Using BIG-IP GTM to Integrate with Amazon Web Services
This is the latest in a series of DNS articles that I've been writing over the past couple of months. This article is taken from a fantastic solution that Joe Cassidy developed. So, thanks to Joe for developing this solution, and thanks for the opportunity to write about it here on DevCentral. As a quick reminder, my first six articles are: Let's Talk DNS on DevCentral DNS The F5 Way: A Paradigm Shift DNS Express and Zone Transfers The BIG-IP GTM: Configuring DNSSEC DNS on the BIG-IP: IPv6 to IPv4 Translation DNS Caching The Scenario Let's say you are an F5 customer who has external GTMs and LTMs in your environment, but you are not leveraging them for your main website (example.com). Your website is a zone sitting on your windows DNS servers in your DMZ that round robin load balance to some backend webservers. You've heard all about the benefits of the cloud (and rightfully so), and you want to move your web content to the Amazon Cloud. Nice choice! As you were making the move to Amazon, you were given instructions by Amazon to just CNAME your domain to two unique Amazon Elastic Load Balanced (ELB) domains. Amazon’s requests were not feasible for a few reasons...one of which is that it breaks the RFC. So, you engage in a series of architecture meetings to figure all this stuff out. Amazon told your Active Directory/DNS team to CNAME www.example.com and example.com to two AWS clusters: us-east.elb.amazonaws.com and us-west.elb.amazonaws.com. You couldn't use Microsoft DNS to perform a basic CNAME of these records because of the BIND limitation of CNAME'ing a single A record to multiple aliases. Additionally, you couldn't point to IPs because Amazon said they will be using dynamic IPs for your platform. So, what to do, right? The Solution The good news is that you can use the functionality and flexibility of your F5 technology to easily solve this problem. Here are a few steps that will guide you through this specific scenario: Redirect requests for http://example.com to http://www.example.com and apply it to your Virtual Server (1.2.3.4:80). You can redirect using HTTP Class profiles (v11.3 and prior) or using a policy with Centralized Policy Matching (v11.4 and newer) or you can always write an iRule to redirect! Make www.example.com a CNAME record to example.lb.example.com; where *.lb.example.com is a sub-delegated zone of example.com that resides on your BIG-IP GTM. Create a global traffic pool “aws_us_east” that contains no members but rather a CNAME to us-east.elb.amazonaws.com. Create another global traffic pool “aws_us_west” that contains no members but rather a CNAME to us-west.elb.amazonaws.com. The following screenshot shows the details of creating the global traffic pools (using v11.5). Notice you have to select the "Advanced" configuration to add the CNAME. Create a global traffic Wide IP example.lb.example.com with two pool members “aws_us_east” and “aws_us_west”. The following screenshot shows the details. Create two global traffic regions: “eastern” and “western”. The screenshot below shows the details of creating the traffic regions. Create global traffic topology records using "Request Source: Region is eastern" and "Destination Pool is aws_us_east". Repeat this for the western region using the aws_us_west pool. The screenshot below shows the details of creating these records. Modify Pool settings under Wide IP www.example.com to use "Topology" as load balancing method. See the screenshot below for details. How it all works... Here's the flow of events that take place as a user types in the web address and ultimately receives the correct IP address. External client types http://example.com into their web browser Internet DNS resolution takes place and maps example.com to your Virtual Server address: IN A 1.2.3.4 An HTTP request is directed to 1.2.3.4:80 Your LTM checks for a profile, the HTTP profile is enabled, the redirect request is applied, and redirect user request with 301 response code is executed External client receives 301 response code and their browser makes a new request to http://www.example.com Internet DNS resolution takes place and maps www.example.com to IN CNAME example.lb.example.com Internet DNS resolution continues mapping example.lb.example.com to your GTM configured Wide IP The Wide IP load balances the request to one of the pools based on the configured logic: Round Robin, Global Availability, Topology or Ratio (we chose "Topology" for our solution) The GTM-configured pool contains a CNAME to either us_east or us_west AWS data centers Internet DNS resolution takes place mapping the request to the ELB hostname (i.e. us-west.elb.amazonaws.com) and gives two A records External client http request is mapped to one of the returned IP addresses And, there you have it. With this solution, you can integrate AWS using your existing LTM and GTM technology! I hope this helps, and I hope you can implement this and other solutions using all the flexibility and power of your F5 technology.
