Introduction: Accessing Lab Resources
Welcome to this F5 Distributed Cloud Lab. The following tasks will guide you through the initial
access requirements for this multi-part lab. Lab attendees should have received an invitation
(which requests you update your password for access) email to the lab environment. Please check
the email address used for course registration and its associated spam folders to see if the
invitation email has been received. If you have not received an email, please contact a member
of the lab team.
The F5 Distributed Cloud Console, where a majority of all lab tasks will be conducted, is a SaaS
based control-plane for services which provides a GUI and API for managing network, security, and
compute services. The F5 Distributed Cloud Console can manage “sites” in existing on-premises,
private data centers and sites within AWS, Azure, and GCP public cloud environments.
Task 1: Lab Environment
The image below represents an overview of the lab environment. F5 Distributed Cloud Services
will be configured as a SaaS Edge delivery and security service tier to a publicly hosted web
application. The key elements lab attendees will interact with are as follows:
F5 Distributed Cloud Console F5 Distributed Cloud Global Network / Application Delivery Network (ADN) Publicly hosted application (Public Cloud)
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Task 2: F5 Distributed Cloud Console Login
The following will guide you through the initial Lab environment access within the F5 Distributed
Cloud Console. You should have received an email with an invitation to access a F5 Distributed
Cloud Tenant. The email will come from no-reply@volterramails.io.
The name of the F5 Distributed Cloud tenant that we will be using for this lab is f5-xc-lab-sec
Additionally, the following are key configuration elements for this lab and will be used
throughout the lab tasks that follow.
After following the invitation email’s instructions to Update Password, proceed to the first
step below to access the F5 Distributed Cloud Lab Tenant.
Please log into the F5 Distributed Cloud Lab Tenant with your user ID (email) & password.
https://f5-xc-lab-sec.console.ves.volterra.io/
When you first login, accept the Lab tenant EULA. Click the check box and then click
Accept and Agree.
Select all work domain roles and click Next to see various configuration options.
Roles can be changed any time later if desired.
Click the Advanced skill level to expose more menu options and then click Get
Started to begin. You can change this setting after logging in as well.
Several Guidance ToolTips will appear, you can safely close these as they appear.
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You can adjust your work domains and skill level (not required) by clicking on the
Account icon in the top right of the screen and then clicking on Account Settings.
In the resulting window you can observe the Work domains and skill level section and
other administrative functions.
Note
For the purposes of this lab, permissions have been restricted to lab operations. As a
result some menus will be locked and not visible.
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Namespaces, which provide an environment for isolating configured applications or
enforcing role-based access controls, are leveraged within the F5 Distributed Cloud
Console. For the purposes of this lab, each lab attendee has been provided a unique
namespace which you will be defaulted to (in terms of GUI navigation) for all tasks
performed through the course of this lab.
Click on the Select Service in the left-hand navigation. In the resulting fly out
navigation, click Web App & API Protection.
In the Web App & API Protection configuration screen observe the URL. In the URI
path, locate the <adjective-animal> namespace that you have been assigned. It will be
located in the portion of the URI path between /namespaces/ and /overview/ as shown
in this example …/namespaces/<namespace>/overview/…. Note the namespace as it will
be used throughout the lab tasks that follow.
Note
Administratively, there are other ways to find namespaces. Due to access and permission
restrictions for this particular lab, those menus are not available.
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Task 3: Accessing your Lab Jumphost
The following will guide you through accessing your Lab Jumphost. Subsequent tasks will require
you to use the Jumphost for access to the OpenBullet tool and other associated resources available
only on the Jumphost.
Returning to the UDF Course screen in your browser, click on the Deployment tab and
then observer the JumpHost and its two options; Access and Details. You will
first click on the Details link.
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In the resulting window note the Administrator password which you will use shortly
and then click Done in the bottom right-hand corner of the window.
Warning
DO NOT CLICK STOP. If you do so you will have to wait till it stops then restart
your JumpHost for this lab.
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Returning to the UDF Course screen in your browser and the Deployment tab and click
on the Access link. From the resulting dropdown, click on the resolution you prefer.
If you don’t get a resolution selection, just accept the default.
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A RDP file will download which you will need to open. Note different browsers will render
the download differently. Your OS platform must have an application which supports
opening RDP files in order to access the JumpHost.
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You will then be prompted to log in as Administrator to the JumpHost. Note the prompt
may render differently for other RDP clients. If you experience an abnormally long delay
in accessing the JumpHost, changing the If server authentication fails setting to
Connect and don’t warn me. If you cannot connect, please alert a lab team member.
Anti-virus configurations, VPN or conflicting applications can also complicate access.
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Beginning of Lab: You are now ready to begin the lab, Enjoy! Ask questions as needed. |
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