This blog is a joint collaboration between Cisco (Ravi Balakrishnan) and F5 (Patrick Campbell)
Having to debug a network issue can be a daunting task, involving 100’s of IP address’s spread across your entire deployment. Imagine having a tool which can help with getting all the information you want of an IP address with a click of a button. The F5 ACI ServiceCenter is one such tool designed to do exactly that and more.
Telemetry streaming
Let’s get into the nuts and bolts of getting the entire benefit from visibility from the ServiceCenter. BIG-IP has a great component as part of its automation toolchain called ‘Telemetry streaming’. The ServiceCenter takes advantage of telemetry streaming (TS) to grab traffic statistics from the BIG-IP.
Integration TS with the ServiceCenter is a two step process:
Step 1: Download and install TS RPM Telemetry Streaming package on the BIG-IP (no cost, no license)
Step 2: Configure the TS consumer on the BIG-IP which the ServiceCenter will poll. Use a tool like POSTMAN or Curl to POST the below API to the BIG-IP.
URL: https://<BIG-IP MGMT IP address>/mgmt/shared/telemetry/declare
Payload:
IP Address facts
Once logged into the ServiceCenter from the APIC controller choose the telemetry consumer to retrieve the IP address statistics.
Conclusion
The ServiceCenter besides the statistics will give much more information like the active connections on the BIG-IP, the physical port on which the IP is active (Virtual IP or node IP) on both the BIG-IP and the Cisco ACI, filtered logs from the BIG-IP and much more. To learn more check out the video below on the latest App enhancements and example use cases:
Related Links
Download the F5 ACI ServiceCenter App to get started.
Refresh your knowledge on the F5 ACI ServiceCenter tool:
I think there should be integrated application inside ACI which should communicate while accessing services from F5(other vendor) or vice-versa by mutual agreement so that the client don’t have to much work. Im sorry if such thing is available…