This 2-day 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 Topics

• Review the Linux Command Line
• Review BIG-IP Application Creation
• Discuss Automation and DevOps Concepts
• Configuring BIG-IP with iControl REST
• Configuring BIG-IP programmatically with Ansible

• 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 major components of Ansible and how they work together to configure BIG-IP
• Use flow control elements such as conditionals and looping in Ansible Playbooks
• Onboard and configure BIG-IP applications using Ansible

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.

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

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 Ansible

• Introducing YAML
• Establishing an Ansible Trust Relationship
• Creating an Ansible Playbook
• Exploring the Playbook
• Working with the Inventory File
• Using the Command Module
• Gathering Facts for the Playbook
• Deploying Apps on BIG-IP using Ansible
• Deleting a BIG-IP Application
• Onboarding a BIG-IP system using Ansible
• Deploying BIG-IP HA
• Investigating Ansible Roles