Sizing for HW and SW based
I am looking for a data for dimensioning for r5800 / 6000 etc where I am deploying DNS+PEM+AFM+URL Filtering + some iRules on ONE rSeries The same witch I am looking for is for VE deployment Where I can find data about such figures I can only find for DNS QPS, but for the rest of the modules can't Are there any exact numbers? How can I combine and calculate this module and see if feet into rSeries and VE HP??
F5 DNS with cPanel Web Hosting Server
Hi, We have a publicly accessible web hosting server backed by cPanel and currently we are using F5 to handle our DNS. The problem that we are facing is when one of our end customer adds a Zone /DNS record INSIDE his cPanel account and everytime we have to manually check and add those records in F5 to make things work. Is there a solution for this?.
Configuring BIG-IP for Zone Transfer and DNSSEC
This article is for organizations that use our F5 BIG-IP as their primary DNS. The guide consists of two parts. First, it shows you how to configure BIG-IP DNS to perform a zone transfer to a secondary DNS server. Second, it demonstrates how to enable DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) on BIG-IP DNS. Part 1: Configure BIG-IP DNS for Zone Transfer This part of the article will focus on guiding you on how to set up BIG-IP for zone transfer. I assume at this point in time that you already have DNS records configured via Zone Runner. Having said that, let's proceed to set up BIG-IP for zone transfer to a secondary DNS, which in our case will be F5 Distributed Cloud DNS. Step 1: Create a custom DNS Profile On the Main tab, click DNS > Delivery > Profiles. click Create. Type a Name for the custom DNS profile. Select 'dns' as the Parent Profile from which it will inherits settings. Under DNS Traffic area, Zone Transfer, select Enabled. Click Save & Close. Step 2: Create a custom DNS Listener On the Main tab, clickDNS>Delivery>Listeners,clickCreate. In theNamefield, type a unique name for the listener. For the Destination setting, in theAddressfield, type an IPv4 address on which BIG-IP DNS listens for network traffic. In the Service area, from theProtocollist, selectUDP. In the Service area, from the DNS Profile list, select the custom profile created on Step 1. ClickFinished. Repeat steps 1-6 to create a TCP listener, but on step 4, select TCP. Step 3: Generate a TSIG Key On BIG-IP DNS Command Line, enter the following in bash: tsig-keygen -a HMAC-SHA256 <tsig name> Example: tsig-keygen -a HMAC-SHA256 example The output should be similar to this key "example" { algorithm hmac-sha256; secret "UAHXLiErXSTXw84QcaeWk2jLnU0GYXGWBQ2IT+rtfCU="; }; Step 4: Configure TSIG Key In the BIG-IP GUI, go to DNS > Delivery > Keys > TSIG Key List, click Create. Name: example Algorithm: HMAC SHA-256 Secret: <paste the secret output generated from Step 3> Step 5: Create Nameservers Go to DNS > Delivery > Nameservers > Nameserver List, click Create. Create the following nameserver objects: Name: localbind, Address: 127.0.0.1, Service Port: 53 Name: f5xcdns1, Address: 52.14.213.208, Service Port: 53, TSIG Key: example Name: f5xcdns2, Address: 3.140.118.214, Service Port: 53, TSIG Key: example The IP address details of F5XC to be used in Zone Transfers can be found here https://docs.cloud.f5.com/docs/reference/network-cloud-ref Step 6: Create DNS Zone for Zone Transfer Go to DNS > Zones > Zones > Zones List, click Create. Fill the following details: Name: f5sg.com DNS Express :: Server: localbind Zone Transfer Clients :: Nameservers: Select f5xcdns1 & f5xcdns2 TSIG :: Server Key: example Step 7: Include TSIG in named.conf On BIG-IP command line, create and open a new file named tsig.key in the /var/named/config directory. For example, use vi editor to