The DevCentral Chronicles July Edition 1(7)

July is my favorite month due to it being both the middle of summer and I was born in July. This month I’ll drip of perspiration and celebrate another twist in the odometer of life. It’s also time for our monthly Chronicles where we keep you updated on DevCentral happenings and highlight some of the cool content you may have missed since the last issue. You can always catch up with the links at the bottom. Welcome!

With #F5Agility18 right around the corner August 13-16, 2018, let’s kick off this edition with John Wagnon‘s Capture The Flag at Agility 2018. Happening Tuesday night Aug 14, block your calendar for our #Geekfest event, Hack to the Future! This year, for the first time ever during our Agility conference, we will host a Capture The Flag game.  The game is designed for eight teams (4 people per team) to compete against one another to see who can capture the most flags, earn the most virtual money, and keep their web application safe from attack.  The teams will be chosen prior to the event, so if you want to be included in one of the teams, make sure you reach out to your SE and get the invitation.  DevCentral MVP’s Kai, Stan, Leonardo & Nathan with Bart as Pit Boss will also participate. The entire evening will be themed with tons of cool 80s stuff related to the classic movie series.

Next, we’d like to recognize F5 Systems Engineer, Steve Lyons for his prowess over the last month. First, Steve is one of our most engaged SE’s amplifying our social channel at every tweet; he published three, in-depth articles Configuring the BIG-IP as an SSH Jump Server using Smart Card Authentication and WebSSH Client, Configuring Certificate Based Authentication and Kerberos Constrained Delegation in F5 Access Policy Manager (APM) and Configuring Endpoint Security (Client-Side) Using F5 Access Policy Manager (APM); in addition to answering 5 questions from members. He’s highly active and has the technical know-how to help. Follow Steve @SteveLyonsF5

Jason Rahm and his infinite knowledge continued his python series with Getting started with the python SDK part 5: request parameters revisited and also replied to a twitter question from @CISCO_World with a full article about Duplicating BIG-IP Objects about how to copy a virtual server.

For the developer crowd, ENE Satoshi Toyosawa added his iControl REST Cookbook - Virtual Server Profile (LTM Virtual Profiles). For cloud folks, Chase Abbott shows off Application Auto Scaling Through BIG-IP Cloud Edition and for security, John lit up Introducing F5 DataSafe in his #LightboardLesson.

And in closing, Rhazi Youssef from e-xpert Solutions is our Featured Member for July and is the third engineer we've featured from e-Xpert Solutions SA.

We look forward to seeing you in Boston for Agility and as always, you can stay engaged with @DevCentral by following us on Twitter, joining our new LinkedIn Showcase page or subscribing to our YouTube Channel. Look forward to hearing about your BIG-IP adventures.

The Chronicles:

• Volume 1, Issue 1
• Volume 1, Issue 2
• Volume 1, Issue 3
• Volume 1, Issue 4
• Volume 1, Issue 5

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!

The DevCentral Chronicles Volume 1, Issue 5

Is it May already? Did you enjoy your ‘May the Fourth’ along with ‘Revenge of the Sixth’? For me, May is filled with a bunch of family holidays along with Mother’s Day, of course. May also falls perfectly for our 5^th installment of the #DC Chronicles. If you missed our initial issues of the DC Chronicles, you can catch up with the links at the bottom. The Chronicles are intended to keep you updated on DevCentral happenings and highlight some of the cool content you may have missed since the last issue. Welcome!

We’re only 3 months away from #F5Agility18 in Boston, August 13-16! You can hang out with the DevCentral team and many MVPs will also be in attendance to share their expertise. Our team is prepping some sessions and look forward to socializing with the community. Get the details here and now's the time to register for F5 Agility 2018 and lock in your labs and sessions. Also, Early Birds get $300 off the registration fee Through May 18!

