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 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
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 PageThe Internet of...(Drum Roll Please)...Band-Aids?!?
Last week I told you about my family's experience with an under the skin glucose sensor that tracks blood sugar levels. While this Internet of Things trend often takes the form of a thermostat, light bulb or coffee machine, the medical field has been using sensors for a while and it is about to get even more connected with your skin. We're talking skin tags of a different kind. First up is a sensor filled smart bandage. Ed Goluch, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Northeastern University is working on a smart band-aid that will monitor infections and alert the person. He was investigating how individual bacteria cells behave by using a sensor. The sensor measured the produced toxins and how cells reacted to antibiotics when the idea hit. Next they build an electrochemical sensor with computer chips to detect Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacteria that commonly takes advantage of people with compromised immune systems. For this particular bacteria, it can detect of an infection is starting before symptoms show and the patient can put an antibiotic on the wound to heal it. So far the testing has only occurred in the lab and the next step is humans and animals. Pretty Cool. In Japan, University of Tokyo, in cooperation with JST, has introduced the world’s very first flexible wireless organic sensor. This paper-thin, water proof sensor can also be used for band-aids but also a few other health situations. Like urine. OMG! Did he just write the word for pee in a blog post?!? Yup, we all do it but back to the story. The idea is to be able to detect the chemical compound for health related matters. The circuit was actually tested on a wet diaper where it was successfully able to transmit the needed data and receive power from a nearby source. The cool thing about this sensor is that they wanted to develop something that is easy to make, use, dispose and replace. Instead of expensive components, they went for simple detectors for thing like humidity and air pressure. Being small and low cost, they could be used for such disposable things like diapers or bandages. Next up is a microchip that can now be printed directly on the skin. Originally designed for sports physicians, MC10 has created a health sensor that is formed with spray-on bandage material. Since it is essentially a second skin, it can detect hydration levels and temperature of the wearer. It lasts about two weeks on the body even while bathing or swimming and it is 1/30 the size of previous sticker sensors. Lastly, the iPhone 6 and it's NFC (near field communications) chip has been one upped by a human. Robert J. Nelson has had a NFC chip implanted in his hand! We've seen stories the past couple years about body modification with chips so he isn't the first but for $99 he picked up a chipset and got someone to implant it. In his story he states, 'I should make it clear that I am not trying to become a cyborg or anything like that. For me, getting this implant came down to having a strong interest in technology and the connected space, and more to the point is that I am someone who likes seeing technology integrated into life. Or in this case, my body' Seriously, wouldn't be cool if you twisted your ankle and your sock would tell you how bad the sprain was? And then sent the data to your doctor for an appointment if it was serious? Or just quickly cooled down so you have ice around the sprain? Dizzying, all the applications for this. Forget about the internet being this thing we use to look up stuff and email...soon we all will be part of the internet with our connected bodies. The Internet of You! ps Related: A Smart Bandage To Let You Know When Your Wounds Are Infected My Sensored Family Cheap wireless organic circuits may soon make band-aids smart MC10's New Biometric Health Sensor Is Like a 'Second Skin' High-Tech 'Band-Aids' Call Doctors Wearable Technology That Feels Like Skin NFC chip implants: First Apple, now this guy Here's why I implanted an NFC chip in my hand Technorati Tags: iot,sensors,things,healthcare,medical devices,skin,silva,smart bandaids,f5 Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:
