iControl

Gain visibility Into Your BIG-IP delivered Web Applications With Symphoniq

Joe Pruitt — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:21:43 GMT

Webinar Details

Date: Thursday Oct 16th, 2008
Time: 9AM PST, 12PM EST
Duration: 45 minutes

Featured Speakers:

Peter Murray
Technical Marketing Manager
F5 Networks

Hon Wong
CEO
Symphoniq

IT departments purchase F5’s BIG-IP Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) to increase their Web Application performance. Because of the complexity of the applications being accelerated, finding an optimal ADC configuration requires visibility into the impact the appliance has on both the end user and the network.

Symphoniq has created a Web Application performance monitoring solution based on our TRUE (The Real User Experience) technology. An industry first, the solution integrates tightly with F5’s powerful iRules and iControl platform to provide an out of the box ADC and real user monitoring solution for all of your BIG-IP HTTP applications.

Register now for this webinar, and hear Peter and Hon discuss how F5 and Symphoniq can help you gain visibility into your ADC infrastructure, and improve your end users’ Web Application experience.

In this webinar you will discover:

How F5 acceleration technology can help address performance issues associated with complex Web architectures.
How collecting ADC and end user browser metrics provides the data required to optimize application delivery.
How using your existing ADC hardware can give you a cost effective platform for monitoring HTTP applications.

I've worked with Hon and the gang over at Symphoniq with the iControl integration for a while now and they've got some great technologies that you really should take a look at if you are in the world of web applications and would like to get a closer look at how the applications are performing and how you can optimize them. Believe me, it'll be the best way you can spend your 45 minutes next Thursday morning. So, on the 16th, grab yourself a cup of coffee and join in, you won't regret it.

For more information, check out www.f5.com and www.symphoniq.com.

-Joe

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, BIG-IP, Symphonq, TRUE, ADC, Joe Pruitt

The First VIPRION Review

Joe Pruitt — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:11:18 GMT

This just came across the wire: The UK based website ITPRO just published the first public review of F5's VIPRION On-Demand Application Delivery Controller. Let's see how it fared:

Rating: 5 out of 6 stars

Price: £83000

"Targeting enterprises and service providers, the Viprion offers a range of features suited to those looking for levels of resilience, scalability and performance that standard appliance based solutions can’t deliver."

"A unique feature of the Viprion is its ability to present a single virtual server with massive resources behind it as it can use all blades. As new blades are added they are incorporated into the cluster, enabling a single application to scale easily with demand."

"Installation was simple as the Viprion not only clustered the blades for us but also presented a single virtual IP address for management."

"During its stay in the lab the Viprion impressed us mightily with its huge range of features. The automatic blade clustering feature also makes upgrades extremely simple and the well designed web interface makes light work of configuration and management."

Verdict: The Viprion sets new standards for enterprise level application delivery, with seriously good resilience, scalability and performance. Load balancing features don’t get any better either and yet during testing we found it remarkably easy to deploy and manage.

So there you have it. If you have been maxing out your 8800's and have been feeling the need for an upgrade, then this review might help you tip the scale. The one thing that they didn't mention in the review is that iControl, the remote management/automation API is available on that product as well so all your scripts you've developed for managing your v9.x devices will work with the new platform as well.

Make sure you check out the full review at the ITPRO website.

-Joe

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, VIPRION, iRules, iControl, Product Review, Joe Pruitt

Socializing the Network

Joe Pruitt — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:07:04 GMT

A while ago I wrote a little app that listened to the BIG-IP for status change notifications and logged them to disk. I showed this to Robert Scoble and the Channel 9 crew when they visited the F5 headquarters and he asked if he could get those results in his RSS reader. I answered that by writing the BigipBlogging sample that I submitted to the DevCentral CodeShare

I'm an early adopter in most web based tools so naturally I was a early member on Twitter. Last year I blogged about an extension to the original program that listened for notification messages and in addition to writing them to disk, the messages could be proxied to my BIG-IP's Twitter acccount. This has the added benefit of giving me access to a free SMS gateway to allow status messages to go to my cell phone - which is GREAT for a demo BTW!

Fast-Forward to earlier this week... I received an email from Lori asking if I'd ever released the source for the application as she thought this was a great time to do it. I could have sworn I did but it seems I kept it all to myself as I could not find heads or tails of it anywhere on DevCentral. I guess since there was no request for it, it slipped by. Lori said when I posted this in May last year, Twitter was for a niche audience, but now it's mainstream.

