Automating Application Deployment with BIG-IQ
Automating Application Deployment with BIG-IQ BIG-IQ 5.4 has a host of exciting new features such as the Central Policy Builder which suggests new security policies based on traffic across your enterprise, fine-grained Roles-Based Access Control (RBAC) that allows application teams to manage network services for their own application, remote script management, and support for F5’s new Per-App BIG-IP VE (virtual ADCs sized for individual applications). Perhaps the most exciting new function is the ability to turn settings for an application into a template for rapid reuse. Let’s take a look at BIG-IQ’s new Application Template function. An application template is a collection of the objects and default parameter settings for an application. You can deploy the collection of objects in that template to any devices – and you can do so either manually or programmatically. BIG-IQ helps you create a catalog of these templates. To be clear, this version of BIG-IQ only includes LTM objects and configurations in Application Templates. Future versions will include a broader range of configurations. You might ask, can’t I do this using iApps and iWorkflow to help orchestrate them? Yes, however, iWorkflow requires you to commit to using iApps – and not everyone is willing to do so. And, iWorkflow lacks the reporting, alerting and central management functions that are so rich in BIG-IQ. So how does this work? Let’s say that you want to standardize your HTTPS application to use a virtual server, a client SSL profile, a pool and nodes. You might want some configuration settings to be consistent across all your applications while others will need to customizable. With BIG-IQ you create an application template that includes each of these objects. You can set default settings and you specify which parameters will editable and which will not. When someone uses your template to create an application, all they need to do is provide the editable values (virtual server address, number of nodes and their addresses, and so forth.) and then deploy the application. Better still, BIG-IQ will display the declarative API call that can be used to deploy this application (see figure 1), making it easy to use BIG-IQ for orchestrating the deployment of applications. Application templates can be created manually or by importing existing LTM objects. Parameters for those objects can be defined as editable. Parameters defined as not editable in the template are included using the default template values. Parameters defined as editable are visible and can be revised. When you are defining a template object, you can specify the prompt that will be displayed when a user is deploying an application from this template. This allows you to customize the questions using terminology that is specific to your environment and not limited to the F5 lexicon that the application team might not understand. As you are defining which fields are editable, you have the option to preview what questions will be asked at deployment time. Finally, the person creating the template can specify if multiple instances of an object can be created as part of the application deployment. This allows you to create a single template that can be used to deploy applications with one or more nodes or pool members, where everything else in the application is kept standard. Application Templates are created and managed under the “Application” tab (new in 5.4). The workflow is straight forward. First you go to the “Service Catalog” and click “Create”. You can then define: Virtual Servers Pools Nodes HTTP and HTTPS Monitors Client SSL Profiles HTTP Profiles Once the template is defined, you can create and deploy applications. Ultimately, we can expect this concept of Application Templates to be expanded to allow templating of all services – not just LTM. This is an important step in the direction of “application centric” networking in which analytics are integrated with management and orchestration to build a more agile network. So, this application templating function, while useful today, is still not the last word in application management. The bottom line, BIG-IQ 5.4 will help you deploy applications more quickly and consistently than ever before.Repo for Azure VMSS deployment
Hello, For a deployment of an autoscaling (F5 Advanced WAF) model in Azure, I'm searching an ARM template which will fit some requirements. Which existing ARM template can be used in order to create a custom one with the below characteristics: Advanced WAF module Autoscale (VMSS 2 min & 3 max) Existing network 2-NIC version 15 BYOL Internal LB (front of the VMSS - unlike external LB) without public IP (F5 NICs) One more questions regarding existing templates: The 'appContainerName' parameter is set to "f5devcentral/f5-demo-app:latest": ==> is there an impact for rolling update capabilities on the VMSS, when wanted to push a new image? Thanks in advance Regards Fatih
Azure Big IP F5 template with HA via LB
Hello All, I have deployed two Big IP virtual appliances into Micosoft Azure using the following template: https://github.com/F5Networks/f5-azure-arm-templates/tree/master/supported/failover/same-net/via-lb/3nic/existing-stack/payg I ran accross the problem detailed here (https://github.com/F5Networks/f5-azure-arm-templates/issues/198) but once I manually set the failover network and mirroring network IP address both devices synced in an Active/Sandby configuration. My question now is how does the Azure loadbalancer in front of these F5 devices pass traffic / manage failover for them? The Azure loadbalancer as deployed from the template has the F5 external addresses in a back-end pool but there are no health probes, loadbalancing rules or inbound NAT rules defined - does all this have to be done manually similar to what is documented here? : - https://azure-f5-lab-days.readthedocs.io/en/latest/class1/module3/lab1.html Thanks for any help
F5 ASM Template import query
I want to create new asm policy that will be used as a template for ASM security policy , i exported the new created asm policy with xml and binary format as a template and try to import both on another asm box it worked , However want to understand whats a difference between if we export and import policy template as a xml and binary , will both work in same way want to know the difference between xml without compact and binary in exporting and binary ? whats a F5 recommendation to export and import in binary or xml without compact ? request you to chekc and help me in answering this query
OWA 2nd Authentication? Exchange Problem?
