DevCentral's Featured Member for July - Rhazi Youssef

Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and our Featured Series gives you some insight on some of our most active folks.

Rhazi Youssef has been a very active DevCentral member since 2012 and the third engineer we've featured from e-Xpert Solutions SA. Initially Rhazi was a bit reluctant to participate as he's a quiet, humble guy and we're thrilled that he's DevCentral's Featured Member for July!
Let's learn a bit more about Rhazi.

DevCentral: Please explain to the DevCentral community a little about yourself, what you do and why it’s important.

Rhazi: I’m a security engineer since 2009 working in Geneva (Switzerland), a region with several security projects involving F5 BIG-IP (GTM, LTM, ASM, APM). My interest began early when I started and installed several security equipment like Mail relay, FW, SIEM&SEM, web proxy… 

But I admit that my job became more interesting when I started to approach the application part. I am talking about WAF (ASM), perimeter security (APM), LTM (LB, optimization,)… 

I immediately bonded with this product since it is very rich, complete and scalable with its time. It is for this reason that I invested heavily on this product by passing for example all my certificates which gives me today the title of “Security Solution Expert” (401).

DC: You are a very active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?

RY: First off, like everyone else I admit that Devcentral has already allowed me to get out of trouble and not just once, and I thank the community for this. The DevCentral community is very much involved in sharing, helping and informing members. This work done by the community helped me a lot in my work (I upgraded my skills) so I think it is normal for me to give back to the community that helped me...and offer advice that will help with experience and knowledge the community to move forward.
My investment in the community is even easier since F5 is a product that is very important to me. 

Today I work primarily on F5 BIG-IP (APM, ASM, LTM, GTM, WebSafe) which allows me to have an important experience on the potential problems that one can meet during a deployment, so it's the least of the things to help the community when I can.

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

RY: These last 6 years I worked mainly on F5, I had the chance to work with some very great customers that I cannot mention :-). I deployed all types of hardware until VIPRION. And today I work on almost all of the BIG-IP modules (ASM, APM, LTM, GTM, VCMP, LC, WebSafe). 

The advantage with F5 is that you cannot get tired of this product. It is rich, complete and scalable. For example the APM that allowed me to meet the needs of our customers by going from the identity federation (SAML) to Oauth&OpenID connect. But still it's the same thing for ASM and other modules. We do not say it often enough but this product allows us to be up to date in terms of security; I'm talking about authentication protocols that the APM offers, different security methods carried by the ASM ... all these aspects allow us to maintain our level and to learn ...

DC: You are a Sr. Security Engineer with e-Xpert Solutions SA. Can you describe your typical workday, how you manage work/life balance and the strong support of F5 solutions?

RY: As everyone knows the job of Security Engineer is not easy. We must manage several clients, several projects, manage customer support, communicate with clients (vulnerabilities, news), schedule management, project tracking,... 

So every morning I spend quite some time to manage my emails, my calendar and answer to my customers. I am registered to F5 RSS feed, which keep me updated on CVE, I also follow many f5 webinars (I usually watch them later when they are online).
At e-Xpert solutions I am product manager of F5 solution, so I have to inform my colleagues about vulnerabilities or any new features, I must also regularly write news that we publish on our website. The other PMs do the same thing with their own products which also allows me to be informed about the other products of our portfolio. 

During my working day I connect regularly to DevCentral when I have some time to help or learn about some interesting topics. For me, helping the community is not binding. On the contrary, certain questions allow us to update ourselves on certain subjects and to exchange on our different points of view. 

I finished my work day in the evening by doing a small check of my mails and a pass on my usual information sites which included DevCentral. I almost forgot I work out every 3 days and I try to run at least every 2 days (no excuse for gym time!). 

If you are interested, here is the website of the company in which I evolve: https://www.e-xpertsolutions.com/

DC: You have a number of F5 Certifications. Why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

RY: 8 months ago I had my last certification “Security Solution Expert” (401). Having all these certifications was very important to me. First of all in order to guarantee a high level of expertise to our customer. Moreover this certification process obliges us to study and consequently to update us on the different modules. 

These certifications are like a quality label, our customers appreciate when the engineers who intervene has the higher level of certification. 

Moreover with the experience that I have, I think that the passage of these certifications allow us to have a richer view of the product and consequently to propose to our customers the best possible alternatives according to their needs.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

RY: DC allowed me several times to solve the different problems I encountered. Things that seem simple to me today but that was not at the time I posted them and caused me quite some problems (Kerberos delegation, Kerberos authentication, Sideband, DDOS using iRule with session table …). 

I remember that I had to set up a perimeter of security to protect an application using the APM (I know it looks pretty simple). But I realized that the application was contextual (Web and JNLP) and that the APM session cookies were not propagated on to other contexts, so JNLP part could not connect. 

