What’s new in F5 Insight for ADSP v1.1?
Introduction F5 Insight for ADSP, a key component of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), helps teams monitor and secure apps that are spread across hybrid, multi-cloud and AI environments. In this article, I’ll highlight some of the new features introduced in F5 Insight v1.1. Demo Video Disaster Recovery Now with enhanced User Workflows. The F5 Insight Disaster Recovery feature helps your system keep running even if one server fails. It works by maintaining two synchronized systems: Primary instance — Handles all active operations. Standby instance — A backup system that continuously syncs data from the primary. If the Primary fails or requires maintenance, you can “promote” the Standby to take over as the Primary. After fixing the first system, you can perform a “failback” to restore it to normal operation. Change to Default User Credentials on First Boot F5 Insight now supports a default user and random password login workflow. You can either use cloud-init (like previous version) or the default user credential option. NOTE: This applies to new installations, not upgrades. In previous versions of F5 Insight, the procedure to set the admin username/password involved utilizing the “cloud-init” function. There is now an alternative method for setting the admin username/password. A unique password will be generated at first boot, allowing administrators to log in for the first time using this password. This randomly generated password must be changed after initially logging in. UI Improvements Previous versions of F5 Insight dashboards with large data volumes could experience some performance degradation due to extensive configuration objects. This has been resolved by implementing comprehensive performance optimizations across the dashboard platform, enabling it to handle significantly larger datasets while maintaining a fast and responsive user experience. Upgrade Procedure You’ve probably never upgraded your F5 Insight version, so it’s time to learn how. First, download the updated software version from myf5.com. The updated software is distributed as a bundled gzipped tar file. Then, upload the new version to your F5 Insight from the About screen, then click Upgrade. After uploading the new version, select Start Upgrade. The upgrade will take several minutes. Conclusion The latest version of F5 Insight for ADSP offers expanded functionality with Disaster Recovery. It also provides a convenient alternative to “cloud-init” for setting the initial administrative username & password. Finally, there are several UI improvements aimed at making the user experience better and more seamless. Upgrade today to the latest version of F5 Insight for ADSP and enjoy the following benefits: Streamline the initial configuration of F5 Insight with the new default admin user and dynamically generated password. Enjoy expanded workflows with the Disaster Recovery feature. Benefit from the many UI improvements. Related Content Introducing F5 Insight for ADSP F5 Insight for ADSP – Initial Setup in VMware F5 Insight for ADSP - A Closer Look F5 Insight for ADSP Documentation F5 Insight Product Page F5 Insight Release Blog
F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management
Introduction A big part of effective application delivery and security is ensuring visibility and control of your hybrid and multicloud app and API deployments. F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management—a key component of F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP)—helps teams maintain order and streamline administration of BIG-IP app delivery and security services. Combining data-rich dashboards, intuitive configuration workflows, and powerful automation, BIG-IQ creates a single interface for holistic management of your BIG-IP investment. In this article, I’ll highlight some of the key features and use cases in F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management. Effective management of this complex application landscape requires a single point of control that combines visibility, simplified management and automation tools. Demo Video What is BIG-IQ? F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management reduces complexity and administrative burden by providing a single platform to create, configure, provision, deploy, upgrade, and manage F5 BIG-IP security and application delivery services. BIG-IQ supports BIG-IP end-to-end, including BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE), F5 rSeries appliances, and F5 VELOS, managing policies, licenses, SSL certificates, images, and configurations for F5 appliances and modules. BIG-IQ saves you time and money by providing a single point of management for all your BIG-IP devices—whether they are on premises or in a public or private cloud. It can manage any physical or virtual BIG-IP device so long as it can establish layer 3 connectivity for management, either by GUI or through APIs. You can run BIG-IQ on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and most private cloud architectures. Why is BIG-IQ important? Effective management—orchestration, visibility, and compliance—relies on consistent app services and security policies across on-premises and cloud deployments. Easily control all your BIG-IP devices and services with a single, unified management platform. Core Capabilities of BIG-IQ: Application analytics Simplify troubleshooting and assess health and performance at a glance with big-picture and application-specific dashboards. Advanced application templates Powerful AS3 templates make it easy for app teams to spin-up applications with appropriate security and network services. Central policy management Ensure compliance and security with centrally managed configurations for devices and applications. Holistic security dashboard Reduce blind spots and mitigate risks with a birds-eye view of your security posture. End-to-end device lifecycle management Create, configure, deploy, upgrade, patch, certify, and manage up to 1000 BIG-IP devices from an intelligent, centralized platform. Cert-management Keep BIG-IP device certificates compliant and up to date via seamless integrations with popular third-party certificate management platforms. License management Automatically apply and remove licenses as you add or remove BIG-IP devices. Backup and restore Backup and restore images, software, and configuration files. Role-based access control Use standard roles or create custom ones to provide development teams with the tools they need to deliver applications. How does BIG-IQ work? BIG-IQ manages all your BIG-IP products regardless of how they are deployed. BIG-IQ also manages your F5 rSeries and VELOS appliances. It allows you to edit policies and quickly deploy it to one or more BIG-IPs. You can use it to back up and restore your BIG-IPs. You can use it to monitor the health of applications managed by BIG-IPs Add your BIG-IPs to BIG-IQ Use BIG-IQ to upgrade your BIG-IP software version. Schedule daily backups. Use BIG-IQ to upgrade your BIG-IQ software version. Conclusion Effective management—orchestration, visibility, and compliance—relies on consistent app services and security policies across on-premises and cloud deployments. Easily control all your BIG-IP devices and services with a single, unified management platform, F5 BIG-IQ. Related Content Five Key Benefits of Centralized Management F5 BIG-IQ Solution Overview Boosting BIG-IP AFM Efficiency with BIG-IQ: Technical Use Cases and Integration Guide F5 BIG-IQ What's New in v8.4.0? F5 BIG-IQ What's New in v8.4.1?
F5 Insight for ADSP – Initial Setup in VMware
Demo Video Initial VMware Configuration Download the ova file from myf5.com. In VMware choose the Create/Register VM option and choose Deploy a virtual machine from an OVF or OVA file. Continue through the install wizard, which will upload the ova file to your VMware server. Uncheck the option to Power on automatically so you can edit the VM properties prior to boot. Note: Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed is recommended for performance Edit the Virtual Hardware options and set the hardware settings as follows: Note: A 600 GB disk formatted to Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed is recommended for performance Switch to the VM Options tab and expand Advanced Scroll down and click Edit Configuration Click Add parameter and add the following: guestinfo.userdata.encoding = base64 Create a local cloud-config.yml file to set the administrative username and password: Be sure to change the admin password and make a note of it. Then you need to base64 encode the file. Return to the VMware Configuration Parameters screen and Add another parameter named “guestinfo.userdata” and paste the base64 encoded text in the Value. Click OK when done. After saving the VM settings, you are ready to power on your VM for the first time! Note: Refer to the F5 Insight on VMware Deployment Guide for