And who am I to say no to my fellow blogger...

So, here you go. Check out the PerlTwitterProxy sample added to the iControl CodeShare. Usage is pretty simple if you set it up on your BIG-IP. If so, then all you have to customize is the Twitter credentials you'd like to use for message posting.

Oh and Lori, we'll see how many downloads this thing gets and if Twitter has reached mainstream in the networking community.

-Joe

Technorati Tags: F5,DevCentral,BIG-IP,iControl,Twitter,Social Networks,Channel 9,Robert Scoble,Lori Mac Vittie,Joe Pruitt

Symphonic releases TrueView ADC Edition

Joe Pruitt — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:13:21 GMT

I found out about this at our partner conference earlier this week and it looks like Symphonic's TrueView ADC Edition has made it's way out into the wild.

From the press sheet:

Symphoniq, in conjunction with F5, has created a unique monitoring solution to leverage your existing Application Deliver Controller (ADC) infrastructure to give you detailed, actionable insight into how the infrastructure is running, from your end user's perspective.
TrueView, ADC Edition takes advantage of Symphoniq's TrueView technology to measure real end-user response times, and leverages F5's iRules and iControl technologies to seamlessly integrate with your infrastructure to provide the information you need to optimize your web application delivery.

With all the benefits of the True Product line, TrueView ADC Edition is built exclusively around F5's BIG-IP. They are using iControl to enable Symphonic transaction monitoring and, in doing so, the BIG-IP is automatically configured to dynamically instrument outgoing web pages or SOA calls.

Key highlights in the TrueView ADC Edition include:

Monitors application performance as experienced by the real users of HTML, AJAX, Flash and Silverlight applications
Collects detailed Web performance parameters (such as response time, parsing time, time to first byte, and error rate) from the real user's perspective at the browser
Allows setting of thresholds to generate alerts on Web performance parameters to support 24/7 operations
Capture and report on F5 BIG-IP device statistics
Correlates F5 BIG-IP device statistics with critical web application parameters to gain unprecedented visibility
Business group oriented approach relates performance issues to business impact
Customizable SQL-based reporting engine supports service level reporting and historical data archival
Monitoring functionality leverages existing F5 BIG-IP appliances using iRules and iControl, no additional third-party appliance required
Seamless migration to the full TrueView suite for end-to-end application performance monitoring and diagnostics

If you are a BIG-IP customer and are looking at ways to eek the most out of your applications and their performance on the network, I'd highly suggest you take a look at Symphonic's new offering.

Who knows, maybe we'll get them on a podcast sometime soon to talk about how they've used iControl and iRules to their, and your, advantage.

-Joe

Technorati Tags: F5, Symphonic, TrueView, ADC, iControl, iRules, Joe Pruitt

SEADUG Meeting 1 Recap

Joe Pruitt — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:08:08 GMT

Well we survived it and it was a blast! Thanks to everyone that showed up and I hope you learned a few things and had some fun along the way.

The night started off with socializing over some yummy pizza (which I ate way too much of) and we fit in some foosball and pool while we were waiting for things to kick off.

I presented a iRules slide deck covering some iRule basics and then dug into some optimization techniques and ended up with some troubleshooting tips. Hopefully everyone learned a little something during the talk.

We gave away some pretty nice DevCentral laptop backpacks to the ones who 1) answered correctly, or 2) guessed close enough (you know who you are!) the answers to some questions we threw out. For those that didn't make it, here are the questions

1) What does TCL stand for?

2) How many *::payload commands exist in the iRules command set?

3) What are the two functions of OneConnect?

4) Explain with examples what iControl and iRules are and when and why would you use each technology?

Congrats to the winners! Hope you enjoy your backpacks!

Jeff was rolling the camera so hopefully by next week we'll get a recording of the presentation online. In the mean time, here is the slide deck from the meeting: 20080423-SEADUG-1.pptx

Call for Eastside Hosting

We are always willing to host but if there is anyone on the Eastside (Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland) that can offer hosting, we'd gladly move it to the eastside. The location will have to accommodate 20-30 folks.