create a new file named tsig.key in the /var/named/config directory, enter the following command: vi /var/named/config/tsig.key To add the TSIG key, paste the following output we generated earlier: key "example" { algorithm hmac-sha256; secret "UAHXLiErXSTXw84QcaeWk2jLnU0GYXGWBQ2IT+rtfCU="; }; Save thetsig.key file. To create the necessary symbolic link to thetsig.keyfile in the/configdirectory, enter the following command: ln -s /var/named/config/tsig.key /config/tsig.key To set the correct owner for thetsig.keyfile, enter the following command: chown named:named /var/named/config/tsig.key Using a text editor, open the/var/named/config/named.conf file for editing. For example, to usevieditor to edit the/var/named/config/named.conffile, enter the following command: vi /var/named/config/named.conf Add the followingincludestatement to the top of thenamed.conffile, below the first two comments in the file: include "/config/tsig.key"; Save the file. Step 8: Add the Secondary DNS (F5XC DNS) IP addresses in Zone Transfer allow list Using a text editor, open the/var/named/config/named.conf file for editing. For example, to usevieditor to edit the/var/named/config/named.conffile, enter the following command: vi /var/named/config/named.conf Add the following acl statement at the bottom of the named.conf file (Note: The IP address details of F5XC to be used in Zone Transfers can be found here https://docs.cloud.f5.com/docs/reference/network-cloud-ref) acl "F5XC" { 52.14.213.208/32; 3.140.118.214/32; }; Insert the following inside the allow-transfer block (this will allow F5XC to perform AXFR requests) allow-transfer { localhost; F5XC; <--- Add this line }; Save the file (Optional) Part 2: Configure a BIG-IP DNS Zone for DNSSEC Assuming you already have a zone configured for DNS zone transfer and you want to enable DNSSEC on this zone, you can follow the steps below. The generated cryptographic keys for DNSSEC will be synced to the secondary DNS as part of the zone transfer. Step 1: Create automatically-managed zone-signing keys (ZSK) On the Main tab, DNS>Delivery>Keys>DNSSEC Key List, click Create. In theName field, type a name for the key (Zone names are limited to63characters) From theTypelist, selectZone Signing Key. From theStatelist, selectEnabled. **You can leave all other setting to default and click Finish on this point. But if you can also modify other settings based on your requirement Click Finished. Step 2: Create automatically-managed zone-signing keys (KSK) On the Main tab, DNS>Delivery>Keys>DNSSEC Key List, click Create. In theName field, type a name for the key (Zone names are limited to63characters) From the Type list, select Key Signing Key. From theStatelist, selectEnabled. **You can leave all other setting to default and click Finish on this point. But if you can also modify other settings based on your requirement Click Finished. Step 3: Creating a DNSSEC zone On the Main tab, clickDNS>Zones>DNSSEC Zones, click Create. In theNamefield, type a domain name. For example, use a zone name of f5sg.comto handle DNSSEC requests forwww.f5sg.comand*.www.f5sg.com. From theStatelist, selectEnabled. For theZone Signing Keysetting, assign at least one enabled zone-signing key to the zone. You can associate the same zone-signing key with multiple zones. For theKey Signing Keysetting, assign at least one enabled key-signing key to the zone. You can associate the same key-signing key with multiple zones. ClickFinished. Step 4: Upload generated DS record to parent zone Upload the DS records for this zone to the organization that manages the parent zone. The administrators of the parent zone sign the DS record with their own key and upload it to their zone. You can find the DS records in the Configuration utility.
