The second time the opportunity was presented to attend OpenStack Summit. Here is few thoughts and observations. Venue – In one of the recent podcasts Greg has mentioned – that probably the decision to have the summit in Canada (not US) was based on premises that it is easier for Out-of-North-America OpenStack users to get…
Overview of few new but exciting technology market players
As you might guess by number of technologies discussed here it’s not a sponsored post. During last few weeks I came across multiple very mind blowing products and it’s great there is an opportunity to review them here and hopefully it will help others with a big picture what you get from these vendors. Datrium…
Webinar With Citrix – Transitioning Load Balancing to the Cloud
In the face of public cloud services and the Amazons and Azures of the world wanting to own as much of your enterprise IT budget as possible, how does traditionally on premises technology remain relevant?
Multipathing With NFS4.1 And KVM
Today, we’re going to talk about performance and especially network performance. The main goal of this article is to present to you a way to boost progressively your network bandwidth at minor costs. Welcome to the wonderful world of the multipathing! We can define the multipathing as a method to use more than one way…
F5 iRules – What is a Program?
When I’m not working (boring right now), reading Everyday Feminism (fascinating*) or spending time with the family (awesome) I’m writing. I’ve three book projects on the go, two of which are taking far too long and rapidly become a chore. The third is the third edition of my F5 iRules book (I’m not shilling –…
Using Puppet to Configure F5 Network’s LTM via SOAP
You’ll like this, and you won’t; and that reflects on how I’ve felt variously about this task/burden. So, I’ve spent three weeks, almost full-time, on the work necessary to use Puppet to configure F5 Networks LTM via SOAP. Not just a few Pools and Virtual Servers; the whole box, from scratch. I knew this would be…
Using ssldump to Decode/Decrypt SSL/TLS Packets
Who needs the Wireshark GUI right; let’s do this at the command line and be grown up about things. This is a straight copy of my popular Using Wireshark to Decode/Decrypt SSL/TLS Packets post, only using ssldump to decode/decrypt SSL/TLS packets at the CLI instead of Wireshark. Aside from the obvious advantages, immediacy and efficiency of a CLI tool, ssldump also…
What The Heck Is SPDY?
A10‘s presentation at NFD8 seemed to generate a bit of interest (dare I say excitement) and many a question around the SPDY (pronounced ‘speedy’) protocol. I promised Lindsey Hill (@northlandboy) on Twitter that I’d write a blog post about it and here it is. It took me rather longer to write than I thought and…
Viewing HTTP Headers Using Browser Developer Tools
I often find myself viewing HTTP headers (request and response) at the ‘client side’, which are often much quicker (and safer) than decrypting SSL/TLS traffic on a load balancer/ADC. With the use of SSL/TLS growing rapidly even within private networks and the inability to decrypt PFS/DHE protected traffic, this can often be the only way to troubleshoot. The reasons I…
Network Design Concepts Part-2
In the first article of this series, reliability and resiliency has been explained. Every component and every device can and eventually will fail, thus system should be resilient enough to re converge/recover to a previous state. Resiliency can be achieved with redundancy. But how much redundancy is best for the resiliency is another consideration to…
A History of Load Balancing
A visual representation of the company and, to a lesser extent, product history of the load balancing/application delivery field. My usual F5 bias is present but it seems justified considering their long-held market leading position. I’ve been itching to post this for a while but simply couldn’t stop changing the formatting. I can’t say I’m…
F5 Configuration Backups 3.0
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…
Understand Etherchannel Load Balancing.
Let’s try to define what EtherChannel is and why it exists nowadays as a powerful feature.
Anycast HSRP and Design Considerations
HSRP is the first hop redundancy Cisco property protocol which allows a transparent failover of the first-hop gateway. Many technologies have been slightly modified to use it efficiently. In this article although Anycast hsrp will be explained but I want to first explain how basically HSRP works. Also you can check this video from http://orhanergun.net…
Configuration Backups for F5
As an administrator of network devices, keeping full backups is important for being able to recover from hardware failure. With F5 devices, backups come in the form of UCS files which is an archive that contains all configurations and SSL certificates. With a UCS file, you can take a replacement device, upload a UCS file…
F5 drops LAB VE price to $95
During a recent F5 purchase I wanted to get some more F5 lab virtual edition appliances. At my company we have had two and it has been invaluable for testing new configs and training junior engineers in a safe environment that could be trashed and restored at will. At the time we ordered the lab…
F5 Networks iRule Event Order – HTTPS/SSL – Client & Server Side
As promised, here’s the iRule event order for HTTPS. I’d be grateful to any F5′ers out there that can pick holes in this, if any. Apologies for the ‘slimming’ of the diagram caused by the WordPress theme. Right click and view in a new tab or save as to see it in all it’s glory….
F5 Networks iRule Event Order – HTTP
I hit an issue recently where I thought I knew what was what but found myself doubting my knowledge. To that end, here’s a diagram detailing the iRule event order where HTTP traffic is concerned – I’ll follow up shortly with one for HTTPS flows. I’d be grateful to any F5’ers out there that can…
F5 LTM Encrypted Cookie Insert Persistence
The purpose of a load balancer is to distribute client connections to multiple servers to increase load capacity and provide high availability. One common requirement of load balanced applications, since most application servers maintain session information on the local box, is that a client must stay locked to a single server for the duration of…
Stateless Routing Through an in-line F5 LTM
When using an F5 load balancer there are 2 predominant ways to setup the network topology. While there are many different names for these methods, in this article I will call them “load balancer on a stick” and in-line. Although the article is about the in-line method, we will quickly review both methods for comparison….
What The Heck Is F5 Networks’ TMOS?
F5 Network’s Traffic Management Operating System (TMOS) is, first and foremost and for the sake of clarity, NOT an individual operating system. It is the software foundation for all of F5’s network or traffic (not data) products; physical or virtual. TMOS almost seems to be a concept rather than a concrete thing when you first…
Upgrading F5 BIGIP HA Pair from v10 to v11 – Ethan’s Notes
I recently completed a challenging upgrade on a pair of production F5 3600s running 10.2.0, going to 11.2.1 running the LTM module. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been a challenging upgrade, but that was due to the things I learned along the way. Lessons Learned License reactivation. The upgrade document doesn’t say much about this….
The Future of F5 Networks: SDN, iRules & Node.js
Unlike some others in the network industry (until lately at least), those dealing with F5 Networks’ products are probably well accustomed to change – significant and fast paced change at that. F5 are not a company to shy away from rapid change and replacing old technology and tools with newer, better ones. The change from the…
Six Things About F5 BIGIP v11 iApps
F5 Networks’ Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is my load balancer – okay, Application Delivery Controller, if you insist – of choice. The LTM platform is as feature-rich and well-supported as they come, with all sorts of customizability as well as the iRule scripting language (a superset of TCL) that lets you do fancy transaction manipulation….
POLL: CCIE Data Center – Who’s In?
I have one primary question for the Packet Pusher’s community regarding the newly announced CCIE Data Center track: Who’s in? The beta CCIE Data Center written tests are available (mine is scheduled for a week from now), schedule at a PearsonVUE near you (they’ve gotten a bit better in Portland, btw). Non-beta written tests and…