Call for Speakers

While I love talking in front of folks, this is a "User Group" so we'd love to have someone offer up a topic that they would be willing to present at the next and future meetings. So, if you have a great project that you have been working on and would like to share with the community, let me know via the blog or Northwest User Group forum and we'll get you locked in.

Till next time!

-Joe

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, User Groups, SEADUG

Show your Ninja-e-ness

Joe Pruitt — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:37:06 GMT

While some folks here at DevCentral like to think that they are all knowing with regards to folks in our community, the facts are that we only get a small glimpse into what challenges you face in your day to day lives while keeping your network and applications working like a well oiled machine.

A while back I posted about becoming an iRule Ninja. I'm assuming everyone has read that post and taken the challenge to heart and now it's your opportunity to share with the DevCentral team how you've been kicking butt with the programming support with your F5 gear (iControl and iRules) as well as unique and creative ways you have used the core features of our products to make you a "Hero" in your day job.

So, how do you do this? We've got a couple of ways that we've setup for you to get your info back to us:

Plain Old Email: You can always email the team directly at devcentraleditor -at- f5 -dot- com.

Voicemail: Let's face it, email is a great way to pass along information, but it's pretty informal. In line with pushing the possibilities, we've setup a voicemail box for folks to submit your testimonials to. If you are inspired to share your Ninja-e-ness (yes, I made up that word), pick up the phone and give 206-201-2258 a call. Be warned, the voice on there is a little bit scary B-). Sorry, there's no toll-free option right now.

Skype: For those who don't want to pay the toll and have a headset lying around, we've got a Skype account that goes into the voicemail system as well. Add "f5recorder" to your Skype contact list and initiate a voice call to leave us a testimonial as well.

The Grand Scheme

Ideally, I'd love to get to the caliber of Ravensmoon Replicas, where users like Bill W (above) are enthusiastic enough to post a pictures of themselves in Jedi costumes with quotes from their kids. Priceless.

We'll take these calls and build out a testimonial section on DevCentral that propel you to stardom as the closet tech Ninja that you know you are.

So what are you waiting for, get in touch and let us know how you've solved that tough problem and get your 15 minutes of stardom. And don't forget, the voicemail prompt is a bit scary, don't hang up B-) Oh, and for those with "real" testimonials (related to F5 gear - sorry Bill W), we might have some goodies (t-shirts, etc) to pass along in return for your time.

-Joe

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, iRules, Ninja, iRule Ninja, Testimonials, iControl 101, Skype, Jedi, Ninja-e-ness

Python + iControl = pyControl

Joe Pruitt — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:42:20 GMT

Today I'm proud to announce the arrival of our newest DevCentral Labs project: pyControl!

For those who don't know, the Python here is not referring to the snake, nor is it referencing the "Meaning of Life guys". In this case, its' the dynamic object-oriented programming language. So, what is pyControl? Well, it's a native Python library that integrates with F5's iControl Management API.

With the support for Python, we are ever expanding our base of client platforms to ease the frustrations of management and reporting on your network infrastructure. Whether it's perl, PowerShell, Java, .Net, or Python, we've got you covered.

So, if you are a closet Python geek, or even one who wear's his Python skilz as a badge of honor, hop on over to the pyControl Labs project, download the bits, and let us know what you think.

-Joe

Technorati Tags: Python,iControl,Monty Python,Geek,pyControl

iControl SDK v9.6.0 is here

Joe Pruitt — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:52:33 GMT

It's been a while since the last version of the SDK has been released and it looks like it's that time again.

So, whip out your zip program, and head on over to the iControl downloads page and be the first one on your block to get your hands on the latest and greatest iControl SDK.

Version 9.6.0 is a roll up of all previous upgrades and supports all previous versions of BIG-IP. What goodies can you expect to find in the SDK? Well, for starters, ASM and WA have made their debuts. LTConfig is the place to go for our new single configuration initiative. Oh, and for those of you lucky enough to have had your own "unboxing of Viprion", you can now automate configuring your clusters.

Oh, one more thing. The iControl Assembly has been updated for 9.6.0 as well, so for those of you java or Microsoft developers out there, make sure you grab the latest version for inclusion in your projects.

Happy coding!

-Joe

Technorati Tags: iControl, SDK, Assembly, ASM, WA, Viprion, cluster, java, .Net, Web Services, SOAP

Can a podcast get a referral bonus?

