP iRule with binary scan a. Article by Colin Walker code attribute to Joel Moses b. Code Share by Stanislas Piron iRule with SSL::extensions Local Traffic Policy Option #1 is for folks that prefer complete control of the TLS protocol. It only requires the use of a TCP profile. Options #2 and #3 only require the use of a SSL persistence profile and TCP profile. SNI Routing with Local Traffic Policy We will skip option #1 and #2 in this article and look at using a Local Traffic Policy for SNI Routing. For a review of Local Traffic Policies check out the following DevCentral articles: LTM Policy Jan 2015 Simplifying Local Traffic Policies in BIG-IP 12.1 June 2016 In previous articles about Local Traffic Policies the focus was on routing HTTP traffic, but today we will use it to route SSL connections using SNI. In the following example, using a Local Traffic Policy named “sni_routing”, we are setting a condition on the SSL Extension “servername” and sending the traffic to a pool without terminating the SSL connection. The pool member could be another server or another BIG-IP device. The next example will forward the traffic to another virtual server that is configured with a clientssl profile. This uses VIP targeting to send traffic to another virtual server on the same device. In both examples it is important to note that the “condition”/“action” has been changed from occurring on “request” (that maps to a HTTP L7 request) to “ssl client hello”. By performing the action prior to any L7 functions occurring, we can forward the traffic without terminating the SSL connection. The previous example policy, “sni_routing”, can be attached to a Virtual Server that only has a TCP profile and SSL persistence profile. No HTTP or clientssl profile is required! This method can also be used to solve the issue of how to consolidate multiple SSL virtual servers behind a single virtual server that have different APM and/or ASM policies. This is similar to the architecture that is used by the Container Connector for Cloud Foundry; in creating a two-tier load balancing solution on a single device. Routed Correctly? TLS 1.3 has interesting proposals on how to obscure the servername (TLS in TLS?), but for now this is a useful and practical method of handling multiple SSL certs on a single IP. In the future this may still be possible as well with TLS 1.3. For example the use of a HTTP Fronting service could be a tier 1 virtual server (this is just my personal speculation, I have not tried, at the time of publishing this was still a draft proposal). In other news it has been demonstrated that a combination of using SNI and a different host header can be used for “domain fronting”. A method to enforce consistent policy (prevent domain fronting) would be to layer in additional conditions that match requested SNI servername (TLS extension) with requested HOST header (L7 HTTP header). This would help enforce that a tenant is using a certificate that is associated with their application and not “borrowing” the name and certificate that is being used by an adjacent service. We don’t think of a TLS extension as an attribute that can be used to route application traffic, but it is useful and possible on BIG-IP.
MQTT Broker - logging irule
Hi i am trying to setup an MQTT LTM VS and running into a few issues, i was trying to use some of the sample irules to capture some more logging but can't quite figure out this one that should log the messages https://techdocs.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/manuals/product/ltm-iot-administration-13-0-0/1.html Common/irule_mqtt_loggging:14: error: [undefined procedure: MQTT::message_id][MQTT::message_id] /Common/irule_mqtt_loggging:26: error: ["The command does not expect argument."][MQTT::message topics qos $topic] i had thought that these were standard variables that could just be used...if anyone has managed to get this working any help would be apprecated thanks chrisSSL Orchestrator Advanced Use Cases: Client Certificate Constrained Delegation (C3D) Support
