411 DC Post of the Week - Changing Servers Mid-Connection

DevCentral TV — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 04:43:06 GMT

Persistence & Pool Member State

This week Deb & Colin dig into unexpected behavior some of our customers encounter when attempting to switch servers for a client connection already in progress.

Our Post of the Week this week was recommended by DevCentral user aherrman. Almost 2 years ago he encountered this puzzling issue while his SE was on vacation, and his quest for a solution led to his first DevCentral post. He's been an active member of the community ever since.

He says: "Though there might be better posts about it, the reason for this nomination is because the behavior (having to do LB::detach to properly handle persistence changes in an HTTP session) confused the heck out of me for a while. I have a feeling many other people might run into that too, so having the topic discussed in a more obvious place might be helpful."

Related documents: OneConnect? For my iRule?

Technorati Tags: F5, DevCentral, Post of the Week, Persistence, Pool Member, State, OneConnect, iRule

DC Post of the Week - Persistence and Pool Member State

DevCentral TV — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:34:42 GMT

This week Deb & Colin take a look at a post from the Advanced Design & Configuration General Discussion forum
The post Problem with SSL termination on LTM... actually turned out to be about something else: How LTM manages persistent connections for pool members in a "Disabled" state.
Watch the video for a discussion of the real issue the poster encountered and the probable path to resolution.

VIPRION - Unboxed ...Again

DevCentral TV — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:53:03 GMT

A couple months after the filming of the popular "Viprion - Unboxed" video, we got a call from some of the engineers here at F5 saying they had a real, live Viprion, shipped straight from manufacturing, and still in the package. They wanted to know if we wanted to come film them opening it up. Did we ever!
Our last Viprion - Unboxed video was shot pre-release with a development unit. So while you got to see what the box was all about, how it came apart, how it worked, etc., you didn't really get to see how it would show up on your door. Well, here you go. In this second take at Unboxing a Viprion you'll get to see exactly how these are being shipped from manufacturing, what's included inside (manuals, static straps and all), and you'll even get some great commentary from the engineers in the know.

Seattle Lunch 2.0 at F5 Networks

DevCentral TV — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:37:20 GMT

On December 6th, 2007, F5 Networks hosted the Seattle Lunch 2.0 meetup. We had some great pizza and were entertained by the great talk about "The myths of innovation" by Scott Berkun. Scott's presentation was scheduled to go 20 minutes but the conversation could not be contained and went almost double that. Thanks to Josh Maher for scheduling, thanks to Scott for the great talk, and a special thanks to everyone who made the trek over to F5.

TechDump: Login to your FirePass using simple UNIX tools, complete with script

DevCentral TV — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 22:09:00 GMT

FirePass does not use any proprietary "voodoo" to generate SSL VPN tunnels. The underlying technology is nothing more complex than PPP over SSL. Internally, F5 has used this to our advantage for testing purposes and employee remote access from Unsecured locations.

411: Steve Morenzoni talks about how a fully digital hospital makes use of F5 gear

DevCentral TV — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 21:52:00 GMT

A Senior Network Engineer stops by to chat with us about how F5 products help their large scale network to support their entirely digital Hospital setup.

411: Jeff Browning talks about what's new on DevCentral

DevCentral TV — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 07:53:00 GMT

Jeff Browning takes a few minutes to chat with us about what's goig on here at DevCentral. He tells us what's new, what's exciting, and even what his favorite things about DevCentral are. From the sound of things, there's plenty to check out, so tune back in soon for updates.

411: An introduction to FirePass

DevCentral TV — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 16:52:00 GMT

Jeff Browning interviews F5's Dan Kim and Robert Rexford to learn about the more advanced functionality available with the Firepass SSL VPN including content processing and scripting, endpoint security, and more.

00:28 Who are you?
01:18 What is Firepass?
02:35 Before we dive into the technical details, how can people get a demo of the basics?
03:55 What are some of the more cool or advanced things you can show us?
05:13 Whoa - if you need to hit the "panic" button, let me know.
06:30 We get a tour of the reverse proxy, content processing, and custom scripting.
08:40 So, someone building iRules today should pick this up pretty quickly?
09:08 What else can you show us?
13:10 It looks like the Visual Policy Editor is an intuitive way to develop endpoint security policies to protect your network.
14:07 You can actually present a message to users telling them what they need to do to be compliant?
16:08 We take a look at Group Based Policy management.
17:30 It looks like this could be a quick and easy way to create user groups for external users quickly.

411: Help stop Phishing in your network, with iRules

DevCentral TV — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 01:30:00 GMT

Phishing is a rather nasty tactic hackers use to prey on users willing to share information, usually personal data, that the perpetrators then use to either steal financial assets or gain access to other personal data. Jeff Browning spends some time with Alan Murphy, Mike Lowell, and Colin Walker from F5 to learn about a new iRule solution that provides a defensive measure companies can deploy to protect their users from phishing attempts.

411: F5 Architect Rick Masters discusses F5 Enterprise Manager (EM)

DevCentral TV — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 17:41:00 GMT

F5’s Joe Pruitt sits down with F5 Architect Rick Masters to discuss the new F5 Enterprise Manager (EM), get a demo, discuss some background on how the product was developed, lessons learned, and other how EM can help users.

00:04 : Who are you and what do you do?
04:00 : So, you guys have finished this product in record time. Have you approached this project differently?
05:55 : Does this help with documentation and testing?
07:38 : How is Enterprise Manager going to be packaged and distributed?
09:40 : Let's see a demo...
10:44 : What's a "config sync"?
12:01 : How are you getting this information from the BIG-IP?
12:59 : How do customers typically divide devices? By datacenter? Application?
14:30 : Is the configuration archive/restore used for disaster recovery or fixing config mistakes?
15:38 : Could you talk about certificate management?
21:50 : It sounds like this makes it easier to install new BIG-IP software updates?
22:22 : What feature do you think people will like the most?
23:30 : You’ve got a sneak preview for DevCentral members??? Cool!
26:19 : How can people learn more about EM?