Blog > How-To  | June 25, 2014 
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F5 Configuration Backups 3.0

Eric Flores

In a previous article I introduced a project for the configuration backups of F5 devices. It offered an automated, centralized backup service for F5 BigIP devices with a web interface. There was also several features mentioned in the road map. Now after 4 months of tireless work, version 3.0 of the Config Backup for F5 program is finally complete.

Config Backup for F5 V3.0

The new version has a new core engine completely rewritten in Python and several feature additions. Some of the new features are –

  • New VMware appliance
  • Uses the F5 iControl API
  • Device and backup management from the web UI
  • Certificate reporting

VMware Appliance

The new VMware appliance offers a turnkey backup server with the backup program already installed, requiring no Linux knowledge. While it is based on CentOS 6.5, it comes with a custom written interactive configuration utility to get the appliance up and running on the network.

F5 iControl API

The new version of the backup program uses the F5 iControl API to interface with the BigIP devices. One of the main reasons for the rewrite in Python was to take advantage of the python Bigsuds library from F5. Using iControl opens up the door for collecting more info from the device (shown below) and centralized control.

Device info –
device4

More Web UI Management

The previous version of the backup program used text files for configuration and the list of devices. In version 3.0 all configuration settings and device management has been moved to the web UI.

Adding devices –
device2

Backup settings –
backup

Once you install the program (or setup the appliance), you can be ready to run backups in under 5 minutes.

Certificate Reporting

Now in the new version, certificate reporting is available on the web UI. You get a list of all the certificates sorted by expiration date. No more surprise cert expirations!

Cert list –
certs1

Cert Detail –
certs3

Download

The new version of the Config Backup program is available on the project Sourceforge page here –

https://sourceforge.net/projects/f5configbackup/files/

It is available in the new VMware format and also as a package for CentOS 6. In the next few months I will also be working on an Ubuntu install package. Unfortunately with new functionality, the dependencies become more intricate so a generic source install package will not be available.

Documentation is available here –

https://sourceforge.net/p/f5configbackup/wiki/Home/


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