If you haven’t heard, BIG-IP Cloud Edition is will be available soon! BIG-IP Cloud Edition is built by tightly integrating BIG-IQ Centralized Management and BIG-IP Per-App VEs to deliver advanced application services and management. You can autoscale, offer self-service management for app owners, and per-app analytics. We got a couple cool pieces covering Cloud Edition: Chase’s Skies Never Looked So Good With BIG-IP Cloud Edition where he explains all the pieces of the pie and also check out Jason’s Lightboard Lessons: BIG-IP Cloud Edition Overview.

We also dropped a couple other #LightBoardLessons for your viewing pleasure covering some of our new Security solutions. John lights up the DDoS Hybrid Defender and introduces us to the new F5 Advanced WAF. DDoS Hybrid Defender offers comprehensive DDoS threat coverage in a simple, dedicated appliance with native, cloud-based scrubbing services and the awesome Advanced WAF protects against the latest attacks using behavioral analytics, proactive bot defense, and application-layer encryption of sensitive data. Couple of cool tools to help mitigate internet threats.

Mitigate threats you say? There will always be vulnerabilities in the wild and depending on the type of threat, we’ll typically have some mitigation techniques to share. Our SIRT (Security Incident Response Team) folks are always examining the murk out there and sharing insights. This past month is no different with mitigation techniques for Remote Code Execution with Spring Data Commons (CVE-2018-1273), Directory Traversal with Spring MVC on Windows (CVE-2018-1271) and the Drupal Core Remote Code Execution (CVE-2018-7602). In a few cases, BIG-IP ASM customers were already protected by the existing signatures!

As we wrap up this edition, we’d also like to point out @GrahamAlderson‘s new video series AppSec Made Easy with examples for Anti-Bot for Mobile APIs, Proactive Bot Defense, L7 Behavioral DoS and a couple more this week. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t call out Bank of America’s Jai Kumar as our Featured Member for May!

As always, You can stay engaged with @DevCentral by following us on Twitter, joining our LinkedIn Group or subscribing to our YouTube Channel. Look forward to hearing about your BIG-IP adventures.

ps

The Chronicles:

• Volume 1, Issue 1
• Volume 1, Issue 2
• Volume 1, Issue 3
• Volume 1, Issue 4

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!

F5 Agility is coming to Boston, MA this August!

The DevCentral team will be at F5’s largest user conference to date! Will you?

Now's the time to register for F5 Agility 2018 in Boston, MA August 13-16. Early Bird registration knocks $300 off your registration fee!

What's F5 Agility all about?

Besides an opportunity to meet fellow community peers, solution partners, and F5 experts, we’ll have

Breakouts!
Breakout sessions at Agility focus on the latest technologies, applications, and architecture strategies. The technical breakout sessions at Agility range from beginner to advanced, enabling you to select classes that best meet your needs. Additionally, you can choose from sessions in multiple tracks or use the recommended learning paths to focus on specific areas that matter most to you. Last year we had 62 hours, this year we’re expanding to 150+ hours of technical breakouts, including dedicated Spanish-language sessions.

Sample learning paths:

• Application Security
• Application Delivery
• Access Management
• Service Provider
• Programmability
• Cloud Solutions
• Automation and Orchestration
• Super-NetOps

Labs!
We have expanded lab offerings to a total of 80 hands-on lab sessions. Our comprehensive 4- or 8-hour labs will address a wide variety of installation, troubleshooting, and networking technologies across a variety of environments. The instructor-led classes also provide an opportunity to gain valuable knowledge in preparation for F5 Certification exams.

New for 2018, Agility will have a room dedicated to self-paced labs that are shorter and/or more targeted. Attendees will have the opportunity to go through these labs at their own pace, with instructors available to assist with any questions. All self-paced labs will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Certifications!
Are you getting started? Already F5 Certified? We’ll have F5 Certification exams running throughout the week. Be sure to sign up in advance in order to guarantee your seat.

