And Now, A Word About iHealth
Hot off the presses from the AskF5 team, I bring to you the announcement many of us have been waiting for...iHealth for the masses! If you don't know what iHealth is yet, get out from under your rock and check it out. It's an amazing analysis, investigation and error prevention tool that's free for those with a support contract. It really is as cool as it sounds, and offers tons of helpful, impossible to find elsewhere features. Do yourself a favor and try it out. And now, the announcement, which contains the iHealth news as well as plenty of other AskF5 related goodies :
F5 is excited to announce that BIG-IP iHealth is now available to everyone
BIG-IP iHealth is an F5-hosted tool that enables you to verify the proper operation of your BIG-IP
system and ensure your hardware and software function at peak efficiency.
The technology at the heart of BIG-IP iHealth is the qkview file, which provides a running snapshot of
your BIG-IP system with up-to-the-minute configuration and diagnostic information. You can quickly
download a qkview file from your BIG-IP system, and then upload the file to the BIG-IP iHealth system.
The BIG-IP iHealth system translates the output from your qkview file and displays the content in a
customer-friendly format that mimics the familiar BIG-IP Configuration utility. In addition to
translating the raw data, the BIG-IP iHealth Diagnostics component of the BIG-IP iHealth system
evaluates the logs, command output, and configuration of your BIG-IP system against a database
of known issues, common mistakes, and published F5 best practices. The prioritized results provide
tailored feedback about configuration issues or code defects, and provide a description of the issue,
recommendations for resolution, and a link to further information in the AskF5™ Knowledge Base.
This customized diagnostic information enables you to take the recommended action, and in many
cases, can help you resolve common configuration issues without the need to contact F5 Technical
Support. If you require assistance from F5 Technical Support, your BIG-IP iHealth data will be
available to F5 engineers for faster resolution.
For more information, visit http://www.f5.com/services/customer-support/ihealth/.
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Helping F5 Support troubleshoot technical issues
Refer to the following solution for information about the files you can provide to F5 Support in order
to help F5 Support troubleshoot technical issues.
SOL2633 Instructions for submitting a support case to F5
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Avoiding the 497 day jiffies counter bug in the Linux 2.4 kernel
To avoid any issues which may result from the 497 day jiffies counter bug in the Linux 2.4 kernel,
customers should schedule an annual reboot of their BIG-IP LTM, GTM, ASM, WebAccelerator,
Link Controller, WAN Optimization and FirePass systems. Although the counter bug is not an F5
software defect, and all issues known to affect F5 products have been patched in current product
versions, an annual reboot is recommended to avoid any other issues which may arise.
For more information (including which product versions are affected), refer to SOL7036 The Linux
uptime counter wraps after 497 days. This issue was addressed by a kernel upgrade in BIG-IP
version 10.1.0; therefore, this issue does not affect BIG-IP versions 10.1.0 and later.
ARX version 5.2.2 released
F5 is pleased to announce the release of ARX version 5.2.2. Documentation is available at the
following location:
http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/arx/releasenotes/product/relnotes_5_2_2_arx.html
BIG-IP version 10.2.1 Hotfix 2 released
F5 is pleased to announce the release of BIG-IP v10.2.1 Hotfix 2. While there are no new features
in this release, it improves upon the BIG-IP version 10.2.1 branch with increased stability. F5
recommends upgrading from any version of 10.2.1 to version 10.2.1 HF2. This release contains:
· Stabilization fixes for LTM, GTM, ASM, APM, WAM, and WOM
· Security patches
Software: https://downloads.f5.com/esd/productlines.jsp
Top 10 Solutions for March
1. SOL11215 Upgrading an active/standby BIG-IP high availability pair
2. SOL10737 SSL Renegotiation vulnerability - CVE-2009-3555 / VU#120541
3. SOL5527 Configuring the BIG-IP system to log to a remote syslog server
4. SOL12531 Troubleshooting health monitors
5. SOL8035 Overview of BIG-IP daemons
6. SOL7820 Overview of SNAT features
7. SOL10819 Performing a clean installation of BIG-IP version 10.x or Enterprise Manager 2.x
8. SOL6401 Configuring the BIG-IP to use an SSL chain certificate
9. SOL7024 Overview of the ConfigSync process
10. SOL9476 The F5 hardware/software compatibility matrix