Introduction F5 BIG-IP is synonymous with "flexibility". You likely have few other devices in your architecture that provide the breadth of capabilities that come native with the BIG-IP platform. And for each and every BIG-IP product module, the opportunities to expand functionality are almost limitless. In this article series we examine the flexibility options of the F5 SSL Orchestrator in a set of "advanced" use cases. If you haven't noticed, the world has been steadily moving toward encrypted communications. Everything from web, email, voice, video, chat, and IoT is now wrapped in TLS, and that's a good thing. The problem is, malware - that thing that creates havoc in your organization, that exfiltrates personnel records to the Dark Web - isn't stopped by encryption. TLS 1.3 and multi-factor authentication don't eradicate malware. The only reasonable way to defend against it is to catch it in the act, and an entire industry of security products are designed for just this task. But ironically, encryption makes this hard. You can't protect against what you can't see. F5 SSL Orchestrator simplifies traffic decryption and malware inspection, and dynamically orchestrates traffic to your security stack. But it does much more than that. SSL Orchestrator is built on top of F5's BIG-IP platform, and as stated earlier, is abound with flexibility. SSL Orchestrator Use Case: Client Certificate Constrained Delegation (C3D) Using certificates to authenticate is one of the oldest and most reliable forms of authentication. While not every application supports modern federated access or multi-factor schemes, you'll be hard-pressed to find something that doesn't minimally support authentication over TLS with certificates. And coupled with hardware tokens like smart cards, certificates can enable one of the most secure multi-factor methods available. But certificate-based authentication has always presented a unique challenge to security architectures. Certificate "mutual TLS" authentication requires an end-to-end TLS handshake. When a server indicates a requirement for the client to submit its certificate, the client must send both its certificate, and a digitally-signed hash value. This hash value is signed (i.e. encrypted) with the client's private key. Should a device between the client and server attempt to decrypt and re-encrypt, it would be unable to satisfy the server's authentication request by virtue of not having access to the client's private key (to create the signed hash). This makes encrypted malware inspection complicated, often requiring a total bypass of inspection to sites that require mutual TLS authentication. Fortunately, F5 has an elegant solution to this challenge in the form of Client Certificate Constrained Delegation, affectionally referred to as "C3D". The concept is reasonably straightforward. In very much the same way that SSL forward proxy re-issues a remote server certificate to local clients, C3D can re-issue a remote client certificate to local servers. A local server can continue to enforce secure mutual TLS authentication, while allowing the BIG-IP to explicitly decrypt and re-encrypt in the middle. This presents an immediate advantage in basic load balancing, where access to the unencrypted data allows the BIG-IP greater control over persistence. In the absence of this, persistence would typically be limited to IP address affinity. But of course, access to the unencrypted data also allows the content to be scanned for malicious malware. C3D actually takes this concept of certificate re-signing to a higher level though. The "constrained delegation" portion of the name implies a characteristic much like Kerberos constrained delegation, where (arbitrary) attributes can be inserted into the re-signed token, like the PAC attributes in a Kerberos ticket, to inform the server about the client. Servers for their part can then simply filter on client certificates issued by the BIG-IP (to prevent direct access), and consume any additional attributes in the certificate to understand how better to handle the client. With C3D you can maintain strong mutual TLS authentication all the way through to your servers, while allowing the BIG-IP to more effectively manage availability. And combined with SSL Orchestrator, C3D can enable decryption and inspection of content for malware inspection. This article describes how to configure SSL Orchestrator to enable C3D for inbound decrypted inspection. Arguably, most of what follows is the C3D configuration itself, as the integration with SSL Orchestrator is pretty simple. Note that Client Certificate Constrained Delegation (C3D) is included with Local Traffic Manager (LTM) 13.0 and beyond, but for integration with SSL Orchestrator you should be running 14.1 or later.To learn more about C3D, please see the following resources: K14065425: Configuring Client Certificate Constrained Delegation (C3D): https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K14065425 Manual Chapter: SSL Traffic Management: https://techdocs.f5.com/en-us/bigip-15-1-0/big-ip-system-ssl-administration/ssl-traffic-management.html#GUID-B4D2529E-D1B0-4FE2-8C7F-C3774ADE1ED2 SSL::c3d iRule reference - not required to use C3D, but adds powerful functionality https://clouddocs.f5.com/api/irules/SSL__c3d.html The integration of C3D with SSL Orchestrator involves effectively replacing the client