Forum Discussion

James_Thomson's avatar
James_Thomson
Icon for Employee rankEmployee
Aug 15, 2013

How to make sure BIG-IP is ready to take iControl commands to build an App Service

Building a java application to orchestrate F5 creation and configuration. Basic readout. We make the following iControl calls to the F5 (in this order): 1) bigIp.ManagementDevice().get_failover_state(devices) - loop untill the state returned is HA_STATE_ACTIVE 2) upload base (vlan,selfip,etc..) iApp template 3) configureTemplate - bigIp.ManagementApplicationService().create() - that's where it usually fails 4) save configuration 5) license 6) upload iapp template 2 7) configureTemplate - bigIp.ManagementApplicationService().create() - sometimes fails

 

During step 3, we usually get something like this: error_string : 01020005:3: The requested operation is not implemented yet.

 

I've set the code to retry if it encounters a failure. After a couple tries, the code will succeed and move on. But this is silly, I should be able to make the correct iControl calls to BIG-IP to validate that it is in a happy state and can accept my iControl iApp commands.

 

Anyone have any thoughts on how to create a robust request or group of requests to F5 to know that it's ready?

 

cloud
deployment
devops
iApps
iControl
management

4 Replies

Sort By
  • Fred_Slater_856's avatar
    Fred_Slater_856
    Historic F5 Account
    Aug 15, 2013

    James

     

    You may be triggering the iApp's implementation before the control plane (mcp) is ready. In tmsh, I would watch "show sys mcp" until it is in a running state. BTW, why are you uploading the iApp before licensing (steps 2 and 3), and again afterwards (steps 6 and 7)?

     

    Fred

     

  • James_Thomson's avatar
    James_Thomson
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Aug 15, 2013

    Thanks Fred, We are implementing 3 different iapps, so we upload 1, run 1, upload2, run2, upload 3, run 3. We have it broken out this way because I have a few other scenarios we use and I'm mixing and matching iApps so each one is it's own function. That's a good point about mcpd. I'll add some code that checks the services that are running before I run my commands to see if that seems to be the issue.

     

  • Fred_Slater_856's avatar
    Fred_Slater_856
    Historic F5 Account
    Aug 15, 2013

    OK, I understand. If your goals is to bring these apps up quickly, perhaps a different order would help: 1) license, 2) upload all 3 iapps, 3) pause for system readiness, 4) run all 3 iapps, 5) save config.

     

  • James_Thomson's avatar
    James_Thomson
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Aug 15, 2013

    Yeah, that sounds like a plan. It's the "pause for system readiness" that I'm trying to get rid of. I'd rather query something to know the system is definitely ready and then go as opposed to pause, try, fail, pause, try, fail, pause, try work, but I definitely like the idea of reordering.