further details on this procedure. Post Boot VM Settings Open the VM Console and login to F5 Insight with the credentials specified in the cloud-config.yml file Configure the F5 Insight network settings using the following commands: Example: After hitting Enter, you will see the following: If no changes are needed, enter “y” to confirm. The output should look like the following: Note: Refer to the F5 Insight User Guide for further details on this procedure. Accessing the User Interface The initial configuration is complete and you can now log into the UI. You will see the Welcome screen. Click Next. Paste the text of the JWT Token and click Validate. If the license is activated, click Next. Enable the LLM Provider. Select your LLM Provider, Anthropic in this example. Enter your API Token/Key and the Enterprise API URL. Note that I am skipping TLS verification. Click Test Connection. Click Next if the test is successful On the next screen, select your preferred Setup Method. I’m using Start Fresh. Click Add Device Enter the Endpoint, Username and Password You can optionally configure a Certificate Authority and Data Center Select the Modules that are active and you want to monitor. Click Add Device. Click Next The configuration is complete. You can view the Home Page or the Device Settings. The Home Page should look like this: Conclusion F5 Insight for ADSP offers customizable visualizations and dashboards to help teams surface actionable metrics and KPIs tailored to your organization. It provides access to useful telemetry data for a deeper understanding of your environment, application behaviors, and complex BIG-IP deployments, all centralized in a single location. Identification of root causes during outages/tickets. Solve issues and struggles with Day 2 analysis of your BIG-IP Fleet and the applications therein. Mitigates the problem of a lack of detailed visual information on your BIG-IP Fleet. Set a foundation for the utilization of open-source tools and their benefits. Related Content Introducing F5 Insight for ADSP F5 Insight for ADSP - A Closer Look F5 Insight for ADSP Documentation F5 Insight Product Page F5 Insight Release Blog
F5 BIG-IP Zero Trust Access
Introduction F5 BIG-IP Zero Trust Access, a key component of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), helps teams secure apps that are spread across hybrid, multi-cloud and AI environments. In this article, I’ll highlight some of the key features and use cases addressed by BIG-IP Zero Trust Access. F5 BIG-IP Zero Trust Access improves security and the user experience while managing access to your portfolio of corporate applications. Demo Video What is Zero Trust? Key Zero Trust Concepts Zero Trust is a cybersecurity framework built on the following core concepts: Never Trust Similar to human concepts that trust is not given freely, it is earned Always Verify Authenticate and authorize based on all available data points Continuously Monitor Zero Trust is an ongoing security framework that requires monitoring F5 enables zero-trust architectures that optimize your investments and extend zero-trust security across your entire portfolio. Why is this important? Securing apps is complex because apps are spread across a hybrid, multi-cloud environment. Apps themselves have become hybrid in nature, too. This creates 2 problems: Legacy and custom applications can complicate access security. Apps residing anywhere increases the attack surface. F5 BIG-IP Zero Trust Access secures hybrid application access. Securely managing access to corporate applications is critical to preventing data breaches. Doing it well can also increase efficiencies in business processes and user productivity. A Zero Trust security model can deliver this business value by enabling users to seamlessly and securely access their applications from anywhere regardless of where the application resides. In today’s world of hybrid, multicloud and AI applications, Zero Trust is a must. Application access control is key to any Zero Trust architecture. How does F5 address Zero Trust? F5 Zero Trust Begins with Secure Access to All Apps. The F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) is the foundation for Zero Trust Architectures. F5 ADSP delivers visibility, enforcement, and intelligence where it matters most: the application layer. While there are many important components to Zero Trust, we will be focusing on Zero Trust Application Access: Identity-Aware Proxy - Secure access to apps with