Hi DevCentral, I deployed iApp Exchange 2010/2013 Template a several times and it was working fine for every customer. On my last customer there's something strange happening. I tried everything to fix it. When I want to authenticate with the test user it gives me after hitting login button a second http-auth prompt where I need to log in with the same data a second time. So after typing 2nd time credentials he forwards me to OWA. On which site is something wrong configured? I tried everything on F5 site. I cannot access customers Exchange so I dont know what I have to tell the customer to change.. Log: Disabled the SSO for this session: no supported WWW-Authenticate header is found
Exporting iapp template from BIG-IP 11.2.1 Build 862.0 Hotfix HF2 and importing to BIG-IP 11.2.1 Build 1104.0 Hotfix HF4 fails
Trying to get a copy of iapp template f5.http_solar_alpha.2012_08_09 from Production F5 to Development F5. It fails whether exporting to a file and then importing, or copying and pasting text. These are the errors which all seem to stem from the file f5.http_solar_alpha.2012_08_09.cli_script not being found. I am no longer able to find this template and I don't recall how I installed it originally. Just looking for some clues as to what to try next. line 4 [script "f5.http_solar_alpha.2012_08_09.cli_script" included from "APP_TMPL_/Common/f5.http_solar_alpha.2012_08_09_definition" not found][tmsh::include "f5.http_solar_alpha.2012_08_09.cli_script"] line 230 ["\r" has no meaning. Did you mean "\r" or "r"?][{\r\n}] line 230 ["\n" has no meaning. Did you mean "\n" or "n"?][{\r\n}] line 231 [script "f5.http_solar_alpha.2012_08_09.cli_script" included from "APP_TMPL_/Common/f5.http_solar_alpha.2012_08_09_definition" not found][tmsh::run_proc f5.http_solar_alpha.2012_08_09.cli_script:do_tmsh_create "\"$component\"" "\"$arguments\""] line 255 ["\r" has no meaning. Did you mean "\r" or "r"?][{\r\n}] line 255 ["\n" has no meaning. Did you mean "\n" or "n"?][{\r\n}] line 256 [script "f5.http_solar_alpha.2012_08_09.cli_script" included from "APP_TMPL_/Common/f5.http_solar_alpha.2012_08_09_definition" not found][tmsh::run_proc f5.h Unexpected Error: Loading configuration process failed.Where should I save the Advanced Customization Templates?
Good morning, another few newbee questions: As per https://devcentral.f5.com/s/articles/Customizing-APM-end-user-login-page-with-APM-Advanced-Customization-Templates, Chapter 4: 1. Download the template-n.zip file and extract all the files from it, where n is the template number. Where should I save it? How do I assure that this new template applies only to one of my VS? I want to test it first... ;) Many thanks, HP.OWA Authentication
Hello together. I deployed the 2013 iApp for Exchange. I deployed the template like 20 times everytime it was working fine. Now i have a customer who gets, after entering credentials, a second login prompt. Which means I have to enter credentials twice to get into Outlook Web App. When I login once and kill the session after, the login is still cached so at this time I just have to enter credential one time and he forwards me to OWA. Any Ideas? Something misconfigured on the other exchange site?