and server SSL profiles that the SSL Orchestrator topology creates, with C3D SSL profiles. This is done programmatically with an iRule, so no "non-strict" customization is required at the topology. Also note that an inbound (reverse proxy) SSL Orchestrator topology will take the form of a "gateway mode" deployment (a routed path to multiple applications), or "application mode" deployment (a single application instance hosted at the BIG-IP). See section 2.5 of the SSL Orchestrator deployment guide for a deeper examination of gateway and application modes: https://clouddocs.f5.com/sslo-deployment-guide/ The C3D integration is only applicable to application mode deployments. Configuration C3D itself involves the creation of client and server SSL profiles: Create a new Client SSL profile: Configuration Certificate Key Chain: public-facing server certificate and private key. This will be the certificate and key presented to the client on inbound request. It will likely be the same certificate and key defined in the SSL Orchestrator inbound topology. Client Authentication Client Certificate: require Trusted Certificate Authorities: bundle that can validate client certificate. This is a certificate bundle used to verify the client's certificate, and will contain all of the client certificate issuer CAs. Advertised Certificate Authorities: optional CA hints bundle. Not expressly required, but this certificate bundle is forwarded to the client during the TLS handshake to "hint" at the correct certificate, based on issuer. Client Certificate Constrained Delegation Client Certificate Constrained Delegation: Enabled Client Fallback Certificate (new in 15.1): option to select a default client certificate if client does not send one. This option was introduced in 15.1 and provides the means to select an alternate (local) certificate if the client does not present one. The primary use case here might be to select a "template" certificate, and use an iRule function to insert arbitrary attributes. OCSP: optional client certificate revocation control. This option defines an OCSP revocation provider for the client certificate. Unknown OCSP Response Control (new in 15.1): determines what happens when OCSP returns Unknown. If an OCSP revocation provider is selected, this option defines what to do if the response to the OCSP query is "unknown". Create a new Server SSL profile: Configuration Certificate: default.crt. The certificate and key here are used as "templates" for the re-signed client certificate. Key: default.key Client Certificate Configuration Delegation Client Certificate Constrained Delegation: Enabled CA Certificate: local forging CA cert. This is the CA certificate used to re-sign the client certificate. This CA must be trusted by the local servers. CA Key: local forging CA key CA Passphrase: optional CA passphrase Certificate Extensions: extensions from the real client cert to be included in the forged cert. This is the list of certificate extensions to be copied from the original certificate to the re-issued certificate. Custom Extension: additional extensions to copy to forged cert from real cert (OID). This option allows you to insert additional extensions to be copied, as OID values. Additional considerations: Under normal conditions, the F5 and backend server attempt to resume existing SSL sessions, whereby the server doesn’t send a Certificate Request message. The effect is that all connections to the backend server use the same forged client cert. There are two ways to get around this: Set a zero-length cache value in the server SSL profile, or Set server authentication frequency to ‘always’ in the server SSL profile CA certificate considerations: A valid signing CA certificate should possess the following attributes. While it can work in some limited scenarios, a self-signed server certificate is generally not an adequate option for the signing CA. keyUsage: certificate extension containing "keyCertSign" and "digitalSignature" attributes basicConstraints: certificate extension containing "CA = true" (for Yes), marked as "Critical" With the client and server SSL profiles built, the C3D configuration is basically done. To integrate with an inbound SSL Orchestrator topology, create a simple iRule and add it to the topology's Interception Rule configuration. Modify the SSL profile paths below to reflect the profiles you created earlier. ### Modify the SSL profile paths below to match real C3D SSL profiles when CLIENT_ACCEPTED priority 250 { ## set clientssl set cmd1 "SSL::profile /Common/c3d-clientssl" ; eval $cmd1 } when SERVER_CONNECTED priority 250 { ## set serverssl SSL::profile "/Common/c3d-serverssl" } In the SSL Orchestrator UI, either