I will not go into the technical details but I had to create an iRule that used a table of correspondence between the cookie APM and the JNLP JSessionID that I stocked in a table session. Later I made an SSO on the backend application using the sideband (SSO profiles APM was not suitable). DC allowed me to build my iRule and sincerely without DC I would have had a lot of trouble and it would have taken me took a lot of time. And lastly DC allowed me to set up a fakeadfs using iRulesLX (and without DC, I do not think I could have done it alone).

DC: Finally, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

RY: When I was little and did not have school I spent my whole day on the football fields. I could play for 6 hours of suites without stopping. I loved football and I still do. So as you guessed I wanted to become a professional. But reality has taken over the dreams. Growing up I discovered computer science I started to build/dismantle my pc to add ram, change the hard drive, buy new graphics card for games... and little by little, I ended up in IT and I really do not regret it, but I admit that if I could have had the career of Ronaldo and also his salary I would not have mind either.

Thanks Rhazi!
Check out all of Rhazi's DevCentral contributions, connect on LinkedIn and follow e-xpert Solutions on LinkedIn.

If there is a DevCentral member you think should be featured, let us know in the comments section!

DevCentral's Featured Member for June - Jie Gao

Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and our Featured Series gives you some insight on some of our most active folks.

Jie Gao is a very active contributor on DevCentral since 2012 and has been on a roll recently answering questions about monitoring, URI redirects, SSL and many others. We're excited to name Jie as our Featured Member for June!

Let's learn a bit more about Jai.

DevCentral: please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it’s important.

Jie Gao: I am a system administrator in the University of Sydney and have been in the IT profession for over 20 years. I became an F5 administrator from "the other side" with a background in the open source, *nix system administration, system integration, Web application development, etc., some 7 years ago. I wanted to help bridge the great divide between networking and application through the use of F5. Upon reflection, I'm not sure I made much of a difference. :-(  Off work, I immerse myself listening to music on my Hi-Fi.

DC: You are very active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?

JG: Like many others here, I got on DevCentral initially to find a solution to a specific problem. I stayed on to learn more, to find out what more I can do and do better in my work. It is beneficial to know what issues other people are encountering, issues that might potentially affect my work later as well. If there is a software issue, then I could learn about it here early before it hits us, saving us from pulling our hairs out trying to figure out the puzzle. There are also solutions there that we could be asked to provide at work at the drop of a hat.

It feels good to be able to help people out. Sometimes it is even easier and more satisfying to help a total stranger than someone you already know. At the same time, it is also a good opportunity to learn how to answer a question properly - there are great minds and hands on DevCentral and I have learnt a great deal from them. I hope I have not provided too many incorrect/half-cooked answers! F5 staff tend to provide a complete, authoritative answer citing official documentation. Sometimes it might also be better to help people help themselves if they are not in a great hurry. Through answering questions, I have also learnt how to ask questions properly as well. 

All said, DevCentral is an invaluable site of knowledge, solutions, and advice (and silly questions - including mine), where F5 administrators and solution designers, or really anyone, can find a quick answer to an F5-related issue in hand, or a pointer to a resource for further exploration. Great resource.

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

JG: The University has been using the BIG-IP LTM/APM/GTM/ASM modules for various application services for many years, and I have been with it all along. However, I prefer to regard myself a generalist, although I spent most of my time on F5 at work. I like programming and code in a few languages, and I did my first Ruby script while answering a question about iControlREST on DevCentral. :-)

DC: You are a Senior Network Designer at University of Sydney. Can you describe your typical workday and how you manage work/life balance?

JG: My typical workday starts with e-mail processing, browsing F5 Support's New Updates, and checking into DevCentral for a look, in that order. Home is wherever I am. All my hobbies/activities are suitably for a single soul. So I have got the balance holistically right. ;-)

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

JG: A few years ago I had a challenge, probably not the biggest but nonetheless an interesting one, to host a DNS split-view for a part of the organization as a matter of emergency. I found some useful code examples as well as relevant documentation on DevCentral and did it all in an iRule!

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

JG: The very first dream I recall I had as a toddler was to be a proud driver of a red-milky colored bus that thrummed through the center of Beijing. I have since had many other dreams, but I never did realize my first one.

Thanks Jie! Check out all of Jie's DevCentral contributions and follow The University of Sydney on Twitter.


If there is a DevCentral member you think should be featured, let us know in the comments section!

DevCentral's Featured Member for May - Jai Kumar

Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and our Featured Series gives you some insight on some of our most active folks.

