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heskez_36146's avatar
heskez_36146
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Oct 08, 2015

What do you know about config backup of F5?

Hi,

 

In my search for a UCS backup solution I found something on the net: The Config Backup F5 solution on Sourceforge, it led me to the page of Nerd of technology, the creator of the product.

 

I've put it to the test and I'm very enthusiastic about the whole thing. A couple of questions came up after deploying, probably not that urgent but none the less it crossed my mind:

 

  • Considering hardening of the product it seems very secure, however since it's an open source product what can you tell about to trust this appliance with confidential data? Are there parties out there actually using this appliance within a production environment?

     

  • As this appliance is linux based SSH script stuff, is it also possible to adjust for taking backups from appliances other than F5? Fortigate firewalls for example?

     

I'm looking forward at all of your comments ;)

 

Erik

 

availability
monitor
security
storage
TMSH

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  • mimlo_61970's avatar
    mimlo_61970
    Icon for Cumulonimbus rankCumulonimbus
    Oct 08, 2015

    Haven't used the backup solution mentioned above, but I have seen a few conversations on these boards and people seem to like it.

     

    I am leaving a comment to recommend Rancid for your fortigate backups. http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid/ It works very well for CLI based configurations like fortinet, cisco, juniper and so on. It does support F5, but it isn't a ucs backup, more of a bigip.conf file backup solution.

     

  • heskez_36146's avatar
    heskez_36146
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Oct 08, 2015

    Thanks for your reply and comment. I'll start a search in older topics then to see what people are saying about it. Considering Rancid, I've used it only for switches and liked it. The only disadvantage is that a clear text password is stored within a config file, so a no go for high secure environments.

     

  • Eric_Flores_131's avatar
    Eric_Flores_131
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Oct 09, 2015

    To answer your first question, the appliance is a CentOS 6.5 distro. It was hardened accoring to the steps mentioned here. For security purposes I would recommend doing a yum update as soon as you download it as the CentOS distro has had quite a few a updates sense the VM image was posted.

     

    As far as trying to make it backup other vendors, you would have to code it. There are 2 parts to the application, a python daemon running the backup logic and an Apache/PHP GUI. Both are tied to each other through a SQLite DB. The python daemon is interfacing with the BIG-IPs through the F5 iControl API.

     

  • heskez_36146's avatar
    heskez_36146
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Oct 10, 2015

    Thanks for your answer Eric, I'll look into it as soon i have the time.

     

    best, Erik