Forum Discussion

Syafiq_89483's avatar
Syafiq_89483
Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
Sep 07, 2013
Solved

iRules Change Management

I have several irules running on a single box. Each irules consist of nearly 500 line of code.   The development process of this irules was so rapidly changing, considering that our customer needs...
application delivery
deployment
devops
iRules
management
  • Didier_Fort_226's avatar
    Didier_Fort_226
    Sep 07, 2013

    I personally do not think this has to be handled on the F5 itself. If you consider each iRule as a configuration file, you can manage each one like you would manage a system configuration file. We started using Git to manage our iRules, right now it's a manual process, but the F5 has APIs which will be used to implement automated processes. We started by adding headers to each file, so that people know not to modify the iRules directly on the box. Here's what we put at the beginning of each iRule:

     Managed by Git (git@your.git.machine/gitpath/conf.git)
 Version: $Id$
 $Format:Git ID: (%h) %ci/%cn$

    And then you can add this to your .attributes file:

     Manage the Identity substitution
*.txt    ident
*_stash  ident

 Substitute information on export
*.txt    export-subst
*_stash  export-subst

    We then use git archive to export the files, which will replace the variables with some information. I realize this solution is not perfect, we are in the early rounds.

    The biggest challenge becomes the human factor, no iRules should be modified directly on the F5. BTW, the $Id$ variable can be used to verify that nobody touched the file.

    Regards, Didier

Didier_Fort_226's avatar
Didier_Fort_226
Icon for Altostratus rankAltostratus

I personally do not think this has to be handled on the F5 itself. If you consider each iRule as a configuration file, you can manage each one like you would manage a system configuration file. We started using Git to manage our iRules, right now it's a manual process, but the F5 has APIs which will be used to implement automated processes. We started by adding headers to each file, so that people know not to modify the iRules directly on the box. Here's what we put at the beginning of each iRule:

 Managed by Git (git@your.git.machine/gitpath/conf.git)
 Version: $Id$
 $Format:Git ID: (%h) %ci/%cn$

And then you can add this to your .attributes file:

 Manage the Identity substitution
*.txt    ident
*_stash  ident

 Substitute information on export
*.txt    export-subst
*_stash  export-subst

We then use git archive to export the files, which will replace the variables with some information. I realize this solution is not perfect, we are in the early rounds.

The biggest challenge becomes the human factor, no iRules should be modified directly on the F5. BTW, the $Id$ variable can be used to verify that nobody touched the file.

Regards, Didier

Didier_Fort_226's avatar
Didier_Fort_226
Icon for Altostratus rankAltostratus
Sep 09, 2013
OK, I need to look at iApps. No, it's not automated yet, we are in the early stages. BTW, I personally think that adding $Id$ and other variables is a temporary step. Once the iRule are automatically pushed either via iApp or other means, these variables won't be necessary.