Deploying a 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. 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. 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.

Clicking on the View Rendered button displays 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 FAST API¶

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.

Submitting another task while a previous one is still in progress can result in an error from AS3. It is recommended to either wait on the result of a previous deployment task before submitting another one or to enable Burst Handling for AS3.