Jai Kumar is a very active contributor on DevCentral and has been for a number of years amassing 4 #DC badges. We're excited to name Jai as our Featured Member for May.
Let's learn a bit more about Jai.

DevCentral: please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it’s important.

Jai Kumar: From my childhood (Kid born in 90's lol), I always thought and was eager to know how Internet and the entire network stuffs worked. That’s how my passion came - “I want to be a network engineer” and here I am a Network Engineer (Still lot to learn). I am Jai Kumar, living in Chennai (India). My close ones call me Jai. Got Married last November and have a loving spouse. Enjoy watching thriller/crime seasons and a big fan of G.O.T, Breaking Bad, Prison Break, Dexter. The list goes on… Now it’s Mr.Robot. An ardent reader of THN and I’m a workaholic!!!
I enjoy working for Bank of America providing Engineering and design of traffic management for consumers. This includes global traffic management, application load balancing, traffic routing and advanced health check services.
As a team we play a major role in providing architecture and high level design guidance for BOA. As well as oversight of design and engineering services provided by our partners. Work with business to understand future trends and roadmap emerging requirements.

DC: You are very active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?

JK: I don’t recall when I joined DevCentral, but I’m sure it would have been for an iRule or to do something with device hardware RMA/upgrade challenges I faced in my start of career. DevCentral has molded me in tremendous ways. I have learned so many technical things which I haven’t faced in my working place. That’s what special about DevCentral is. You cannot expect to know everything, things may run differently. 

Sometimes you’d be able to reproduce the other people’s issue and fix it – You gain knowledge, sometime you don’t – So you learn when someone answers. One of my favorite quotes of Benjamin Franklin:“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” 

DevCentral is a great forum where great minds come to help out others issue. The involvement of every engineer out there to help the fellow F5 mate is what makes special of DC community. And with whatever knowledge I have, I’d love to give back to the community too. 

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have. 

JK: I could be the youngest DC member holding less than 5 years of overall IT experience. I specialize in BIG-IP LTM and GTM. I started from the basics as I was in the monitoring team in my 1^st year. Happened to learn the metrics that were being monitored on F5 devices, how monitoring works, what action requires to be taken at such scenarios. Then moved to the next device level troubleshooting issues. Did 50 plus device replacements, HDD reseats, cable issues etc. Next comes the design of setups for applications. Over the last 3 years, have been engaging with application owners and creating LB environments. Had attended hands on virtual LAB trainings on BIG-IP ASM and AFM. Never got chance to learn deeper getting involved in real time practice, maybe in future, someday !!!

DC: You are a Senior Software Engineer/F5 Engineer at Bank of America. Can you describe your typical workday and how you manage work/life balance?

JK: At Bank of America, we live our values, deliver our purpose and drive responsible growth through our eight lines of business. 

Our values – “DART”• Deliver together • Act responsibly • Realize the power of our people • Trust the team

My work life style is simple, Mon – Fri, I have a general shift and a rotational on-call. We have a bunch of great minds in the team. Like every org, we do too have ticketing tools, accept tickets and troubleshoot, build environment for the application team. Get assigned with Projects and also implement changes required from GIS standpoint. Attend technical/management meeting, join TFG/brain storming sessions.

I involve myself in helping our Ops team on system level issues, being a primary POC for device level issues within the team. In the background, I see opportunities to automate things wherever I feel I can. Got awarded multiple times for automating. 

In BOA, we are encouraged to give back to the society, so I do participate in Bank of America Community Volunteering. Enjoying a good work/life balance overall. Maybe blessed or being lucky.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

JK: One of our F5’s Configuration utility failed to display SSL certificates, same happened when you try to list all certificates through CLI. This really ate lot of my time. Then I happened to learn from F5 articles and DC to enable mcpd to find the actual single cert which was causing this issue. It was containing special chars in the subject. Because of which we were unable to install any of the certs at all. After fixing the particular cert, things got back normal.
Later we involved the right teams to let them know to avoid these scenarios in future. But I’m yet to face stronger challenges, after all I’m just 5 years in Industry now.

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

JK: It was always to be a Network Security Engineer. Well during my final year in college, I got 2 job offers for a CORE company (Embedded Systems electronics) and a voice process company. But I had not much of a real interest. So I looked for openings outside and was interviewed by Vodafone Enterprise and got selected. That’s where my carrier started and I’m thankful for that.

Thanks Jai! Check out all of Jai's DevCentral contributions and connect with him on LinkedIn and follow Bank of America on Twitter.

If there is a DevCentral member you think should be featured, let us know in the comments section!

DevCentral's Featured Member for April - Daniel Varela

Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and our Featured Series gives you some insight on some of our most active folks.