And you can Meet the Experts

If the structured programs still leave you wanting more, we will have experts available to answer questions at the DevCentral booth during the Solutions Expo hours, as well as two breakout rooms dedicated to walk-in help for iRules and all things Programmability. If you are not yet a member of DevCentral, you can sign up on-site.

Also at Agility 2018

Solutions Expo
The core of the conference, our Solutions Expo brings together the various aspects of the F5 ecosystem. Learn what works where with whom, and meet solutions experts from all avenues.

Geek Fest
Lab attendees get a chance to rub elbows with each other and presenters over food, drinks, and (sometimes unconventional) activities.

F5 Connects Women
Women leaders from both F5 and our partners join to discuss the perspectives women bring to tech, as well as the influence we can have when our potential is realized.

5K Fun Run
Grab your runners and discover Boston by foot on a beautiful, urban run through the city with fellow attendees. DevCentral’s own John Wagnon leads this one!

For more information on reserving your place, go to F5 Agility 2018

We look forward to seeing you in Boston!

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.

F5 DevCentral Asks, ‘How Can We Help in 2017?’

Back in 2003, DevCentral was one of the early/first corporate social media sites dedicated to serving, sharing, supporting and engaging our user community. Some 14 years later, we have MVPs, Featured Members and You all contributing to a lively, engaged community. We have some cool stuff planned for 2017 and we recently asked a few of our Featured Members what they’d like help with in 2017. They share their time, knowledge & tips with the community and we thought, what can we (the collective DevCentral ‘we’) offer back.

The question was: What do you think will be some of your biggest IT challenges in the coming year and how can the DevCentral community help you achieve your goals in 2017?

Here’s what they said:

Yann Desmarest (Innovation Center Manager, e-Xpert Solutions SA): My biggest IT challenges for the coming year will be API security, Oauth and OpenID Connect integration, Data Loss Prevention and CASB (Cloud Access Security Brokers). Through DevCentral, I hope to get resources, code and articles that guide me in the right direction to solve those challenges. I would love to get more dissections of known attacks (DDoS, ransomware, etc.) by security researchers. Some BIG-IP ASM and APM hands-on virtual labs on tricky features along with some tutorials to integrate F5 products with Microsoft Office suite. One request is chat capabilities with DevCentral members to ask questions or interact for sharing feedback.

Koman Vijay Emarose (Network Architect, Rackspace): My team would like an article series from F5 Engineers sharing interesting support cases & solutions on how they resolved it. We’d also like some information around F5’s place within the world of network virtualization and public cloud. Some guidance on F5 supported and recommended automation platform (Ansible, Python, TCL, etc.) examples around usage would be great. Some of the automation works great for certain code versions yet not so much for other versions. F5’s stance on a specific automation tool would be helpful for us to devote our time and resource to master the automation tool. Lastly, some articles on new technologies including but not limited to, Network Virtualization, 5G, IoT and public cloud integration. 

Joel Newton (Senior DevOps System Engineer, SpringCM): We'd like to start thinking about architecting a solution that utilizes Windows containers, so I’d like to understand how best to configure and utilize our BIG-IP LTM devices in a container-based architecture. Maybe publish some research and/or examples from the F5 lab of what F5 folks have done with Windows containers would be cool.

I know the DevCentral team has some ideas and if you’d like to engage with Joel, Vijay or Yann, please reach out to them…or post a comment here.

Finally, we’re conducting a site survey on DevCentral and would appreciate your feedback. If you get a pop-up that looks like:

Please give your feedback on 8 simple questions. Should easily take less than 5 minutes and helps us, help you.

Thanks!

The DevCentral Team

The New, Old Kid in Town

For nearly 12 years at F5, I've had only two job titles - Security Systems Architect from 2004-06 and Technical Marketing Manager since 2006. Whenever anyone asks what I do at F5, I typically answer, 'Writer, speaker and video producer,' in that order. Above all, I focused on covering emerging trends within our industry and evangelizing the various solutions - including F5's - to solve some of these challenges.

