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
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