a fine-grained approach to user authentication and authorization that enables only per-request context- and identity-aware access. Single Sign-On (SSO) and Access Federation - Integrating with existing SSO and identity federation solutions, users can access all their business apps via a single login, regardless of if the app is SAML enabled or not. OAuth 2.0 and OIDC Support - Enable social login to simplify access authorization from trusted third-party identity providers like Google, LinkedIn, Okta, Azure AD, and others. Identity Aware Proxy (IAP) – A Key Component of Zero Trust Use the Guided Configuration to configure the Identity Aware Proxy. From the BIG-IP UI, go to Access > Guided Configuration > Zero Trust. Select the Identity Aware Proxy You will see a configuration example of Identity Aware Proxy Click Next at the bottom For the Config Properties, give it a name, “IAP_DEMO” in this example Set the below options to On Click Save & Next Enable the F5 Client Posture Check Select your CA Trust Certificate Click Add Give it a Name, “FW_Check” in this example Under Windows, select Firewall and Domain Managed Devices Enter your domain name, “f5lab.local” in this example Click Done Click Save & Next Configure the Virtual Server Properties Switch Advanced Settings to On Set the Destination Address, “10.1.10.100” in this example For the Client SSL Profile, select the Client SSL Certificate, Private Key and Trusted Certificate Authorities For the Server SSL Profile, select your Server SSL Certificate and Private Key Click Save & Next Click Add under Authentication Give it a Name, “AD” in this example Set the Authentication Type to “AAA” Set the Authentication Server Type to Active Directory Choose your Authentication Server, “ad-servers” in this example Check the box for Active Directory Query Properties Under Required Attributes, find “memberOf” and click the arrow to move it to Selected Click MFA Click Add Double click Radius Under Choose Radius Server, select Create New Give it a name, “radius_pool” in this example Enter the Server IP Address, “10.1.20.8” in this example Enter the Secret in the two fields Click Save Click Save & Next Click Add Give it a name, “basic_sso” in this example For the SSO Configuration Object, click Create New The Username Source and Password Source should be set like the following Click Save Click Save & Next Under Applications click Add Give it a name, “iap1.acme.com” in this example Under Application Properties, set the FQDN and Caption to “basic.acme.com” Set the Pool IP Address to 10.1.20.7, Port 443, HTTPS Click Save For the Auth Domain, enter “iap1.acme.com” Click Save & Next Set Primary Authentication to “AD” Click Save & Next Click Add under Contextual Access For the Contextual Access Properties, give it a name, “basic.acme.com” in this example Set the Resource to iap1.acme.com Set Device Posture to FW_CHECK Set Single Sign-On to basic_sso Find the Sales Engineering Group and click Add Select the box for Additional Checks Set the Match Action to Step Up Set Step Up Authentication to Custom Radius based Authentication Click Save & Next The Remediation Page must be changed to a real host where users can download and install the EPI updates In this example, it has been changed to “https://iap1.acme.com/epi/downloads” Click Save & Next Click Save & Next Click Deploy Click Finish when the deployment completes Test the functionality by going to a client computer and accessing https://iap1.acme.com Logon with valid credentials You should see a page like the following Click basic.acme.com Login with valid credentials & click Validate You should see the basic.acme.com web page and be already logged in Note: If you disable the Windows Firewall on the client, you should get a block page similar to the following: Conclusion BIG-IP introduces a powerful access experience. BIG-IP provides a variety of Authentication, Federation, SSO and MFA protocols allowing for modern to legacy protocol translation. BIG-IP integrates with 3 rd parties to enforce identity aware decisions. BIG-IP secures identities for any apps and users anywhere in legacy and modern environments, spanning on-prem, hybrid or cloud locations. The highly scalable and proven Access Security solution that F5 customers know and trust. Related Content Zero Trust Solution Overview Secure Corporate Apps with a Zero Trust Security Model BLOG: F5 BIG-IP Zero Trust Access Zero Trust Application Access for Federal Agencies
What's new in BIG-IP v21.0?