Daniel Varela has been one of those engaged members and amassed 374 points in February alone! Answering bunches of questions about SAML, SSO, Cookies and more, we're proud to name Daniel as our Featured Member for April.

DevCentral: Hi Daniel and thanks for helping many of our members! Please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it’s important.

Daniel: I am an ADC/GSLB/WAF SME currently working for Centrica PLC. My job entails load balancing applications, availability and security. My work experience is mainly around network security. I chose to work in security because you never get bored of it, there is always something new to learn which is what I love. I have been actively working with F5 devices for the last 10 years. I still remember when I first heard about iRules, I was really impressed with the possibilities it provided. Additionally, with a BIG-IP you can learn about a lot of technologies: HTTP, TLS, DNS, SAML, OAuth, Web acceleration, Web Application Firewall… I am probably missing technologies here but you get the idea. This is one of the reasons I am working with F5, fun is guaranteed.

DC: You are a former F5 employee (2014-17) and continue to be a very active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?

DV: I have always thought (and I always say to my customers) that DevCentral makes a difference in respect to any other vendor. The amount of information someone can find there is incredible and if what you are looking for is not there you just have to ask, people from all around the world will help you to do whatever you want to do (event the craziest things), there is always an iRule for that 😊. For this reason I like to participate as much as I can, I have found a lot of help there and I feel like I have to return the favor (and it is also fun to see what people are trying to do with F5).

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have and your F5 Certifications. Why are these important and how have they helped with your career?  

DV: My experience with F5 has been pretty much with all the modules: LTM, ASM, APM, GTM, AFM, Silverline and a bit of WebSafe. I was an F5 consultant for 3 years meaning it gave me a great opportunity to learn a lot about all those modules. This provided me with a lot of knowledge and helped me to get the F5 Certification F5-CSE Security. I would recommend to everyone to make an effort and get it, in my experience companies really value this accreditation.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

DV: The biggest challenges for me have always been around BIG-IP APM. APM is probably the module which you can expand on the most, some things are not there by default but with the help of iRules you always find a way to get what you need. The last challenge was to expand SAML IDP capabilities by providing step-up authentication using authentication contexts available in the protocol itself. It may sound simple but just because how APM and SAML is designed it was tricky.

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

DV: Finally, I have always wanted to work in IT but if I wasn’t doing this I think I would be a fireman. I love sports and being active so I think it’s a job I could do.

Thanks Daniel! Check out all of Daniel's DevCentral contributions and connect with him on LinkedIn.

If there is a DevCentral member you think should be featured, let us know in the comments section!

DevCentral's Featured Member for February - Lee Sutcliffe

After a brief hiatus for the New Year, we're kicking off the 2018 Featured Member series with a new DevCentral MVP: MrPlastic, Lee Sutcliffe. Like Kevin this past December, Lee does a great job with the opening question, so we'll let him tell his story. A long-time DevCentral member and always engaged with the community, Lee Sutcliffe is DevCentral's Featured Member for February 2018. Congrats Lee!

DevCentral: First, please explain to the DevCentral community a little about yourself, what you do and why it’s important.

Lee Sutcliffe: I guess always enjoyed fixing and building things, taking things apart to see how they worked (admittedly, not always being able to put them back together again). From a young age, my younger brother would design something on paper and I’d have to build it with Lego. So it comes as no surprise that he is now an Architect and I’m an Engineer (of sorts). 

My first IT job was a sandwich placement; after two years of University you spend a year working in Industry before going back to complete your final year. The idea being, when you graduate you already have some level of experience in the real world as well as your degree to help you get on the job ladder. 

My placement was at a local high school as an ICT Technician, doing anything from network cabling to NT4-Windows 2000 migrations. 

After going back to University and graduating I spent a year being a typical long haired hedonistic backpacker commonly known as hippie before finally deciding I should stop enjoying life and go earn some money for a change. 

Since then worked in another high school as a Network Manager for three years before landing a job in 2009 with Callcredit, a credit reference agency in Leeds UK. It was here where I really cut my teeth and was able to develop my career as a network engineer using Cisco, F5 and Check Point technologies amongst others. 

I left the safety permanent employment in 2013 to become a freelance contractor, working for a variety of clients, mostly in the financial sector to where I find myself today at Lloyds Banking Group.

DC: You are a very active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?

LS: DevCentral always is my first port of call for anything I don’t know straight away. Members of the community have really helped me out over the years, especially in the early part of my career. I get a sense of satisfaction helping others and it’s important to give something back. For fear of sounding too altruistic, it is also a good way to keeping up to date and refreshing old skills, as well as learning new ones.