I am now embarking on my third adventure at F5 - joining the F5 DevCentral team as a Sr. Solution Developer - concentrating my writing, speaking and videos on our amazing community.

DevCentral’s mission is to deliver technical thought leadership to the community through connecting, preparing, and empowering professionals engaged with F5 technologies and I'll be helping develop, test and share technical solutions to some of today's technology challenges. In many ways, my job really doesn't change all that much, except for digging a little deeper into technical solutions and engaging deeper within our community.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that my technical chops have slightly eroded since my SSA days installing FirePass (now our BIG-IP APM) and TrafficShield (BIG-IP ASM) but I'm looking forward to returning to my technical roots exploring and explaining how some of this stuff works in the real world. I'll still write lighter stories about IoT, mobile, cloud and the usual (or unusual) things that interest me along with contributing to DevCentral's already awesome LightBoard Lessons video series and reporting from industry events. If you remember the 'In 5 Minutes' video series, I'm also toying with the idea of resuming that - in LightBoard - so if you got any early requests, let me know.

I published my first blog post ever on DevCentral in 2007 and with over 1000 entries later, including close to 400 videos, I feel like I'm coming home.


ps

F5 Agility Summit 2012 - DevCentral

I chat with Joe Pruitt, Sr. Strategic Architect for F5's DevCentral Community.  We have a great conversation about DevCentral, it's history, it's purpose and all the cool stuff, like iRules, forums and blogs, that you can find on DevCentral.

ps

Resources:

• F5 Rethink Your World
• F5 Agility Summit 2012 - Welcome to New York
• F5 Agility Summit 2012 – Splunk
• F5 Agility Summit 2012 – Infoblox
• F5 Agility Summit 2012 - DevCentral
• F5 Agility Summit 2012 - Welcome to Shanghai
• Rackspace uses F5 to create a hybrid platform to meet customer needs
• Using F5, Future Com helped Sysco unify its network
• MLB Network, uses F5 to achieve zero downtime for its cable programming
• F5 Friday: Infoblox and F5 Do DNS and Global Load Balancing Right.
• Upcoming Event: F5 Agility Summit 2012
• F5 Announces Winners of 2012 Agility Customer and Partner Awards
• F5 Networks Selects Westcon Group as First Global Distributor
• F5 YouTube Channel

Technorati Tags: F5, big-ip, agility summit, cloud computing, Pete Silva, security, new york, times square, partners, network firewall,internet,dnssec, big-ip, irules, analytics, devcentral, video

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Does Social Media Reflect Society?

A Community within our Society

You are what you eat; You become what you believe; I am not my art.  A 2011 study from the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Psychology titled "Manifestations of Personality in Online Social Networks: Self-Reported Facebook-Related Behaviors and Observable Profile Information" found that Facebook users are no different online than they are offline. The study also declared a strong connection between someone’s real personality and their Facebook-related behavior. Social and personality processes, according to the study, accurately mirror non-virtual environments.  It was published in the academic journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.  Professor Samuel D. Gosling and his team looked at the big five personality traits - openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism and found that self-reported personality traits are accurately reflected in online social networks such as Facebook.  Extroverted users reported the most friends and the highest engagement while conscientious types had the least.  Simply, extroverts engaged more than introverts.

Merriam-Webster defines society in part as, companionship or association with one's fellows : a voluntary association of individuals for common ends : an organized group working together or periodically meeting because of common interests, beliefs, or profession : an enduring and cooperating social group whose members have developed organized patterns of relationships through interaction with one another : a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests.