Introduction In November of 2025 F5 released the latest version of BIG-IP software, v21.0. This release is packed with fixes and new features that enhance the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP). These changes complement the Delivery, Security and Deployment aspects of the ADSP. Demo Video: New SSL Orchestrator Features SNI Preservation SNI (Server Name Indication) Preservation is now supported for Inbound Gateway Mode. This preserves the client’s original SNI information as traffic passes through the reverse proxy, allowing backend TLS servers to access and use this information. This enables accurate application routing and supports security workflows like threat detection and compliance enforcement. Previous software versions required custom iRules to enable this functionality. Note: SNI preservation is enabled by default. However, if you have existing Inbound Gateway Topologies, you must redeploy them for the change to take effect. iRule Control for Service Entry and Return Previously, iRules were only available on the entry (ingress) side, limiting customization to traffic entering the Inspection Service. iRule control is now extended to the return-side traffic of Inspection Services. You can now apply iRules on both sides of an Inspection Service (L2, L3, HTTP). This enhancement provides full control over traffic entering and leaving the Inspection Service, enabling more flexible, powerful, and fine-grained traffic handling. The Services page will now include configuration for iRules on service entry and iRules on service return. A typical use-case for this feature is what we call Header Enrichment. In this case, iRules are used to add headers to the payload before sending it to the Inspection Service. The headers could contain the authenticated username/group membership of the person who initiated the connection. This information can be useful for Inspection Services for either logging, policy enforcement, or both. The benefit of this feature is that the authenticated username/group membership header can be removed from the payload on egress, preventing it from being leaked to origin servers. New Access Policy Manager (APM) Features Expanded Exclusion Support for Locked Client Mode Previously, APM-locked client mode allowed a maximum of 10 exclusions, preventing administrators from adding more than 10 destinations. This limitation has now been removed, and the exclusion list can contain more than 10 entries. OAuth Authorization Server Max Claims Data Support The max claim data size is set to 8kb by default, but a large claim size can lead to excessive memory consumption. You must allocate the right amount of memory dynamically as required based on claims configuration. New Features in BIG-IP v21.0.0 Control Plane Performance and Scalability Improvements The BIG-IP 21.0.0 release introduces significant improvements to the BIG-IP control plane, including better scalability and support for large-scale configurations (up to 1 million objects). This includes MCPD efficiency enhancements and eXtremeDB scale improvements. AI Data Delivery Optimize performance and simplify configuration with new S3 data storage integrations. Use cases include secure ingestion for fine-tuning and batch inference, high-throughput retrieval for RAG and embeddings generation, policy-driven model artifact distribution with observability, and controlled egress with consistent security and compliance. F5 BIG-IP optimizes and secures S3 data ingress and egress for AI workloads. Model Context Protocol (MCP) support for AI traffic Accelerate and scale AI workloads with support for MCP that enables seamless communication between AI models, applications, and data sources. This enhances performance, secures connections, and streamlines deployment for AI workloads. F5 BIG-IP optimizes and secures S3 data ingress and egress for AI workloads. Migrating BIG-IP from Entrust to Alternative Certificate Authorities Entrust is soon to be delisted as a certificate authority by many major browsers. Following a variety of compliance failures with industry standards in recent years, browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla made their distrust for Entrust certificates public last year. As such, Entrust certificates issued on or after November 12, 2024, are deemed insecure by most browsers. Conclusion Upgrade your BIG-IP to version 21.0 today to take advantage of these fixes and new features that enhance the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP). These changes complement the Delivery, Security and Deployment aspects of the ADSP. Related Content SSL Orchestrator Release Notes BIG-IP Release Notes BLOG F5 BIG-IP v21.0: Control plane, AI data delivery and security enhancements Press Release F5 launches BIG-IP v21.0 Introduction to BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator
F5 Insight for ADSP - A Closer Look