from topology workflow, or directly from the corresponding Interception Rule configuration, add the above iRule and deploy. The above iRule programmatically overrides the SSL profiles applied to the Interception Rule (virtual server), effectively enabling C3D support. At this point, the virtual server will request a client certificate, perform revocation checks if defined, and then mint a local copy of the client certificate to pass to the backend server. Optionally, you can insert additional certificate attributes via the server SSL profile configuration, or more dynamically through additional iRule logic: ### Added in 15.1 - allows you to send a forged cert to the server ### irrespective of the client side authentication (ex. APM SSO), ### and insert arbitrary values when SERVERSSL_SERVERCERT { ### The following options allow you to override/replace a submitted ### client cert. For example, a minted client certificate can be sent ### to the server irrespective of the client side authentication method. ### This certificate "template" could be defined locally in the iRule ### (Base64-encoded), pulled from an iFile, or some other certificate source. # set cert1 [b64decode "LS0tLS1a67f7e226f..."] # set cert1 [ifile get template-cert] ### In order to use a template cert, it must first be converted to DER format # SSL::c3d cert [X509::pem2der $cert1] ### Insert arbitrary attributes (OID:value) SSL::c3d extension 1.3.6.1.4.1.3375.3.1 "TEST" } If you've configured the above, a server behind SSL Orchestrator that requires mutual TLS authentication can receive minted client certificates from external users, and SSL Orchestrator can explicitly decrypt and pass traffic to the set of malware inspection tools. You can look at the certificate sent to the server by injecting a tcpdump packet between the BIG-IP and server, then open in Wireshark. tcpdump -lnni [VLAN] -Xs0 -w capture.pcap [additional filters] Finally, you might be asking what to do with certificate attributes injected by C3D, and really it depends on what the server can support. The below is a basic example in an Apache config file to block a client certificate that doesn't contain your defined attribute. <Directory /> SSLRequire "HTTP/%h" in PeerExtList("1.3.6.1.4.1.3375.3.1") RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{SSL::SSL_CLIENT_VERIFY} !=SUCCESS RewriteRule .? - [F] ErrorDocument 403 "Delegation to SPN HTTP/%h failed. Please pass a valid client certificate" </Directory> And there you have it. In just a few steps you've configured your SSL Orchestrator to integrate with Client Certificate Constrained Delegation to support mutual TLS authentication, and along the way you have hopefully recognized the immense flexibility at your command. Updates As of F5 BIG-IP 16.1.3, there are some new C3D capabilities: C3D has been updated to encode and return the commonName (CN) found in the client certificate subject field in printableString format if possible, otherwise the value will be encoded as UTF8. C3D has been updated to support inserting a subject commonName (CN) via 'SSL::c3d subject commonName' command: when CLIENTSSL_HANDSHAKE { if {[SSL::cert count] > 0} { SSL::c3d subject commonName [X509::subject [SSL::cert 0] commonName] } } C3D has been updated to support inserting a Subject Alternative Name (SAN) and Authority Info Access (AIA) via 'SSL::c3d extension' commands: when CLIENTSSL_HANDSHAKE { ## Insert Subject Alternative Name (SAN) value SSL::c3d extension SAN "DNS:*.test-client.com, IP:1.1.1.1" ### Insert Authority Info Access (AIA) value SSL::c3d extension AIA "ocsp,https://ocsp.entrust.net.com; caIssuer, https://aia.entrust.net/l1m-chain256.cer" } C3D has been updated to add the Authority Key Identifier (AKI) extension to the client certificate if the CA certificate has a Subject Key Identifier (SKI) extension. Another interesting use case is copying the real client certificate Subject Key Identifier (SKI) to the minted client certificate. By default, the minted client certificate will not contain an SKI value, but it's easy to configure C3D to copy the origin cert's SKI by modifying the C3D server SSL profile. In the "Custom extension" field of the C3D section, add 2.5.29.14 as an available extension. As of F5 BIG-IP 17.1.0 (SSL Orchestrator 11.0), C3D has been integrated natively. Now, for a deployed Inbound topology, the C3D SSL profiles are listed in the Protocol Settings section of the Interception Rules tab. You can replace the client and server SSL profiles created by SSL Orchestrator, with C3D SSL profiles in the Interception Rules tab to support C3D. The C3D support is now extended to both Gateway and Application modes.
need help to download web servers OVA files.
