Me Caveman, Need Picture: BigIP Config Visualizer

posted on Wednesday, January 21, 2009 2:37 PM

Every now and then someone pushes out a utility that just makes you yell "YES, that's exactly what I never knew I always wanted." BCV, or BigIP Config Visualizer, is one of those utilities. You supply a bigip.conf file, and BCV presents you with an image file for every virtual server defined in the config. Your images can be exported in jpg, png, or svg format. Exporting via svg gives you the ability to open (and edit) the image in Visio, which is pretty handy. Here's a snapshot of a lab vip:

F5er Micheal Thompson cranked this out in a weekend and is releasing it to the DevCentral community for further work. So, community, tip your hats to Micheal and see what amazing things you can do to expand this excellent contribution.

Technorati Tags: F5,DevCentral,BIG-IP,Jason Rahm

13 Comments

Feedback

1/22/2009 3:08 PM
		This is a very cool tool. I can't wait to dig into it further.
Steve Brown

3/14/2009 7:08 PM
		They are right. It's so cool I have no clue how I can benefit from it.
Chetan Bhatt

4/1/2009 9:31 PM
		I can see it reading the config, I get blank files, 0 size, named my IP's. While its running I see Use of uninitialized value $pool in hash element at C:/Perl/site/lib/BigIP/Parse Config.pm line 74. (dot.EXE:4848): Pango-WARNING **: couldn't load font "Times Roman Not-Rotated 14 ", falling back to "Sans Not-Rotated 14", expect ugly output.
Rugger

4/2/2009 7:49 AM
		The blank file sizes are because of the Pango Warning. Look at this thread. https://mailman.research.att.com/pipermail/graphviz-devel/2007/000326.html Did you use the BigIP Parser that was included in the package? Use of uninitialized value $pool in hash element at C:/Perl/site/lib/BigIP/Parse Config.pm line 74. Can you show us what your configuration file looks like? What version of code?
Jackofalltrades

4/2/2009 9:21 AM
		I did use the parser that was in the package, everything with the parser appeared to get done OK. I have to scrub the conf first then I can post code version is 4.x
rugger

4/2/2009 12:29 PM
		The 4.x version of cod is not supported. There is a different format for 4.x configs verse 9.x
JackofAllTrades

5/27/2009 5:29 AM
		Has anyone else run in to issues with this script? I'm able to run it and get output (with errors): could not parse at C:\Perl\bin\bcv.pl line 491 Use of uninitialized value in numeric gt (>) at C:/Perl/site/lib/Net/Netmask.pm line 562. Use of uninitialized value in string comparison (cmp) at C:/Perl/site/lib/GraphViz.pm line 1083. Use of uninitialized value in hash element at C:/Perl/site/lib/GraphViz.pm line 1088. Use of uninitialized value $from in exists at C:/Perl/site/lib/GraphViz.pm line 752. (dot.EXE:6892): Pango-WARNING **: couldn't load font "Times Roman Not-Rotated 14", falling back to "Sans Not-Rotated 14", expect ugly output. However the drawings are there, yet upon inspection I find the loadbalanced IP (in the diamond box) is incorrect and has been picked up from a different VS and the port info in the diamond dotted box on the left is always any. Does anyone know if a different thread is running on this script as its really would be useful to get this running as its the type of thing my manager and above like to have. I'm running BIG-IP 9.3.0 Build 178.5
Watcher60

5/27/2009 8:41 AM
		Just as a further update I tried running a different config through the script from a ltm running BIG-IP 9.4.5 Build 1049.10 Final which worked with all the correct info and only threw one error so I presume there is either something different on the config format between 9.3.0 code and 9.4.5, or some characters in the config is cauing the script to error thanks
Watcher60

4/29/2009 4:56 PM
		has anyone made improvements on this project?
Tommy P

9/26/2009 5:57 PM
		O/S: Windows 32 This is resolved by ugrading to GraphViz 2.24 or the development version 2.25. See --> http://www.graphviz.org/Download.php
ocnsinc

4/29/2010 4:44 PM
		Great little tool - worked fine for me once I got nmake to work right...
Blake

5/18/2010 5:19 AM
		You might be interested in this Visio addin to layout diagrams with Graphviz: http://www.calvert.ch/graphvizio/ Best regards, Maurice Calvert
Maurice Calvert

12/21/2010 10:05 PM
		Check the iControl forum. I re-wrote the script to use iControl SOAP calls and solved several outstanding bugs. Now I'm looking at enhancing it so you can customize the output a bit more. BTW, Maurice, I've used your plugin and it works well except the settings pop-up is garbled with Visio 2007 and Windows 7.
Russell

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