Introduction F5 Insight for ADSP, a key component of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), helps teams monitor and secure apps that are spread across hybrid, multi-cloud and AI environments. In this article, I’ll highlight some of the key features and use cases addressed by F5 Insight. Demo Video Demo Video: F5 Insight for ADSP - A Closer Look The F5 Insight Home Screen The F5 Insight Home Screen provides comprehensive monitoring for your F5 infrastructure, applications, and security posture. It features intelligent anomaly detection and performance optimization tools, giving administrators and users a centralized view of their BIG-IP fleet health and operational status. System Report Cards The System Report Cards display health indicators ranked Good, Warning, and Critical for the following: Anomaly Detection Monitors the connection count, pool availability, CPU utilization, and memory usage. Application Performance Monitors application-level health based on response time, 4xx, and 5xx error codes. Security Monitors the expiration of SSL/TLS certificates and BIG-IP WAF events. BIG-IP Metrics Monitors for BIG-IP health issues with device resources and operational status. Fleet Status Displays a summary of all BIG-IP devices and their operational status. The Fleet Status shows all the BIG-IP devices with a status of Up, Down or Degraded. Ask AI Assistant Allows you to type queries in plain English to retrieve device statistics, configuration information, security events, device health, application performance and much more. The AI Assistant connects to a configurable Large Language Model (LLM) backend. Supported providers include OpenAI, Anthropic, or a customer provided LLM. An example query: Have there been any outages in the past 24 hours for all devices in all data centers? The AI Assistant understands the question and has identified all the data centers. The AI Assistant then checks the device statistics for any outages or issues. The AI Assistant compiles a detailed summary report of the query. Configuration of Large Language Model (LLM) Large language model (LLM) Insights bring natural language intelligence to F5 Insight, enabling you to query your BIG-IP configurations and logs conversationally. Instead of manually searching through configurations or parsing log files, you can ask questions like “Why is pool member X marked down?” or “Show me all virtual IPs (VIPs) with SSL offloading enabled” and receive immediate, contextualized, clear answers. In the toolbar on the left under Manage, select LLM Insights. Select your LLM Provider Enter your API Token/Key Enter your Enterprise API URL Click Test Connection to verify it’s working Click Save Configuration when the connection is validated. Conclusion F5 Insight for ADSP offers customizable visualizations and dashboards to help you surface metrics and KPIs tailored to your organization. It provides access to useful telemetry data for a deeper understanding of your environment, application behaviors, and complex BIG-IP deployments, all centralized in a single location. Identification of root causes during outages/tickets. Solves issues and struggles with Day 2 analysis of your BIG-IP Fleet and the applications therein. Mitigates the problem of a lack of detailed visual information on your BIG-IP Fleet. Set a foundation for the utilization of open-source tools and their benefits. Related Content Introducing F5 Insight for ADSP F5 Insight for ADSP Documentation F5 Insight Product Page
Introducing F5 Insight for ADSP
Introduction F5 Insight for ADSP, a key component of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), helps teams monitor and secure apps that are spread across hybrid, multi-cloud and AI environments. In this article, I’ll highlight some of the key features and use cases addressed by F5 Insight. F5 Insight: Actionable intelligence to foster operational excellence Demo Videos Demo Video: Introduction to F5 Insight for ADSP Demo Video: F5 Insight - A Closer Look What is F5 Insight for ADSP? F5 Insight is a holistic solution that unifies every aspect of operating applications. It provides end-to-end visibility and operational narratives. It allows you to prioritize to-dos with health scores, anomaly detection, and report cards. It delivers clarity and value faster with views built by F5 experts. It provides expert guidance and optimization recommendations using natural language interactions. F5 Insight is not intended to replace SIEM solutions like Splunk or Sentinel but serves a different, complementary purpose. It’s an open-source tool designed specifically for monitoring and analyzing metrics from your BIG-IP devices. By leveraging open-source telemetry tools, it collects and presents data in a central, easy-to-read dashboard. This eliminates the need to log into individual interfaces like the CLI or GUI to sift through logs and metrics, offering streamlined visibility into your BIG-IP estate for simplified monitoring and analysis. Why is F5 