Social media has changed society in many ways.  We used to just live in a society – our neighborhood, town, city – and (hopefully) looked out for each other, cared for each other and got together for specific causes. This is our community.  The human social creature needed human contact/interaction and participated within that society…but the circle was somewhat limited to a geographic region.  Granted, some societies are nationwide clubs, groups, memberships or associations that span greater distances – Toastmasters, Kiwanis or college alumni for instance.  Now, our circle of friends or association with one’s fellows requires no physical gathering.  We live in our physical geographic society but also engage in our cyber communities that span cities, states, countries and with SETI, universes.  Years ago I often wondered if the internet would create a society of hermits since no one really needed to go outside and interact with others in the real world.  But we are social creatures and our survival requires us to participate in a non-cyber way.  Of course there are people that do not want anything to do with society and live in secluded locations to avoid any human interaction.  Most of us, however, like it or not, must interact in society on a daily basis.

Often our social cyber-interaction is in response to events in the physical society.  We use social media as a way to report, learn and engage with those who are experiencing anything from turmoil to joy in their physical society. World events.  Even the Occupiers, who have used social media to great extent, still came together physically – within their geographic circle(s) – to form their mini-societies.  In some situations, social media has been the only avenue for ‘breaking’ news getting out to the masses.  (Incidentally, it seems like every story on news websites is ‘breaking’ these days – it seems to have lost it’s power) 

Breaking Bad, on the other hand, is a darn good show.

In societies we often share – information, goods, ideas, secrets – for the benefit of the society.  Many of us have heard the warnings from security experts about keeping passwords a secret.  Now, as a form of affection and devotion, teens are sharing their passwords to email, social networks and other accounts.  Since it is risky and relationships can quickly sour via social media, they feel that the symbolism is powerful.  Apparently, the world’s first divorce by Facebook occurred back in 2009 and more recently Deion Sanders announced his divorce on Facebook this past December.  In addition, a survey conducted by UK divorce website www.divorce-online.co.uk in December 2009 found that 20% of behavior petitions contained the word “Facebook.”  A follow up survey in December 2011 found that number has greatly increased during 2011 to 33% of behavior allegations in petitions.

Even the crooks are involved.  We’ve seen the stories about hijacked accounts, malware distribution and the ever popular, ‘I’m stuck in some foreign country, lost my wallet and need to pay the hotel’ scam.  I’m amazed that just a decade ago, security experts warned that you shouldn’t say, ‘We’re not home right now,’ on your answering machine.  That tells riff-raff that the property is ripe for the pickings.  Yet, just a few years later people are posting that they are over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house some 300 miles away.  Their coordinates are available, their home town and sometimes a picture of the actual empty home are posted on the social network.  And then they wonder how they could have been burglarized.  It’s has also caught/captured the idiot criminals who feel the need to share their misdeeds.  In some cases, we share too much and don’t even realize that we’re diminishing our own privacy.  And, of course, there are some who can’t get enough exposure with 24 hour cams following their every move.

Social networks have become one of our society’s primary tools for communication and as a society it is important to communicate effectively.  I’ve always felt that the internet, particularly the web, was a reflection of society.  It’s chronicled, reflected and magnified our lives along with automatically storing and archiving almost every move we make.  People have fallen in love, ordered goods, started movements, spread rumors, gotten arrested/fired/dumped, done banking, filed complaints/kudos, kept in touch, tracked progress, committed crimes, shared ideas and pretty much anything else that didn’t require physical contact.  It’s our journal, reminder, mirror, confidant and has certainly wiggled it’s way into and become part of society.  A community within our society.  But remember, What Happens on the Internet, Stays on the Internet.

ps

Related:

• Your Parents on Facebook: To friend or not to friend?
• Alarming increase in Facebook related divorces in 2011
• Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites
• Young, in Love and Sharing Everything, Including a Password
• Study: Your Facebook Personality Is The Real You
• Husband dumps his wife with online message in 'world's first divorce by Facebook' 
• Employers, workers navigate pitfalls of social media
• 6 painful social media screwups
• The effect of social media on Occupy
• Our Digital Life Deciphered
• Best Day to Blog Experiment – The Results
• How Terms Have Changed over Time

Technorati Tags: blog, social media, comscore, music, statistics, society, web traffic, digital media, mobile device, analytics

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