Category: F5

REST API on F5 with Transactions

It’s possible to group commands together and then have the F5 process them, if one fails, then the config is rolled back the the transaction in voided.  Here’s an example from the documentation:

Create a transaction that will group commands together:

POST https://192.168.25.42/mgmt/tm/transaction

Then the POST with the transaction ID:

POST https://192.168.25.42/mgmt/tm/ltm/poolX-F5-REST-Coordination-Id:1389812351{   "name":"tcb-xact-pool",   "members": [ {"name":"192.168.25.32:80","description":"First pool for transactions"} ]}

Commit transaction:

PATCH https://localhost/mgmt/tm/transaction/1389812351{ "state":"VALIDATING” }

F5 301B LTM Review

As part of work, I need to keep up with certification exams and stay current.  While I dislike exams, it’s part of the job and I do learn new things especially during the exam when I stumble upon a question that forces me to learn something and may even cost me the passing mark.

The LTM-B is the second part exam, while I originally took it a while back, I was up for re-certification and had my notes from back then that I review.

To note the exam is based on 12.2, so keep that in mind as some of the questions are dated and newer released fix the issues presented.

Some things to know:

  • Alerting and reporting
  • AVR
  • HA
  • iRules – you should have a good understanding of TCL and the event model used on F5
  • HTTP and headers
  • How connections flow and persistence, especially cookies

Might be worthwhile reading the old documentation from 12.2 and not the newer ones as the software is evolving quite a bit now.