TRAINING COURSE

Automating BIG-IP with AS3

This course introduces network administrators, operators, and DevOps engineers to the foundational and F5-specific technologies required to automate BIG-IP. Participants will gain exposure to multiple technologies for a variety of use cases and will have hands-on experience that leave them better prepared to automate the onboarding and configuration of BIG-IP.

Course Objectives

  • Review Automation and DevOps concepts
  • Describe the components of iControl REST calls and how they interact with BIG-IP
  • Stand up and configure BIG-IP applications using iControl REST
  • Describe the installation and use of AS3 and DO iApp LX components
  • Automate the onboarding and configuration of BIG-IP
  • Add advanced tools like Postman and Newman to your toolkit

Course Topics

  • Review the Linux Command Line
  • Review BIG-IP Application Creation
  • Discuss Automation and DevOps Concepts
  • Configuring BIG-IP with iControl REST
  • Automating BIG-IP configuration with Application Services Extension 3 (AS3)
  • Automating BIG-IP onboarding with Declarative Onboarding (DO)

Audience

This course is intended for network administrators and operators and DevOps engineers interested in automating tasks on BIG-IP systems in their public and private Clouds as well as in their datacenter infrastructure.

Prerequisites

Students should be familiar with and be able to configure basic BIG-IP elements such as:

  • Virtual Servers
  • Pools, Pool Members and Nodes
  • Pool Monitors
  • Basic Virtual Server Profiles

Students should also be familiar with the basics of the Linux command line.  In addition, the following general technical knowledge should be well understood:

  • Layer 2 Ethernet and ARP networking concepts
  • Layer 3 and 4 TCP/IP networking concepts, including IP addressing and subnetting
  • Layer 7 HTTP networking concepts
  • Linux command line and basic Linux commands
  • HTML

Finally, nice-to-have knowledge includes familiarity with programming and/or scripting languages, such as:

  • JavaScript or NodeJS
  • Python
  • Bash
Course Outline

Chapter 1: Linux Command Line Review

  • Navigating the Linux File System
  • Creating and Deleting Files and Directories
  • Copying and Moving Files
  • Command Line Auto-Completion and Editing
  • Tools for Analyzing Test Results and Inspecting Log Files

Chapter 2: BIG-IP Application Creation Review

  • Understanding Load Balancing Basics
  • Configuring Virtual Servers, Pools, Pool Members and Nodes
  • Configuring Health Monitors and SSL Profiles
  • Understanding the Full Proxy Architecture and Source Address Translation

Chapter 3: Automation and DevOps Concepts

  • Understanding Infrastructure as Code, NetOps and DevOps
  • Differentiating Automation and Orchestration Concepts
  • Diving into DevOps Concepts such as Idempotency, Atomicity and Imperative vs Declarative

Chapter 4: Programming BIG-IP with iControl REST

  • Introducing Basic JavaScript Types
  • Introducing JavaScript Object Notation
  • Discovering an existing BIG-IP Configuration using iControl REST
  • Deploying Apps on BIG-IP using iControl REST
  • Onboarding BIG-IP using iControl REST
  • Working with JSON Programmatically

Chapter 5: Automating BIG-IP with AS3

  • Introducing BIG-IP Applications Services Extension 3
  • Creating BIG-IP Applications using AS3 with Curl
  • Introducing Postman and Postman Tests
  • Creating BIG-IP Applications using AS3 with Postman
  • Using Newman and the Linux CLI to Create BIG-IP Applications with AS3

Chapter 6: Onboarding BIG-IP with DO

  • Introducing Declarative Onboarding for BIG-IP
  • Remotely Installing the Declarative Onboarding iApp LX
  • Onboarding BIG-IP Declaratively

Price: 40 Training Units / $2,000 (USD)

Course Length: 2 days

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