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

LS: Like a lot of people BIG-IP LTM is my bread and butter and coming from a comms background it’s definitely the product I’m most familiar with, especially given its wide adoption. However, I have also worked a lot with GTM, APM and AFM, at the moment I’m working exclusively with iRules. I’m just starting to look into iRules LX which is a really interesting area.

DC: You are a F5 Consultant at Lloyds Banking Group. Can you describe your typical workday and how you manage work/life balance?

LS: I have been working as a contractor at LBG since July last year. I work within a team that are responsible for the maintenance and development of iRules used within the Bank, mainly for the online banking platform. Without disclosing too much, the use of iRules are vast, easily the most comprehensive I’ve seen anywhere, with custom proc libraries and in-house certificate management APIs to name but a few. For all intents and purposes, it’s a developer role which had quite a steep learning curve but I’m enjoying the challenges. Work life balance can be tricky, mainly because I work away in London during the week and home is over 300km away which means weekends can become a bit rushed and end too quickly.

DC: You have many F5 Certifications including Technology Specialist (LTM) certifications. Why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

LS: Having F5 certifications have certainly helped me align my career down a more specific F5 route. They haven’t been plagued by brain dumps so the certifications actually mean something. I also like how the exams are written, you can’t learn parrot fashion and you have to have had hands on experience working with the technology. I’d like to sit my 401 exam eventually but my limited ASM knowledge is currently preventing me getting all four CTS certificates – something I’m keen to resolve!

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

LS: I think my biggest BIG-IP challenge has been the adjustment to my current role. To go from a guy who ‘did wires’ to writing code for a living was a challenge, especially in the first couple of months. My first project at Lloyds was to develop a framework for a micro service which involved multiple separate iRules, hundreds of lines of code for session management and encryption services. However, one of my most memorable challenges was earlier on in my career and was actually quite simple, I do remember feeling particularly pleased with the solution. I had to create a monitor for a webmethod, at the time the required version of NTLM wasn’t supported as standard, I was racking my brains for ages when someone on DevCentral suggested I could use cURL and an external monitor. So I had to use tcpdump to capture the request, rebuild the XML using cURL, test the result then and use an external monitor to check the service. I remember how impressed I was, how customizable the product was and if it didn’t do it out of the box, there’s usually a way to do what you need.

DC: Could you also give the backstory to Mr. Plastic if there is one?

LS: As for my DevCentral handle; MrPlastic well that may take some explaining! I used to produce a form of hard, aggressive dance music called Breakcore under the pseudonym Monster Plastic and ran a club night in Leeds, with my brother where we played our music and booked guest DJs and producers. It was a mixture of jungle, hardcore, gabber and heavy breaks – your mother wouldn’t approve! Monster Plastic soon developed into Lee Plastic. As for the Mr? I don’t know, maybe I just got married and settled down!

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

LS: I’d like to be able to work outside, I’m a keen rock climber and mountaineer and working in London doesn’t lend its self to getting out as much as I’d like. So I’d probably like to work as a climbing and mountaineering instructor. When I was younger I wanted to pilot search and rescue helicopters for the Royal Air Force but after university I was still enjoying partying too much and wasn’t quite ready for a twelve-year commission!

Thanks Lee! Check out all of Lee's DevCentral contributions, connect with him on LinkedIn and visit Lloyds Banking Group or follow on Twitter.

DevCentral’s Featured Member for September – Rob Carr

Rob Carr is a Senior Trainer/Professional Services Consultant with Red Education Pty in Australia, covering the Oceania and Asia markets. He has done training and engagements from New Zealand to Taiwan and points in between. About 60% of his time is running F5 courses, ranging from the from the introductory Admin course through the high-level courses like AFM, ASM or iRules. He enjoys the mix of work, where teaching allows him to be social and PS work lets him delve into the technical nitty-gritty. Rob is also DevCentral's Featured Member for September!

DevCentral: You were an F5er (ProServ Consultant) from 2013-15 and continue to be a very active contributor in the DevCentral community since then. What keeps you involved?

Rob: Long before I did PS Consulting for F5, I worked for F5 in Seattle, first as a Network Support Engineer and then as Software Test Engineer, and I always found DC to be extremely useful. While F5 puts considerable energy into its product documentation and knowledge base articles, there are times when you need an ‘outside’ perspective to really understand what a feature is and how to use it. I always exhort my students to use DC as a resource, and not just for iRules. 

I stay active because I use the site to answer my own questions and because I appreciate it when someone knowledgeable contributes a write-up or a really solid comment. I try and give back by commenting when the subject of a question is one in which I have experience.

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

RC: I’ve been working with BIG-IP since 2005, when there were only two products, BIG-IP and 3DNS (FirePass joined F5 a few months after I did), and those two (well, the current iterations of LTM and DNS) are my strongest products. I’ve also worked with BIG-IP ASM, APM and AFM over my career. Today, I’m most comfortable with BIG-IP ASM and general Application Delivery more generally at this point.

