Embracing AS3: Foundations
Many F5 teams are on the North American leg of the F5 Academy BIG-IP Next Roadshow, where we are sharing the BIG-IP story, where we're going with it, and then diving into some hands-on labs with the attendees. I got to attend in person in Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Columbus, and talked with customers at all stages of the automation journey. Some haven't automated much of anything. Some have been using a variety of on-/off-box scripts, and some are all-in, baby!
AS3 is a critical component of BIG-IP Next, but it has also been around for several years for BIG-IP and can be learned and implemented ahead of your transition to BIG-IP Next. So over the next three weeks, I'm going to host a five-part live-stream series on AS3 Foundations. There are a lot of resources I'll link to and key in on during the event for reference and further study. Here are the shows I'm doing with descriptions:
Beyond Imperatives—What the heck is AS3? (Dec 4 @ 9am PST)
In this first episode, I'll cover the history of automation on BIG-IP, the differences between imperative and declarative models, and the basics of AS3 from data structure and systems architecture perspectives.
Top 10 Features to Know in the VSCode F5 Extension (Dec 7 @ 12pm PST)
Next, special guest Ben Novak, author of the F5 Extension for VSCode, will join me to dig into the features most important to know and learn to use for understanding how to take stock BIG-IP configurations and turn applications into declarations.
Migrating and Deploying Applications in VSCode (Dec 14 @ 12pm PST)
In this episode, armed with the knowledge I learned from Ben in the last episode, I'll finally get to the brass tacks of AS3! I'll review diagnostics and migrate several applications from standard configuration to AS3 declarations and deploy a few. For migrating active workloads, I'll discuss the steps necessary to reduce transition impact.
Creating New Apps and Using Shared Objects (Dec 18 @ 9am PST)
I've always tried to alter existing things before creating new things with tech, and this is no different. Now that I have a few migrations under my belt, I'll attack a net-new application and I'll look at shared objects and how and when to use them.
Best Practices (Dec 21 @ 12pm PST)
Finally, I'll close this series with a look at several best practices when working with AS3. The conclusion to this series, though, is hopefully just the stepping off point for everyone new to AS3, and we'll be able to continue the conversation right here on DevCentral.