F5 Analytics and Visibility Solutions > Insight Fleet Mgmt Lab: Software Upgrades, Updates, and Patching Source | Edit on

Introduction¶

Welcome to Insight Fleet Mgmt Lab. This course provides an in-depth, hands-on walkthrough of managing software lifecycles across an enterprise fleet of BIG-IP instances using F5 Insight.

What is F5 Insight?¶

F5 Insight is a centralized management, observability, and fleet orchestration platform designed to streamline Day 2 operations for BIG-IP deployments. F5 Insight provides real-time visibility into application performance, security telemetry, configuration consistency, and automated software maintenance across high-density enterprise environments.

Key Fleet Management Capabilities¶

Centralized Image Repository: Store, organize, and cryptographically validate TMOS software packages (.iso), public certificates (.pem), and signatures (.sig).
Pre-Staged Image Distribution: Stage large software images to managed BIG-IP instances prior to change windows, minimizing maintenance downtime.
Orchestrated Software Upgrades: Execute zero-downtime upgrades across High Availability (HA) pairs and controlled rolling or batch upgrades across Standalone instances.
Space-Aware Disk Checks: Automatically evaluate storage on target instances before file transfer to prevent mid-job space exhaustion.
Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) Controls: Pause upgrade jobs at critical milestones (e.g., post-Standby upgrade or pre-failover) for administrative health verification.
Audit & Compliance Integration: Attach Change Request tracking numbers (CR-XXXXX) to job executions for compliance logging.

Lab Architecture & Topology¶

During this lab, you will interact with an F5 Insight management node orchestrating upgrades across a representative enterprise fleet:

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                           F5 Insight Management Node                            |
|                       (Software Store & Job Orchestration)                      |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
                                      |
         +----------------------------+----------------------------+
         |                                                         |
+-----------------------+                                 +-----------------------+
|   HA Pair 01 Cluster  |                                 |   Standalone Fleet    |
|                       |                                 |                       |
| ha-pair-01a (Active)  |                                 |   bigip-01.lab.local  |
| ha-pair-01b (Standby) |                                 |   bigip-02.lab.local  |
+-----------------------+                                 +-----------------------+

Lab Objectives¶

By completing this walkthrough, you will learn how to:

Upload and cryptographically validate TMOS images in F5 Insight (Lab 1).
Validate target disk space and pre-stage software images to fleet devices (Lab 2).
Execute automated, zero-downtime software installations across HA pairs and Standalone instances (Lab 3).

Go to Ticket 1