The F5 Guy

On the first day of the SecureWorld Expo I was fortunate enough to attend a FREE LTM Workshop being hosted by a company called Nexum.  For those who are not familiar with the company, Nexum is an information security company which is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.  They offer a wide array of services, all of which are explained in detail on their website @ www.nexuminc.com.

So what was covered in this “Nexum LTM Workshop”?  Quite a bit actually and it was all very well planned out.  The workshop was lead by a gentlemen named Peter Maag, who is a Senior Security Expert with Nexum.  I believe that part of what made this event so much fun for me was that it was obvious that Mr. Maag knew his stuff and (of course) I like talking about the capabilities of the BIG-IP line. 

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It is amazing how many things in IT Industry can be summed up using classic movie quotes.  More often than not a one liner from “The Princess Bride” will suffice.  However after attending the SecureWorld Expo as a member of the press only one dialogue exchange was lodged in my brain.  It’s when Luke is on the planet Dagoba and he turns to Yoda and says “I won’t fail you.  I am not afraid.”  Yoda simply turns to him and says “You will be.  You will be.”

What a great way to segway into my first SecureWorld Expo blog entry!  Be afraid, be very afraid…  I am just kidding of course.  The Expo was excellent and I walked away from the event a wiser person.  It definitely helped me look at things differently and as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Fear always springs from ignorance.” 

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It’s that time of year again… the leaves are changing, little kids are running around all painted up and the iRule contest finalists have been announced!  From browsing the finalists entries, it is safe to say that the judges must have had there hands full this year with many excellent submissions.  If you haven’t casted your vote yet, get over there, browse the selection and help choose the winner!  Here is a direct link: http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=2225

A friend of mine supplied the image to the left.  I am thinking that it may have to be the official logo for my website!  Of course, had I known he was taking pictures of me with his cell phone I would have flexed a bit more…

Not buying that are you?  Well OK, maybe that is just what I look like in my mind!  Coming next week to “The F5 Guy” website, news and reviews straight from the Dallas SecureWorld Expo!

If you have had a chance dive into how the WebAccelerator module on an F5 BIG-IP unit works, then I am sure you have come across the globalfragment.xml file.  After upgrading from TMOS version 9.4.4 to 9.4.8, I recently had such an opportunity and have walked away from the experience having learned some interesting things.

For those who haven’t had a chance to examine the file at length, the globalfragment.xml file is basically a roadmap that the WebAccelerator module can read to know how to handle or classify different file types.  If you want the WebAccelerator recognize and classify a particular file type it would be good for it to be defined in this file.

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I recently had the opportunity to upgrade a BIG-IP 6400 unit from TMOS version 9.4.4 to TMOS version 9.4.8.  Everything went very well with the upgrade, but I did run into two little snags that I wanted to mention.  I will cover the main issue first and then write up another story in a day or two about the other.

The unit that was upgraded has three modules running on it, the GTM, LTM and WA modules.  The issue is caused by the WebAccelerator module logging to many messages out to the PVAC log, which can lead to excessive disk I/O and may cause the log file to grow so large it crashes the WebAccelerator module.  It is now a Known Issue and is being tracked in CR127854.  So if you have upgraded to TMOS 9.4.8 and you are running the WebAcceleration module you might want to keep an eye out for this!

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