Hello everyone, I am following the Keith Barker CBT nuggets video to create a lab in my local machine. Can someone help me to download web servers (red, blue, green) OVA files ? or can some one share the link where i can download these files ? Thanks Rejanish
BIG-IP LTM VE: Transfer your iRules in style with the iRule Editor
The new LTM VE has opened up the possibilities for writing, testing and deploying iRules in a big way. It’s easier than ever to get a test environment set up in which you can break things develop to your heart’s content. This is fantastic news for us iRulers that want to be doing the newest, coolest stuff without having to worry about breaking a production system. That’s all well and good, but what the heck do you do to get all of your current stuff onto your test system? There are several options, ranging from copy and paste (shudder) to actual config copies and the like, which all work fine. Assuming all you’re looking for though is to transfer over your iRules, like me, the easiest way I’ve found is to use the iRule editor’s export and import features. It makes it literally a few clicks and super easy to get back up and running in the new environment. First, log into your existing LTM system with your iRule editor (you are using the editor, right? Of course you are…just making sure). You’ll see a screen something like this (right) with a list of a bagillionty iRules on the left and their cool, color coded awesomeness on the right. You can go through and select iRules and start moving them manually, but there’s really no need. All you need to do is go up to the File –> Archive –> Export option and let it do its magic. All it’s doing is saving text files to your local system to archive off all of your iRuley goodness. Once that’s done, you can then spin up your new LTM VE and get logged in via the iRule editor over there. Connect via the iRule editor, and go to File –> Archive –> Import, shown below. Once you choose the import option you’ll start seeing your iRules popping up in the left-hand column, just like you’re used to. This will take a minute depending on how many iRules you have archived (okay, so I may have more than a few iRules in my collection…) but it’s generally pretty snappy. One important thing to note at his point, however, is that all of your iRules are bolded with an asterisk next to them. This means they are not saved in their current state on the LTM. If you exit at this point, you’ll still be iRuleless, and no one wants that. Luckily Joe thought of that when building the iRule editor, so all you need to do is select File –> Save All, and you’ll be most of the way home. I say most of the way because there will undoubtedly be some errors that you’ll need to clean up. These will be config based errors, like pools that used to exist on your old system and don’t now, etc. You can either go create the pools in the config or comment out those lines. I tend to try and keep my iRules as config agnostic as possible while testing things, so there aren’t a ton of these but some of them always crop up. The editor makes these easy to spot and fix though. The name of the iRule that’s having a problem will stay bolded and any errors in that particular code will be called out (assuming you have that feature turned on) so you can pretty quickly spot them and fix them. This entire process took me about 15 minutes, including cleaning up the code in certain iRules to at least save properly on the new system, and I have a bunch of iRules, so that’s a pretty generous estimate. It really is quick, easy and painless to get your code onto an LTM VE and get hacking coding. An added side benefit, but a cool one, is that you now have your iRules backed up locally. Not only does this mean you’re double plus sure that they won’t be lost, but it means the next time you want to deploy them somewhere, all you have to do is import from the editor. So if you haven’t yet, go download your BIG-IP LTM VE and get started. I can’t recommend it enough. Also make sure to check out some of the really handy DC content that shows you how to tweak it for more interfaces or Joe’s supremely helpful guide on how to use a single VM to run an entire client/LTM/server setup. Wicked cool stuff. Happy iRuling. #Colin