Insight important? Gain out-of-the-box actionable intelligence to optimize application delivery and security: Get critical application and infrastructure performance data, operational analytics, security issues, and other telemetry in a unified tool. Surface important KPIs and data points fast by querying data using natural language with model context protocol (MCP) support. Optimize application delivery and security, as well as underlying resources, with built-in F5 expertise and guidance. Share data with F5 and use F5 AI Data Fabric for application health scores, security grades, and automatic identification and categorization of apps by type and workload (In Limited Availability) Speeds mean-time-to-innocence (MTTI) and mean-time-to-restore (MTTR) with actionable intelligence and proactive alerts. Streamlines monitoring and analysis while being able to run on its own and integrate with your existing Grafana/VictoriaMetrics stacks. Leverage data to make the business case and prove ROI for more resources, application migrations, or system refreshes. How does F5 Insight work? F5 Insight is deployed as a Virtual Machine. This gives you full access and control of your F5 BIG-IP telemetry data. The configuration is simple, log into the F5 Insight portal and add your BIG-IP devices. There is no configuration needed on BIG-IP itself. Ready to get started? Log into the F5 Insight portal: By default you will arrive at the Home screen. From the navigation menu, under Manage, click BIG-IP Settings to add your BIG-IP devices. Before we add the BIG-IP devices click the Data Centers tab and then Add Data Center. This allows you to specify a location for the BIG-IP devices. Give it a Name, San Jose, CA in this example. Click Add Data Center. Go back to the Devices tab and click Add Device. Note that you can add a single device from here or add multiple devices using the Upload YAML Files (more on this later). For now, let’s add a single device using the management address or Endpoint, Username and Password. Scroll down and specify the Certificate Authority if using custom TLS certificates on BIG-IP devices. Under Data Center select the Data Center created previously, San Jose, CA in this example. Note: if you didn’t create a Data Center you can still do it now. Under Modules select the BIG-IP Modules you are using. In this example I selected Policy Firewall (or AFM). Click Add Device. The BIG-IP from San Jose has been added. From the navigation menu select BIG-IP Device then Device Overview to see more details. Note: you can select the specific Device you want to view. Important details are shown on this screen. Some items of interest are the BIG-IP version, system model or VM, Licenses and Enabled Modules. The Home Screen displays System Report Cards and allows you to drill down into the individual widgets. System Report Cards provide at-a-glance health indicators for four critical monitoring categories. Each card displays a status badge (Good, Warning, or Critical) based on deviation thresholds. Note: you can filter the Home Screen to display a specific Data Center. Adding Multiple BIG-IPs using YAML File Upload For bulk onboarding or infrastructure-as-code workflows, import devices using YAML configuration. Using YAML streamlines bulk onboarding, ensures consistency, improves scalability, simplifies automation, and increases accuracy. It also ensures integration with IaC workflows and CI/CD pipelines—enabling reusable, version-controlled configurations. From the BIG-IP Settings screen select Add Device. Upload your Defaults and Receiver YAML files here or click Paste YAML to copy/paste them. Note: YAML import also supports configuring F5 Insight features such as high availability, LLM Insights, AIDF, and data retention policies alongside device definitions. Both BIG-IPs are now connected to F5 Insight When you return to the BIG-IP Settings screen it should look like this: A correctly configured ast-defaults.yaml file will look like the following. Note: enter the username and password to log into your BIG-IPs A correctly configured ast-receivers.yaml file will look like the following. Note: enter a Device Name and Endpoint address. Conclusion F5 Insight for ADSP offers customizable visualizations and dashboards to help teams surface actionable metrics and KPIs tailored to your organization. It provides access to useful telemetry data for a deeper understanding of your environment, application behaviors, and complex BIG-IP deployments, all centralized in a single location. Identification of root causes during outages/tickets. Solves issues and struggles with Day 2 analysis of your BIG-IP Fleet and the applications therein. Mitigates the problem of a lack of detailed visual information on your BIG-IP Fleet. Set a foundation for the utilization of open-source tools and their benefits. Related Content F5 Insight for ADSP BLOG F5 Insight Documentation F5 Insight Product PageF5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator Layer 2 Services with rSeries & VELOS
