Watch this episode to see how you can view F5 BIG-IP SSL statistics in the latest Grafana Dashboard for the BigStats telemetry exporter.
Well, I know I already posted the end of year wrap-up episode (REDtalks.live #40 – 2018 in Review) but I had a little free time and here we are on the very last day of the year with an update to add SSL statistics to the Grafana Dashboard for BigStats.
Thanks for listening!
In REDtalks.live episode #40 we take a look at the activity throughout the year.
NOTE: We’re almost at 20,000 views on the youtube channel. Help us get there by clicking play on this video below:
2018’s REDtalks.live Posts:
In addition to the creation of two dedicated landing pages for:
Its been an honor creating content for you and I really appreciate the comments/feedback. Keep them coming! And if you have any ideas for episodes, please do get in touch here.
Thanks for listening!
Last week Github Universe happened. You missed it? I’m sorry. Don’t let it happen again!
Github Universe is awesome. Some things that stood out for me:
It took me no more than 30 seconds to get through registration and collect my badge, a process that brings with it the reminder of how many times I’m going to be scanned onto follow-up email and call lists for things I’m really not interested in. Nope, not at Github Universe. Everyone is free to communicate without a sales/marketing push.
Every sponsor stand I visited was staffed with the people that created/architected their offering. I can’t recall a conference where every interaction resulted in all the answers to all the questions, at once. That was pretty sweet, right there!
A quick example, I stopped by the Microsoft stand part way through a VS Code demo. I was approached and asked if I had any questions by an employee, who turned out to be one of the developers behind the Github Pull Request extension. Immediately after asking a question about the extension we were both looking at the source code and I was getting a detailed walk-through.
This made my week! And it didn’t just happen once…
The people at Github Universe were all on the same side: the sponsors, the guests, the event support staff, everyone went out of their way to ensure the best experience was had by all. I really cannot fault the execution…
Last, but not least, I appeared on the Github Universe Demo Desk where I demonstrated managing some F5 BIG-IP virtual appliances via Github Enterprise and the practice of Network Configuration as Code.
Here’s the powerpoint presentation: Introducing Network Configuration as Code
And here are the videos:
Having good data is only part of a solution. There’s loads of data on my laptop, for example, that goes unused almost everyday. However, the practice of putting data to work via meaningful representation is how we plan effectively and make informed decisions!
For those who haven’t been following the development of BigStats, its an open source project for ‘exporting’ telemetry off of F5 BIG-IP devices to various destinations and databases. Now, with the release of the ‘Grafana Dashboard for BigStats’, you can start realizing the value of that exported data.
Requires BigStats v0.4 or newer (get that here: https://github.com/npearce/BigStats) installed on your BIG-IP.
Take it for a spin: https://grafana.com/dashboards/7958
Would be great to hear your thoughts!
Twitter: @PearceNathan
https://redtalks.live/BigStats/
BigStats v0.4 has been released! Yay!!! 
Way back in REDtalks.live #32 – Stats & Dashboards (May 25th) I demonstrated a prototype solution for getting useful data out of a BIG-IP and into various telemetry pipelines… Well, that was version 0.1, and now we’re up to version 0.4! So, what’s happened since?
Highlights from the RELEASE_NOTES.md file:
Here’s an sample stats object built from crawling the running config of a BIG-IP every ‘config.interval: n‘ seconds:
{
"ip-172-31-1-20-us-west-1-compute-internal": {
"services": {
"Tenant_01/App1": {
"/Tenant_01/App3/172.31.4.11:80": {
"clientside_curConns": 0,
"clientside_maxConns": 0,
"clientside_bitsIn": 0,
"clientside_bitsOut": 0,
"clientside_pktsIn": 0,
"clientside_pktsOut": 0,
"/Tenant_01/App1/web_pool1": [
{
"172.31.10.112:80": {
"serverside_curConns": 0,
"serverside_maxConns": 0,
"serverside_bitsIn": 0,
"serverside_bitsOut": 0,
"serverside_pktsIn": 0,
"serverside_pktsOut": 0,
"monitorStatus": "down"
}
},
{
"172.31.10.111:80": {
"serverside_curConns": 0,
"serverside_maxConns": 0,
"serverside_bitsIn": 0,
"serverside_bitsOut": 0,
"serverside_pktsIn": 0,
"serverside_pktsOut": 0,
"monitorStatus": "down"
}
},
{
"172.31.10.113:80": {
"serverside_curConns": 0,
"serverside_maxConns": 0,
"serverside_bitsIn": 0,
"serverside_bitsOut": 0,
"serverside_pktsIn": 0,
"serverside_pktsOut": 0,
"monitorStatus": "down"
}
},
{
"172.31.10.114:80": {
"serverside_curConns": 0,
"serverside_maxConns": 0,
"serverside_bitsIn": 0,
"serverside_bitsOut": 0,
"serverside_pktsIn": 0,
"serverside_pktsOut": 0,
"monitorStatus": "down"
}
}
]
}
},
"Common": {
"/Common/172.31.4.200:80": {
"clientside_curConns": 0,
"clientside_maxConns": 0,
"clientside_bitsIn": 0,
"clientside_bitsOut": 0,
"clientside_pktsIn": 0,
"clientside_pktsOut": 0,
"/Common/noAS3_POOL": [
{
"172.31.10.200:8080": {
"serverside_curConns": 0,
"serverside_maxConns": 0,
"serverside_bitsIn": 0,
"serverside_bitsOut": 0,
"serverside_pktsIn": 0,
