Deploying an F5 BIG-IP FAST Application¶

Deploy using the GUI¶

From the BIG-IP, Launch FAST from iApps > Application Services > Applications LX.

You will be presented with 5 tabs, select FAST Templates for a new deployment, or Applications to redeploy an application.

For this example we are using examples/simple_udp. Fields noted with an asterisk * are required.

Enter a Tenant Name. The tenant is the high-level grouping in an AS3 declaration. BIG-IP FAST deploys all configuration for a given tenant in a BIG-IP partition of the same name.
Enter an Application Name. The application is the low-level grouping in an AS3 declaration. BIG-IP FAST deploys all configuration for a given application in a BIG-IP folder within the tenant partition.
Enter the virtual_port.
Enter the virtual_address.
Enter the server_port.
Enter a server_address for each server. This field is not required.

See the image below for example field entries.

From the Debug View buttons, select View Rendered to display a sample of the rendered output of the template.

Clicking on Deploy will start a deployment job.
The current status of the job can be found on the History tab.

Deploy using the BIG-IP FAST API¶

BIG-IP FAST also exposes a REST API for programmability and automation. The basics of working with REST APIs is assumed and will not be covered in this document.

The same examples/simple_udp deployment from the above GUI example can be done via a POST to the mgmt/shared/fast/applications endpoint. Using cURL to do this would look like:

curl -sku <BIG-IP username>:<BIG-IP password> -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST https://<IP address of BIG-IP>/mgmt/shared/fast/applications -d '
{
   "name": "examples/simple_http",
   "parameters": {
      "tenant_name": "Tenant1",
      "application_name": "Application1",
      "virtual_port": 443,
      "virtual_address": "192.168.1.0",
      "server_port": 80,
      "server_addresses": ["10.10.10.1"]
   }
}'

This job is asynchronous and a successful response indicates that the task was submitted, not that it completed successfully. The response payload contains an id that can be used to query mgmt/shared/fast/tasks/<task ID> for the current status of the task.