DC: You are a Consultant & Trainer at Red Education. Can you describe your typical workday?

RC: If I’m training then I try to be onsite about an hour before the students. I need the time to setup the room, settle my thoughts and flip through the material we need to cover that day. Generally, training is a nine-to-five experience, although that can be modified by where the training is being done – in some countries, courses start later, then run into the early evening. Regardless of the specific hours, my tasks for the day are pretty much the same: cover the material, answer student questions and redirect where needed, proctor the labs and troubleshoot course and student issues. It’s almost like being on stage for an eight-hour show. 

Consulting, on the other hand, is generally quite a bit more solitary. I do most of my work remotely, so once I’ve met with the client and we’ve had our kickoff activities, I’m back in Melbourne working from my home office. It’s not unusual to have a conference call once a day with the customer and technical staff and there is always email communication about the design and documentation tasks. 

In the background, there is always communication with the constellation of trainers and consultants that I work with, sharing ideas, running questions past one another or bantering.

DC: You have a number of F5 Certifications including most of the Technology Specialist (LTM, GTM, APM, ASM) certifications. Why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

RC: I have all the F5 Certifications at this point, including the 401 Security Solution Expert exam and I suppose I’m a bit proud of that fact. I think F5’s certification exams are pretty good at covering what you need to know to be successful working on F5 systems in the enterprise, certainly more so than some of the other vendor exams.
In Australia, engagements often come with a requirement that you have certification for the product or products, so in that sense having the certifications has been good for my career. More generally, having the certifications has given me more confidence in representing my skills to prospective clients.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

RC: Recently, I was on an engagement where the customer was migrating internal architectures for some highly fragmented legacy applications, as part of a PCI compliance project. We needed to replace many mod_proxy implementations and to mitigate application issues that came up during this transition, all on a short timeline. We ended up using multiple iRules with each service, providing routing and forwarding and fixing issues like improperly set cookie attributes. iRules is such a powerful and flexible solution that in the near term, given our timeline, it was the best and fastest way to manage the application issues.

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

RC: I’ve always enjoyed gardening and I’m fond of zoos and animal parks, so if I wasn’t working in IT, I think I would like to be a gardener at the zoo.

Thanks Rob! Check out all of Rob's DevCentral contributions, connect with him on LinkedIn and visit Red Education.

DevCentral’s Featured Member for May – NTT Security’s Leonardo Souza

Leonardo Souza lives in the United Kingdom, with his partner, 5-year-old daughter, and a (very) recently newborn son. He’s Brazilian and lived in Portugal for quite a while. He then moved to UK about 5 years ago ‘because of the amazing weather,’ he jokes.

Leonardo started to work with computers when he was 18 years old (he’s not 18 anymore), so he’s worked with many technologies. Fast forward a bit (he’s not that old) and while working as a network engineer, he was working on a project to migrate applications from Alteon load balancers to F5 BIG-IP LTMs. He completed his LTM Essentials and LTM Advanced training during that time (2011) and with the migration project, he was impressed with BIG-IP.

He even applied for a job at F5 in 2012 and joined as a Network Support Engineer. That moved him from Portugal to UK, and has been doing F5 products exclusively ever since.

With all that, Leonardo is DevCentral’s Featured Member for May and we got a chance to talk with Leonardo about his life, work and scripting prowess.

DevCentral: You were an F5er from 2012-15 and continue to be a very active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?

Leonardo: I often say that 1 year in F5 support is equal to 5 years as a F5 customer.
While in F5 support, I had multiple technical challenges every day, and I would typically go to DevCentral to check iRules documentation and get ideas for uncommon cases. After I left F5, I started using DevCentral to stay up to date about what is going on in the F5 world by reading the DevCentral articles. Then I started to go there daily and answer some questions myself. 

Short answer: to keep me updated, both about F5 news and my F5 knowledge.

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

LS: Is difficult to know all F5 products, because some are for very specific networks/scenarios, but I know the common ones:
BIG-IP BIG-IP LTM, GTM/DNS, AFM, APM, ASM, EM, BIG-IQ, and iRules.

I had been a little bit lazy about the F5 certifications but recently I have done all level 300 exams. I have started study for the 401, so that should be done in the next couple months.

DC: As a Security Consultant at NTT Security, what’s your typical workday?

LS: First to clarify, the company recently changed names from NTT Com Security to NTT Security. 