"serverside_pktsOut": 0,
"monitorStatus": "down"
}
},
{
"172.31.10.201:8080": {
"serverside_curConns": 0,
"serverside_maxConns": 0,
"serverside_bitsIn": 0,
"serverside_bitsOut": 0,
"serverside_pktsIn": 0,
"serverside_pktsOut": 0,
"monitorStatus": "down"
}
},
{
"172.31.10.202:8080": {
"serverside_curConns": 0,
"serverside_maxConns": 0,
"serverside_bitsIn": 0,
"serverside_bitsOut": 0,
"serverside_pktsIn": 0,
"serverside_pktsOut": 0,
"monitorStatus": "down"
}
}
]
}
}
},
"device": {
"memory": {
"memoryTotal": 7574732800,
"memoryUsed": 1525312880
},
"cpu0": {
"cpuIdle": 161495459,
"cpuIowait": 169763,
"cpuSystem": 292088,
"cpuUser": 973939
},
"cpu1": {
"cpuIdle": 160343033,
"cpuIowait": 68690,
"cpuSystem": 426881,
"cpuUser": 992052
}
}
}
}
Here’s the code/docs: https://github.com/npearce/BigStats
In addition to all this awesome, I’ve also shared my lab environment setup details! So, if you want to build a Graphite/Grafana demo like in episode #32, or maybe you want to test against a single node Kafka Broker but don’t know how to do this, well, look no further. Here are all my lab setup instructions: https://gist.github.com/npearce/
Thanks for listening!
Delighted to have GitHub’s Christian Weber on the show this week to share his experiences with Infrastructure as Code.
Watch this episode to hear Christian explain some personal experiences, from his days before he worked at GitHub, where Infrastructure/Configuration as Code would have made a big difference. Learn from first-hand experience how certain practices can bring order back to a dire situations. But if you’re too busy right now, you could just come and hear our talk at the F5 Agility conference in Boston (August 13th – 16th) titled “Super-NetOps: Configuration as Code”
“…by treating everything, like a configuration file, as a template we go back into our previous state without relying on a failure state as a means of recovery…”
Christian Weber, GitHub
Enough words from me, Christian’s wisdom awaits you in the video below:
Thanks for listening!
In this episode I’m joined by F5 Consultant, Vinnie Mazza, to hear his experiences with getting started on his programmability and automation journey. Vinnie shares with us how a project outside of work inspired him to learn new skills that, coincidentally, are directly transferable to the workplace.
In this video you will see how, armed with no more than curiosity and a couple of Raspberry Pie’s, Vinnie revolutionized a local police training facility that was in dire need of improvement. The skills he learned from this project not only helped others but also took him on a journey through scripting languages and frameworks that turned him into the automation-ninja that many customers get to appreciate today.
Remember, listeners! Everyone starts from the beginning. Find a project, doesn’t have to be at work, and see what you can come up with.
Linked referenced in this episode:
Thanks for listening (and sorry for having some mic problems this week… New microphone ordered!)
Greetings automators!!! I am delighted to be sharing with you the release of the GitHub Webhook Server for BIG-IP v0.2. w00t!
This release was a major re-write that touched almost every line of code. Why? Well, as with many early prototypes, in the first release I just wanted to see if it could be done. And from the experiment I learned a lot about integrating with GitHub, took a lot of notes, and, well, v0.2 is the result of all those findings: a more robust integration that you should totally take a look at yourself!
The two key adds to version 0.2 are:
There’s a couple other features I snuck in there, which you can see in this demonstration video:
If there are any features you’d like to see, please create a GitHub Issue against the repository, here: https://github.com/npearce/BigHook/issues
For more episode on Network Infrastructure as Code, go here: Network Configuration as Code
Thanks for listening!
Great to have Joel King join me again on REDtalks.live to answer the question, “What is code?”
The answer isn’t as straightforward as you may think, not with practices like Infrastructure as Code at play. In this episode, Joel does a great job at clarifying some misconceptions and clearing up some concepts that should not have been assumed one way or the other.
Also, a significant bonus, I learned more about the Apollo Space Missions in this episode than I thought I’d ever know. Thanks for the wealth of space-launch knowledge, Joe.
Thanks for listening!
We appear to be leaving the era of polling devices for stats and then processing them into something meaningful. This is what happy customers are telling me! So, how should we be operating in the future?
Organizations are standardizing on app-centric performance monitoring and dash-boarding technologies. They’re using open source technologies like ‘StatsD’, ‘GraphiteDB’, ‘Grafana’, and ‘Prometheus’. And its up to the infrastructure vendors to present useful data to these systems, or get out of the way!
To address such asks I set out on a new project called ‘BigStats’. BigStats is an small piece of code installed onto an F5 BIG-IP App Services device that enables it to push application statistics into popular databases and dashboards.
Watch this episode to see how simple this solution really is:
Here’s the code: GitHub
Thanks for listening!
