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ykkim's avatar
ykkim
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Dec 20, 2012

Is iControl 10.x suitable for BIG-IP v9 ??

Hi

 

I made an application configuring LTM SLB using iControl(java) v10.2. It has been working well for v10.x BIG-IPs. And I have to extends it's service to v9.x ones quickly.

 

The API functions involved in my application are restricted in partial LTM and I can't read any version related statement for those functions in API documents.

 

According to DevCentral API documents, it seems possible that iControl v10.2 application controls v9.x BIG-IP without changing code implementations.

 

Can I assume that iControl keeps backward compatibility unless there is a version comment in API documents? If answer's "yes" then I'm using current application for configuring v9.x BIG-IP.

 

Kim.

 

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  • Jonathan_Scholi's avatar
    Jonathan_Scholi
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    Dec 20, 2012
    Yes. Obviously you may want to do some testing, but in my experience, the exact same iControl Java code works for v9 and v10, except for new features introduced in v10.
  • mhite_60883's avatar
    mhite_60883
    Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
    Dec 21, 2012
    I'm pretty sure that is the case.

     

     

    In the past, I've written code that actually attempts to read the version number from the remote BIG-IP to determine whether or not I can use advanced features such as transactions and features that are not available in older API versions.

     

     

  • ykkim's avatar
    ykkim
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    Dec 26, 2012
    Jonathan and mhite,

     

    Thanks a lot for your replies.

     

    Though I should have to test some, your confirmations are very very helpful.
  • Michael_Yates's avatar
    Michael_Yates
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 26, 2012
    Hi ykkim,

     

     

    Yes, you could even use the v11 iControl and still be OK. You can see the iControl API Reference that the methods still exist but are listed as deprecated moving forward, but are still there for backwards compatibility.

     

     

    If you want to see exactly which methods are available for your device you can use this link: https://Device.Management.IP.Address/iControl/iControlPortal.cgi
  • ykkim's avatar
    ykkim
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 26, 2012
    Thank you so much for your final confirmation and the link. That would save a lot of my work and I could learn how to control various versions of BIG-IP with one application.
  • Joe_Pruitt's avatar
    Joe_Pruitt
    Jan 10, 2013
    The iControl libraries are built to the best of our abilities to be backward compatible with previous versions. For 99.99% of the methods, they will all work fine moving backwards. We actually encourage you all to update to the latest libraries in the case you get a newer version you need to access. One issue with using an older library to access a newer system is in the case of enumeration additions. If a new value is added to an enumeration that is being returned, if the client library doesn't know about it, that can cause serialization problems. The main issue with moving backwards, as mentioned above, is the risk of calling a method that doesn't exist on the earlier version. In this case, you'll get a method not found exception.