I work in professional services, doing projects that use F5 products. My daily work includes doing some pre-sales activities advising pre-sales team about the F5 products, doing projects, and finding solutions or writing scripts to automate some F5 tasks.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

LS: I have been using DevCentral for many years, and iRules, to a point where it is part of my daily job. Flexibility is a major advantage for F5 and people ask all the time “Can you do this with an iRule?” 

Recently, I was working in a project to upgrade many F5 devices. We had to perform an extensive inventory for each device which was taking about 3 days per device. I wrote a Python script using iControl SOAP to perform that task. (I still prefer bash script, but there is no iControl SOAP for bash) 

It would take around 240 days to do that manually, and we did in around 3 days using the script.

DC: Finally, if you weren’t in technology – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

LS: I am doing the job I wanted since I was young and I can’t picture myself doing any other type of job.

Thanks Leonardo! Check out all Leonardo’s DevCentral contributions or connect with him on LinkedIn. And visit NTT Security on the web or follow on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Q/A with Betsson's Patrik Jonsson - DevCentral's Featured Member for April

Patrik Jonsson lives in Stockholm with his wife and son and works as a network engineer for a company providing online casino games across the world.

Outside work, he likes to spend time with his family, play around with his home VMware lab and enjoys watching movies. He also loves travelling and having a beer with friends.

Patrik is also a 2017 DevCentral MVP and DevCentral’s Featured Member for April! DevCentral got a chance to talk with Patrik about his work, life and his project the BIG-IP Report.

DevCentral: You’ve been a very active contributor to the DevCentral community and wondered what keeps you involved?

Patrik: One of the best, and fun ways to learn new things is to take on problems, or discussions presented by fellow technicians. It forces you to continuously challenge what you think you know and keeps your knowledge up to date. In addition, when I need input, or help myself, DevCentral has so many brilliant and helpful members ready to take on whatever you throw at them.

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

PJ: The first time I ran into a BIG-IP was just after I graduated from university. It was a 1000 series running BIG-IP v4. When I quit that job 6 years later I considered asking to bring it home with me, but somehow my girlfriend at the time was not as keen to the idea. Still don’t know why. :-) 

I’ve been working mostly with BIG-IP LTM and iControl, but recently I’ve started to dabble a bit with APM, GTM/DNS and ASM as well.

DC: You are a Network Security Specialist at Betsson. Can you describe your typical workday?

PJ: At Betsson you never know what’s going to happen when you step into the office. The gaming industry has very tough competition and getting comfortable as one of the bigger players around is not an option since rivals are always ready to take your place. This, combined with awesome colleagues, makes it a joy to step into the office every morning.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

PJ: Being a multinational company with offices supporting multiple brands, one of the biggest challenges we have is knowledge sharing. Giving the developers the correct information when they need it is vital for an efficient application delivery. In order to provide this, we have used iRules to present troubleshooting information in the form of custom headers so developers can see which pool and member that responded to their request and the current status of all members. We also have a smarter version of the traditional sorry page which shows information about the failed pool and what’s being monitored. And then of course, BIG-IP Report. 

All of these are using iRules and iControl and would not have been possible without the DevCentral API documentation and of course, my hero Joe Pruitt.

DC: What can readers learn from your blog: https://loadbalancing.se/ and what is the BIG-IP Report?

PJ: My blog is where I post ideas and projects that I have. There’s a BIG-IP APM + Google Authenticator guide, F5 Web UI augmentation script for version 11 and a few other things. 

BIG-IP Report was born out of a need to show people the load balancing configuration in a simple manner without giving them access to the BIG-IP interface. After implementing it we have gone from developers asking us where things are, to instead them telling us about bad configuration. We also discovered that it is awesome for us as well, as we can get an overview of the configuration across multiple devices. Finding a specific VIP, or pool is so much easier when the information is in one place. 

I guess the best way to understand it is to try it at http://loadbalancing.se/bigipreportdemo/ 

The blog is not updated that often, so it’s safe to subscribe without getting too much spam.

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

PJ: I think my dream would be working with a non-profit organization helping people in need. I love travelling and combining that with something meaningful would be really nice.

Thanks Patrik! Check out all of Patrik’s DevCentral contributions, check out his blog, or connect on LinkedIn. And visit Betsson on the web or follow on Twitter.

Q/A with itacs GmbH's Kai Wilke - DevCentral's Featured Member for February

Kai Wilke is a Principal Consultant for IT Security at itacs GmbH – a German consulting company located in Berlin City specializing in Microsoft security solutions, SharePoint deployments, and customizations as well as classical IT Consulting. He is also a 2017 DevCentral MVP and DevCentral’s Featured Member for February!

For almost 20 years in IT, he’s constantly explored the evens and odds of various technologies, including different operating systems, SSO and authentication services, RBAC models, PKI and cryptography components, HTTP-based services, proxy servers, firewalls, and core networking components. His focus in these areas has always been security related and included the design, implementation and review of secure and high availability/high performance datacenters.