Joe Pruitt — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:04:17 GMT

Jeff, Colin and I just finished up a set of training sessions to our new sales and SE folks about all the goodness that is DevCentral, iRules, and iControl. We had an hour and a half and the "plan" was 30 minutes DevCentral (Jeff), 30 minutes iRules (Colin) and 30 minutes iControl (me).

Lesson learned: Jeff goes last from now on! Jeff rounded up his talk a little over the one hour mark, Colin sped his up to 20 minutes, which left me with 6 minutes to cover the iRule Editor and iControl. Luckily the folks opted to cut their break after our talk short to hear what I had to say. Hopefully it was worth skipping the bathroom breaks B-).

Overall the feedback was great and I hope the folks that we talked to learned a little something in the process. The one thing that sticks out was when a new employee (call him Mr. X) came up to me and said this: "I just wanted to tell you that your podcasts are the reason I came to work for F5". He went on to explain how a colleague of his pointed him to DevCentral and he really enjoyed the "realness" that we relayed across. In my head I was thinking "NO FRIGGIN WAY!!!" but what came out of my mouth was something to the effect of "that's great, I'm glad you've enjoyed it". I know we as a team enjoy recording these every week as It gives us a chance at the end of the week to "geek out" and talk about interesting things we've dealt with during the week. We've got users and customers who are listening to the podcasts, but I didn't think that they were powerful enough to actually get someone to consider us as a potential employer.

I wonder if he would have put "The DevCentral Weekly Roundup Podcast" on the "Who referred you?" section of his application, if the podcast would have received the referral bonus that employees receive when referring candidates who are later hired? HR, did you hear this? As the legal guardian of the podcast, I'll be on the lookout for the Roundup's paycheck stub in the coming weeks. I'm not sure how HR will handle paying a referral bonus to a pseudo-non-employee that has no social security number or any legal existence out side of DevCentral. Nor do I have a clue on how a podcast would be treated by the IRS for tax reasons, but I have faith in our HR group to work it all out in the name of fairness B-).

Welcome aboard Mr. X, maybe someday we'll out you and you can tell your story to the community.

Oh, and if any other of you podcast listeners out there are interested in opportunities at F5, be sure to add "The DevCentral Weekly Roundup Podcast" to your employment application!

-Joe

Technorati Tags: Pruitt, iControl, iRules, DevCentral, Sales, iRule Editor, podcast, referral bonus, Mr. X

Parking Lot Posting

Joe Pruitt — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:37:49 GMT

A while back Jeff threw out a question on forums asking about where you have "firepassed" from. I'll throw up my latest example.

Last Tuesday was very hectic for me, I had meetings and internal training at the office in Seattle in the morning and had to get back to home in Sammamish by 2:40 for a physical therapy session (I've got a pinched nerve in my neck that I've been treating for the last month or so if you are interested). Anyway, at about 1:15 I had an idea about a tech tip for DevCentral, so I plugged in my headset, fired up Camtasia, and started recording. That took about 5 minutes and afterwards, I had Camtasia export the recording into a raw AVI file that I fed into my custom video transcoding "blender" process that spits out FLV, MP4, WMV, and MP3 versions.

At 1:30 the transcoding was still running and I had to leave to make it in time for my appointment. Traffic was very light and I got there by 2:10 and while I was sitting in the parking lot, I got to thinking what I was going to do for the next 20 minutes before my appointment. Then I thought about the transcoding process I left running. Why not finish the publication of the tech tip from there? I fired up my laptop, plugged in my Verizon Modem, connected to our corporate FirePass with the VPN Tray Client, and connected to my desktop with the Remote Desktop Connection app on my laptop. With a the help of PowerShell, I uploaded the videos to our media server and then logged into DevCentral to create the textual content for the tech tip. At 2:25 I clicked submit on the article and it was posted just in time to make it into my appointment (with 5 minutes to spare).

I think about all the products I used for this process: Vista, Logitech Headset, Camtasia, PowerShell, Windows Media Encoder, ffmpeg, Wireless modem, FirePass, VPN Tray Client, Remote Desktop, and FireFox - all for that little tech tip. Hope you enjoy it!

-Joe

Technorati Tags: Seattle, Sammamish, Verizon, Camtasia, FirePass, PowerShell, ffmpeg, VPN, Pruitt