The F5 Guru

Nexus 5000

I hope you got that Joker reference in the title…It is hard to concentrate when you have this sitting on your desk. The NX-OS based Nexus 5000/2000′s just arrived and I’m pretty excited to see the new things Cisco is implementing with their switch fabric. This unit has a 1Tb/sec back plane and has 10Gb ports like crazy. If I could get my hands on the Viprion we would really have a good lab to play with. I’m still editing and working on the 9.1-9.4 upgrade guide as well as installing a 10.x code base on one of my lab units, but I had to share this.  I am still baffled that it has a HDMI port for the “fabric extender” pictured on the 2000 (top unit) on far left. In order to get one of these bad boys you pretty much have to let this guy talk to your Cisco rep  (picture cracks me up too)

Does anyone recall the old Dell/F5 relationship that lead to the “PowerAPP” appliances?

I did a quick search to see if anything on the web remained of these relics, and came up with a blast from the past:

http://mobilcommcorp.com/Servers.htm

Look at how ancient these goliaths are! Compaq ProLiant, AlphaServer, Himalaya just to name a few are from this era. I ran into one of these devices and noticed something rather remarkable, and certainly a true testament to what enterprise gear should be. I could ramble on about the quality of the datacenter it is housed on or the neglect/lack of OS upgrades but hey, it is a dev box- that’s expected. Checkout this uptime

Seems like a good idea to share what you’ve found that works and what you can’t go a day without. I decided to throw together a quick list of tools that I use on a daily basis-

• TextPad
• Putty/Vi
• WinSCP
• BeyondCompare
• iRuleRedirector
• iRule Editor

Now the last two are F5 related software that are freeware that I use occasionally for the heck of it or convenience factor. I don’t think I could operate without a really solid “diff” tool, and BeyondCompare has given me by far the best “bang for the buck”.

It has a left/right pane view that quickly diff’s the files and shows you the discrepancies, it works over network drives and FTP connections so it makes diff’ing entire folders or file systems  a breeze. It lets you merge changes and quickly work through a mismatch situation. The trial is very generous with 30 days of actual use before it expires and the full copy only runs about $50 ( http://www.scootersoftware.com/ )

Putty is free, if you don’t know what Putty is you are probably stuck on SecureCRT or some other popular programs that cost far too much for what they offer. Putty can handle scp, ssh, sftp, telnet, Serial, pretty much anything you throw at it- and it’s free!( http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ )

Vi is standard, you should really know the basics of Vi if you are going to be in charge of any linux based network device such as the LTM, but some people prefer to use tools like Textpad which run locally ( http://www.textpad.com/ ). It can color code tcl and make it pretty easy to read which I find useful.

F5 has released a tool called the iRule Editor. It connects via iControl and pulls your iRules locally and allows you to manage them, I played with this a few times and use it to help beginners out but after experiencing the Enterprise Manager, I no longer find a use for it.

The other tool I suggest to beginners and support engineers is the iRuleRedirector Generator program written by one of the guys at F5. It is available in devCentral and when I find a link I will place it in this post. It allows you to quickly throw together an iRule to handle a traffic flow issue without any knowledge of how iRules work.

And that’s it, if anyone has something that they feel is important please let me know, I’d love to check out a new toy!

I just wanted to post up another quick example of how studying for the Cisco exam has come along way. Long ago you had to purchase expensive simulators with limited command sets for hundreds of dollars. Now you can simply fire up GNS3 running dynamips and emulate any IOS you want short of a 6000 series chassis

Here is a quick screenshot of a redistribution lab that I recently configured. 9 routers and a ASA firewall running on one VM, incredible!

Welcome to my new blog! I decided to start this blog after numerous frustrations with the lack of F5 documentation on the web.

My current expectations are to fill this blog with all of my tips and tricks and general best practices for installing, configuring, and managing F5 products in all size environments. I’ve worked with implementations in small companies and am currently managing a network with more than 30 LTM devices deployed across the enterprise. My current project set includes the rollout of an Enterprise Manager (500 series) and the planning and architecture of a two-pair GTM deployment.

Feel free to leave comments and I hope you find this site informative!