F5 BIG-IP Application Services Templates (BIG-IP FAST)

BIG-IP FAST templates are an easy and effective way to deploy applications on the BIG-IP system using BIG-IP AS3.

The BIG-IP FAST Extension provides a toolset for templating and managing BIG-IP AS3 Applications on BIG-IP.

Documentation

For more information about BIG-IP FAST, including installation and usage information, see the BIG-IP FAST Documentation

Class Function Documentation can be generated locally in either html or markdown, using the following commands to create files in the class's directory:

# default format is html
npm run buildjsdoc

# specify html as the format
npm run buildjsdoc html

# specifiy markdown as the format
npm run buildjsdoc md

Filing Issues and Getting Help

If you come across a bug or other issue, please use GitHub Issues to submit an issue for our team. You can also see current known issues on that page.

Installing the RPM

Prerequisites

• BIG-IP, TMOS v13.1 or later.
• BIG-IP AS3 version 3.16 or later must be installed (see the BIG-IP AS3 Documentation for details on installing BIG-IP AS3).

Installing the BIG-IP FAST Extension

1. Download the BIG-IP FAST extension RPM the GitHub Release Assets.

2. From the BIG-IP system, install the extension by navigating to iApps > Package Management LX. Click Import and then select the RPM you downloaded.

   • If you are using a BIG-IP version prior to 14.0, before you can use the Configuration utility, you must enable the framework using the BIG-IP command line. From the CLI, type the following command: touch /var/config/rest/iapps/enable. You only need to run this command once (per BIG-IP system). This is not necessary with 14.0 and later.

   Once the package is imported, you should see f5-appsvcs-templates in the list of installed extensions.

3. Click iApps > Application Services > Applications LX.

4. Click F5 Application Services Templates to start using BIG-IP FAST.

Development

Various script used during development are accessed through npm:

• To check for lint errors run npm run lint
• To run unit tests use npm test

Both of these are also run as part of the CI pipeline for this project.

Building

rpmbuild is required to build the RPM. All other dependencies are handled by NPM (make sure to do an npm install before trying to build).

To build everything (recommended), run:

npm run build

To build just the GUI layer, run:

npm run buildgui

To build just the RPM package, run:

npm run buildrpm

The built RPM package and associated sha256 hash will be placed in the dist directory. The package can be installed on a BIG-IP using the usual mechanisms for installing iApp LX packages. There is also an install-rpm script provided in scripts that installs the latest RPM found in dist to a target BIG-IP via the REST API.

Perfomance Tracing

BIG-IP FAST supports perfomance tracing using Jaeger.

To build RPM package with all required modules for performance tracing, run:

npm run buildperf

After installing RPM package on the BIGIP system, in order to enable performance tracing, the following environment variables are required to be set on the BIGIP system:

• F5_PERF_TRACING_ENABLED - boolean flag to enable BIG-IP FAST Perfomance tracing
• F5_PERF_TRACING_DEBUG - boolean flag to enable additional logging on Jaeger client
• F5_PERF_TRACING_ENDPOINT - Jaeger url for sending traces (i.e. http://<ip_address>:14268/api/traces)

Configurable Settings

• FAST Worker:

  • FAST_INIT_MAX_RETRIES - integer number which represents retries number used for FAST Worker initialization workflow.
  • FAST_INIT_RETRY_DELAY_IN_MS - milliseconds to delay between retries used within FAST Worker initialization.
  • FAST_PROVISION_CONFIG_CACHE_TTL_IN_MS - milliseconds to define cache live time for Provision Config.
  • FAST_JSON_REQ_BODY_LIMIT - string value to control the maximum request body size (i.e. 100kb, 1mb); by default, it uses 1mb

• AS3 Driver:

  • FAST_PENDING_TASK_POLL_RATE_IN_MS - milliseconds to define AS3 task poll rate.
  • FAST_OP_LOCK_TIMEOUT_IN_MS - milliseconds to wait for AS3 request OpLock.

Logging

All log messages should contain the worker name (BIG-IP FAST Worker) for easier filtering.

The following logging levels are used (from low priority to high):

• fine - lower priority informational messages
• info - higher priority informational messages
• error - recoverable error (e.g., bad requests)
• severe - unrecoverable error

A finest is also available, but already gets spammed with a lot of socket information, which makes it a common log level to disable.

All requests and responses are logged at a fine log level by default. Any response that contains an error status code (>=400) will default to an error.

NOTE: BIG-IP FAST is the next-generation successor to the now deprecated iApps templates. We strongly recommend not using both BIG-IP FAST AND iApp templates together as these templating solutions are incompatible with each other. Using both BIG-IP FAST and iApps is likely to create configuration and source-of-truth conflicts, resulting in an undesirable end-state.

License

Apache License 2.0

Copyright

Copyright 2014-2022 F5 Networks Inc.

F5 Networks Contributor License Agreement

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