DevCentral got a chance to talk with Kai about his work, life and mastery of iRules.

DevCentral: You’ve been a very active contributor to the DevCentral community and wondered what keeps you involved?

Kai: Working with online communities has always been an important thing for me and it began long time ago within the good old Usenet and the predecessor of the Darknet. Before joining the F5 community, I was also once an honored member of the Microsoft Online Community and was five times awarded as a Microsoft MVP for Enterprise Security and Microsoft-related firewall/proxy server technologies. 

My opinion is that if you want to become an expert for a certain technology or product, you should not just learn THE-ONE straight-forward method fetched from manuals, guides or even exams. Instead, you have to dive deeply into all of those edge scenarios and learn all the uncountable ways to mess the things up. And dealing with questions and problems of other peers is probably the best catalyst to gain that kind of experience. 

Besides of that, the quality of the DevCentral content and the knowledge of other community members are absolutely astonishing. It makes simply a lot of fun for me to work within the DevCentral community and to learn every day a little bit more…

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

KW: Over the years, I successfully implemented BIG-IP LTM, APM, ASM, and DNS Service deployments for our customers. Technologically, I internalized TMOS and its architecture very well and I pretty much learned how to write simple but also somewhat complex iRules to control the delivery of arbitrary data on their way from A to B in any possible fashion.

DC: You are a Principal Consultant for IT Security at itacs GmbH - a German consulting company. Can you describe your typical workday?

KW: Because of my history with Microsoft related infrastructures, my current workload is pretty versatile.

Many of my current projects are still settled in the Microsoft / Windows system environment and are covering the design and review of security related areas. Right now, I’m working with several DAX companies and also LaaS, PaaS and SaaS service providers to analyze their Active Directory and System Management infrastructures and to design and implement a very unique, fundamental and comprehensive security concept to counter those dreaded PtH (Pass-the-Hash) and APT (Advance Persistent Threat) attacks we are facing these days. 

Over the last years, my F5 customer base has periodically grown so I would say my work is a 50:50 mix right now. I do F5 workshops, designs, implementations, second and third level support as well as configuration reviews and optimization of existing environments. I work with some big web 2.0 customers that have the demand to pretty much exhaust all the capabilities of an F5. This challenges me as a network architect and as an ADC developer. 

I realize every day that working with F5 products makes so much more fun than any Microsoft product I have ever dealt with. So in the future, I will even more put my focus on F5!

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

KW: In my opinion, the F5 products themselves are not that challenging – but sometimes the underlying technologies and the detailed project requirements are. But as long as those requirements can be drawn and explained on a sheet of paper, I am somewhat confident that the BIG-IP platform is able to support the requirements – thanks to the F5 developers who have created a platform which is not purely scenario driven but rather supports a comprehensive list of RFC standards which can be combined as needed. 

For an example, one of my largest customers operates an affiliate resource tracking system with three billion web requests per day with a pretty much aggressive session setup rate during peak hours. I have designed and implemented their BIG-IP LTM platform to offload SSL-encryption and the TCP-connection handling to various backend systems using well selected and performance optimized settings. 

Other scenarios require slightly more complex content switching, the selective use of pre-authentication and/or combination with IDS/IPS systems. To support those requirements, I developed a very granular and scalable iRule administration framework which is able to simplify the configuration by using rather easy-to-use iRule configuration files (operated by non TCL developers) which will then trigger the much more complex iRule code (written and tested by TCL developers) as needed. The latest version of my iRule administration framework (which is currently under testing/development) will be able to support a couple thousand websites on a single Virtual Server, where each websites can trigger handcrafted TCL code blocks as needed, but without adding linear or even exponential overhead to the system as the regular iRule approaches would do. The core and the configuration files of the latest version are heavily based on TCL procedures to create a very flexible code base and also conditional control structures, but completely without calling any TCL procedures during runtime to boost the performance dramatically. Sounds interesting? Then stay tuned, I am sure I will publish this framework to the CodeShare once it’s stable enough… ;-)

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

KW: I was typing my first assembler code out of a C64 magazine at the age of 10, so I really wanted to be a developer and/or IT admin since then. But besides of my current job, I can also imagine being a racecar driver. I really have petrol in my blood and pretty much enjoy driving on the German Autobahn. As an alternative, I could also imagine being a cook. I really love cooking and enjoy awesome food!

DC: Thanks Kai! Just don't fire up that sterno while shifting gears!! Check out all of Kai’s DevCentral contributions and check out their blog websites: ops365.de, flow365.de and brandmysharepoint.de.