iRules

iRules with iControl - Two Great Tastes...

Don MacVittie — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:32:28 GMT

Well, I wanted to work some more on my iRules-fu, and I wanted to contribute to the community, so I took a break from the iC2I series this week to develop a simple iRules redirection generator.

If you're like me, you're primarily a developer and iRules are not something you specialize in. I don't mind using iRules to achieve tasks, but those tasks are generally to support my app dev efforts. That's what the iRule Redirection Generator is for. Taking the three most popular redirections and making a simple interface to have them generated for you.

There's nothing crazy difficult about the program (which is available as a C# project), it's mostly just a learning tool to help you understand how to write redirections in iRules. There's a tiny bit of iControl (two calls to get a pool list) in the source, but the point really was about making it easier to do iRules - because I'm lazy. This sample should provide a framework by which other iRules simplifications can be designed. Indeed, the application is written as a tabbed control so that we (that includes you!) can plug in more tool bits as time goes on.

So drop by the DevCentral Labs and check out the iRule Redirection Generator. There's a Tech Tip about it, but thanks to an excellent suggestion by Jeff, the Tech Tip is actually included in the "Usage" tab of the application in its entirety.

Don.

/Reading: D&D 4.0 Core rulebooks, picked them up at midnight last night.

/imbibing: Water and RedBull - did I mention I was out and about at midnight last night?

Web 2.0? Or Web 2.0?

Don MacVittie — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:52:57 GMT

As you've no doubt noticed, there is a bit of duplicate name confusion in the Web 2.0 world. Developers say "Web 2.0" and they mean SOA, dynamic binding, etc. When business people say "Web 2.0" they mean blogs, video, RSS feeds.

DevCentral is an example of Web 2.0, the business version. We've got blogs, video (no DRM, thank you), podcasts, forums, articles, and it's all wrapped together nice as pie.

But DevCentral is also an example of utilizing Web 2.0. Some of the wizardry done behind the scenes and added to by the team is pure Web 2.0 nirvana.

So we get a lot of press about the end-user or business person version of Web 2.0, Jeff and John McAdam have talked about with the press about it repeatedly, people point to DevCentral as the definition of vendor-sponsored community, the list goes on.

The flip side of this is that not much is talked about Web 2.0 from a development perspective. DevCentral is a good example of that, and our ADN (Application Delivery Network) technology is a cornerstone of Web 2.0 networks. Lori is helping people understand the issues in her blog, and we're adding more and more Web 2.0 content all of the time.

That gives you yet another reason to hang out on DevCentral, the Web 2.0 Networking site - because it is both, Web 2.0 and Web 2.0.

Now if only we could get someone to use more intelligent naming - Like Web 2.0 and Development 2.0 or something - so that we're all a little less confused about what, exactly, we're talking about.

Don.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, SOA, Application Development

Drinking: Water, coffee, Moutain Dew (seriously, all sitting around my laptop right now).

Reading: Flames of War 2.0 (link is very slow - they don't have a genius like Joe keeping their DNN installation performing)

I'm a Developer at heart.

Don MacVittie — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:29:00 GMT

I've got many years of AppDev under my belt, a few years of Architecture, and a couple years of networking. That makes me a pretty well-rounded individual.

But our market confuses me. We (and here I mean all the Load Balancing/App Acceleration vendors) want to keep networking terminology, but hope to sell to Application Developers.

Ain't gonna work.

I have long been a proponent of "You can't be an application developer and not be aware of the network anymore". I told some students that in a C++ class I was teaching years ago, and it gets more true all of the time.

But your average enterprise developer is buried, just keeping up with standards, new releases of dev environments, new languages, and the internecine struggle over the One True Database, One True Language, One True OS, and One True Data Format.

No matter how way-bang cool your product is, developers aren't interested if it (and the sales staff) don't speak their language. They just don't have the time.

We at F5 are pretty lucky, I've seen some email go across from some bright individuals, and all of my limited interactions with our sales staff have told me that, for the most part, F5 gets it. Compared to the competition, it looks pretty good to me. But ignoring the competition, and looking at it from the developers' perspective, we still have a long way to go. That's cool, there is always room for improvement, and one thing is certain about this crowd, if it can be better, they'll work on it.

The iRule editor is an example of what I mean by that... The product worked well without it, but it was one of those things that added value for those developing iRules. If you don't already have it, you can read about it and download it here

While functionally the system didn't need an iRules editor, it was certainly high on the wish list of users, and they turned it out (before I came here, to be sure).

So I'm looking forward to a simplified, developer oriented interface that an Application Architect or an Application Developer can quickly and easily define how the BigIP should handle their application without becoming router jockeys. I think it would be cool.

This is a company blog site, so I'll tell you up-front to avoid confusion, I do not know of a plan to implement such a beast, I am not in a position to know of such a plan. I work for DevCentral, not Product Development.

It's just a pipe dream of mine. :-)

Imbibing: Strong Coffee and Mountain Dew
Reading: Skirmish Campaigns, France '40-The Ghost Division, by Scott Fisher and Nathan Forney

Don.

It's about Extensibility

Don MacVittie — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:44:00 GMT

I'm not a fan of tech blogs being positioning of any kind, but since I'm new here and have seen some things "in the wild", you'll get the occasional one of these from me.

While I was still working for Network Computing, I had a conversation with a competitor to F5 where they pitched their solution as better than BigIP becaues it didn't require coding. And thus was easier to use.

These were always fun conversations to have as a writer - you can roll your eyes, put them on speaker phone to let Lori listen, take extensive (and in egregious cases impertinent) notes, and ask piercing questions like "So you're saying iRules and iControl are required to use F5 products?" then listen to the pregnant pause or indignant sputtering because you've interrupted their presentation. This scenario is fortunately not common, but some conversations pass beyond the bounds of acceptability and require a snappy comment to make the presenter aware that you know your market, and lies aren't going to sell.

But I'm not here to talk about the fun NWC writers have trying to bring you unbiased information. The thing that concerns me is that this same vendor may be selling this schtick to you, and that some of you haven't spent enough time in the space to understand the difference, so as my first public service announcement, I'll tell you something F5 has been saying (with greater and lesser success) for years:

iRules and iControl are all about extensibility, flexibility, and adaptability.

It's that simple. And that's what DevCentral is here for. F5 products can do as much as competitors for you out-of-the-box, but no one - not us or the competition - can account for all of the things you might wish to do within your own network. Giving you the tools to do for yourself what vendors aren't doing is not a weight that drags you down, it is a buoy that lifts you out of the sea of network performance and security. And DevCentral is a resource to help you use those tools.

So if you get caught up in one of these conversations, remember that F5 products are competitive without iRules and iControl, these programmatic interfaces are just another tool in your toolchest to help you solve your users problems and lighten the natural tension between the Network team and the AppDev team.

Of course, if you're a DevCentral member, you already knew all of this, but this one's for all the casual surfers and Enterprise Architects out looking for new ways to solve their problems.

Don.

Imbibing: Strong coffee and Mountain Dew

Reading: Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Stephen R. Donaldson