AUTOMATION IN THE NETWORK?
The pace at which applications are developed and deployed continues to accelerate, bringing tangible benefits to businesses and their customers. To keep up, businesses are looking to eliminate IT bottlenecks through models like DevOps to improve internal processes, and automation to speed up workflows. While DevOps and automation are commonplace in many IT departments on the server side, true network automation remains elusive for most.
Even as the processes and toolchains for developing and delivering applications evolve, some things remain the same. Applications still require application delivery services like identity and access management, web application security and TCP optimization, to ensure they remain fast, secure and available in production environments. Why not use Ansible to automate these functions?
F5 AUTOMATION AND ORCHESTRATION
Ansible’s simple network automation framework includes native support for both legacy and open network devices. This framework separates the Ansible Playbook from the Automation execution environments, allowing your Ansible automations to span your entire network stack - network switches, appliances, etc.
F5 users can automate and orchestrate using Ansible through a series of integrations with the F5 BIG-IP API-called modules. These modules leverage the full API support implemented on F5 BIG-IP hardware and virtual platforms.
Ansible F5 modules enable most common use cases, such as:
- Automating the initial configurations on the BIG-IP like DNS, NTP etc.
- Automation to Network the BIG-IP (VLANS, Self-Ips)
- Automated deployment of HTTP and HTTPS applications
- Managing Virtual-Servers, Pools, Monitors and other configuration objects
SOLUTION BENEFITS
The combined Ansible and F5 solution provides:
- Agentless solution: No new software to install on BIG-IP
- Makes use of the native APIs of BIG-IP
- End to End automation: licensing a BIG-IP to application deployment
- Improved configuration and automation speed and consistency
- Ansible F5 modules follow best practice and enable continuous compliance
