BIG-IP provides
Local Traffic Policies that simplify the way in which you can manage traffic
associated with a virtual server.
You can associate a BIG-IP local
traffic policy to support selective compression for types of content that
can benefit from compression, like HTML, XML, and CSS stylesheets. These file
types can realize performance improvements, especially across slow connections,
by compressing them. You can easily configure your BIG-IP system to use a
simple Local Traffic Policy that selectively compresses these file types. In
order to use a policy, you will want to create and configure a draft policy,
publish that policy, and then associate the policy with a virtual server in
BIG-IP v12.
Alright, let’s log into a BIG-IP
The first thing you’ll need to do is create a draft policy.
On the main menu select Local
Traffic>Policies>Policy List and then the Create or + button.
This takes us to the create policy config screen. We’ll name
the policy SelectiveCompression, add
a description like ‘This policy
compresses file types,’ and we’ll leave the Strategy as the default of
Execute First matching rule. This is so the policy uses the first rule that
matches the request. Click Create Policy
which saves the policy to the policies list.
When saved, the Rules search field appears but has no rules.
Click Create under Rules.
This brings us to the Rules General Properties area of the
policy. We’ll give this rule a name (CompressFiles) and then the first settings
we need to configure are the conditions that need to match the request. Click
the + button to associate file
types.
We know that the files for compression are comprised of
specific file types associated with a content type HTTP Header. We choose HTTP Header and select Content-Type in the Named field. Select ‘begins with’ next
and type ‘text/’ for the condition and compress at the ‘response’ time. We’ll
add another condition to manage CPU usage effectively. So we click CPU Usage from the list with a duration
of 1 minute with a conditional operator of ‘less than or equal to’ 5 as the usage level at response time.
Next under Do the
following, click the create +
button to create a new action when those conditions are met. Here, we’ll enable
compression at the response time. Click Save.
Now the draft policy screen appears with the General
Properties and a list of rules. Here we want to click Save Draft.
Now we need to publish the draft policy and associate it
with a virtual server. Select the policy and click Publish.
Next, on the main menu click Local Traffic>Virtual
Servers>Virtual Server List and click the name of the virtual server you’d
like to associate for the policy.
On the menu bar click Resources
and for Policies click Manage.
Move SelectiveCompression
to the Enabled list and click Finished.
The SelectiveCompression policy is now listed in the
policies list which is now associated with the chosen virtual server. The
virtual server with the SelectiveCompression Local Traffic Policy will compress
the file types you specified.
Congrats! You’ve now added a local traffic policy for
selective compression! You can also watch the full video demo thanks
to our TechPubs team.
ps
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