Introduction F5 rSeries & VELOS are rearchitected, next-generation hardware platforms that scale application delivery performance and automate application services to address many of today’s most critical business challenges. F5 rSeries & VELOS are key components of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP). rSeries & VELOS rely on a Kubernetes-based platform layer (F5OS) that is tightly integrated with F5 TMOS software. Going to a microservice-based platform layer allows rSeries & VELOS to provide additional functionality that was not possible in previous generations of F5 BIG-IP platforms. The introduction of a new tenant-based architecture changes many things, including how you configure BIG-IP. Some of these changes affect the network configuration for Inline Layer 2 Services. By default, BIG-IP tenants only have a small set of internal MAC addresses available to them. However, Layer 2 Services (or Bridging) require additional MAC addresses. You must assign an adequate number of MAC addresses to what is called a “MAC pool”. A single Layer 2 Service requires two unique MAC addresses. The MAC Pool must have sufficient MAC addresses based on the number of Layer 2 Services you need. The following KB articles contain additional information on configuring MAC Pools on a BIG-IP rSeries or VELOS platform: K000133655: MAC address assignment in VELOS and rSeries systems K000135389: Configure the MAC Block Size for an existing BIG-IP tenant on the VELOS and rSeries systems Demo Video F5OS Configuration Let’s review the Network configuration on F5OS for a BIG-IP Tenant. From Network Settings select VLANs. Here you can see I have 6 Interfaces configured with VLANs. There’s a Lan VLAN for connectivity from the internal network to the BIG-IP. A Wan VLAN for connectivity from the BIG-IP to the internet. Then there are 4 “L2” VLANs configured to support two Inline Layer 2 Services with SSL Orchestrator. From the Interfaces screen you can associate the VLANs with the physical Interfaces. Next, allocate the VLANs to your BIG-IP Tenant. This is also where you configure the MAC Pool Size for your current BIG-IP Tenant. The MAC Pool can only be changed when the Tenant is not running. From Tenant Management > Tenant Deployments, you can stop the current Tenant if it is already running. Do this with caution during a change window or prior to deployment. Check the box next to the name of the Tenant you wish to configure, “big-ip-kevin” in this example. Then click Configure. Click OK to stop the Tenant When it’s stopped click the name of the Tenant to edit the configuration. Note the VLANs that are allocated to this BIG-IP Tenant: Find the section on MAC Data/MAC Block Size. Set the allocation to Small (8), Medium (16), or Large (32) depending upon your needs. I set mine to Medium. A Small allocation would be sufficient for this deployment but I want to leave room to add more Layer 2 Services in the future. Click Save & Close Click OK to update the configuration You can Deploy the Tenant now that the changes have been made Click OK to Deploy F5 BIG-IP Configuration Minimal configuration is needed on the BIG-IP since F5OS handles the underlying physical interfaces and VLANs. Check the status of the VLANs from Network > VLANs. From here we can see the VLAN configuration from F5OS is reflected in the BIG-IP. Define any Self IPs from Network > Self IPs Now we’re ready to configure SSL Orchestrator. In the interest of time, I will skip to the Network and Services configuration. From Services List click Add Service Double-click on Generic Inline Layer 2 Under Network Configuration click Add Select the L2 VLANs for this Inline L2 Service. Click Done. Click Add again and select the L2 VLANs for this Inline L2 Service. Click Done. It should look like the following: Click Save at the bottom For the Interception Rule select the Lan VLAN under Ingress Network and move it to the right. Click Save & Next at the bottom The Network configuration is now complete. SSL Orchestrator is configured with a Generic Inline Layer 2 Service that contains two Layer 2 “servers” Conclusion F5 rSeries & VELOS are hardware platforms that scale application delivery performance and automate application services to address many of today’s most critical business challenges. They are key components of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP). In this article, you learned how to configure MAC Pools on rSeries and VELOS in order to create Layer 2 Inline Services with SSL orchestrator. Related Content K000133655: MAC address assignment in VELOS and rSeries systems K000135389: Configure the MAC Block Size for an existing BIG-IP tenant on the VELOS and rSeries systems SSL Orchestrator CloudDocs: Creating an Inline Layer 2 Service F5 rSeries: Next-Generation Fully Automatable Hardware F5 VELOS: A Next-Generation Fully Automatable Platform
