What is the F5 SSL Orchestrator?

F5 SSL Orchestrator (SSLO) provides an all-in-one appliance solution designed specifically to optimize the SSL infrastructure, provide security devices with visibility of SSL/TLS encrypted traffic, and maximize efficient use of that existing security investment. This solution supports policy-based management and steering of traffic flows to existing security devices, designed to easily integrate into existing architectures, and centralizes the SSL decrypt/encrypt function by delivering the latest SSL encryption technologies across the entire security infrastructure.

Multi-layered security
In order to solve specific security challenges, security administrators are accustomed to manually chaining together multiple point products, creating a bare-bones "security stack" consisting of multiple services. A typical stack may include components like Data Leak Prevention (DLP) scanners, Web Application Firewalls (WAF), Intrusion Prevention and Detection Systems (IPS and IDS), Malware Analysis tools, and more. In this model, all user sessions are provided the same level of security, as this "daisy chain" of services is hard-wired.
Dynamic service chaining
Dynamic service chaining effectively breaks the daisy chain paradigm by processing specific connections based on context provided by the Security Policy, that then allows specific types of traffic to flow through arbitrary chains of services. These service chains can include five types of services: layer 2 inline services, layer 3 inline services, receive-only services, ICAP services, and HTTP web proxy services.
Topologies
Different environments call for different network implementations. While some can easily support SSL visibility at layer 3 (routed), others may require these devices to be inserted at layer 2. SSL Orchestrator can support all of these networking requirements with the following topology options:
  • Outbound transparent proxy
  • Outbound explicit proxy
  • Outbound layer 2
  • Inbound reverse proxy
  • Existing application
  • Inbound layer 2
Security Policy
The SSLO Security Policy provides a rich set of context-aware methods to dynamically determine how best to optimize traffic flow through the security stack. Context can minimally come from the following:
  • Source and destination address/subnet
  • URL filtering and IP intelligence (Subscriptions)
  • Host and domain name
  • Destination port
  • IP geolocation
  • Protocol
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What's new in SSLO 4.0 and 5.0?

SSLO 4.0 provides significant architectural improvements over previous versions. Here are the highlights:

  • Replaces the complex iRules-based traffic classification and service chaining functions of previous versions with an Access per-request policy engine, providing much greater flexibility in traffic management options.
  • Optimizes traffic flow through security services by replacing the complex "proxy hops" with a new "tee connector" - essentially a mid-proxy tap - that allows decrypted traffic to flow through security devices out-of-band from the main client-server proxy traffic. This is implemented as new "Service" and "Connector" profiles.
  • Introduces new "split session" client and server SSL profiles, that are now responsible for carrying SNI signaling information across the inspection zone.
  • Further optimizes traffic flow by reducing the amount of iRule data plane management, also making it easier to add customization iRules.
  • Introduces three new network topologies. Along with the existing outbound transparent and explicit proxy flows, 4.0 now also supports inbound layer 3 (reverse proxy) inspection, and layer 2 transparent inbound and outbound topologies.

SSLO 4.0 also includes the following new functionality features:

  • Explicit and transparent web proxy devices as an inline security service.
  • Front-end explicit proxy authentication via APM integration (relies on existing SWG-Explicit access policy).
  • FTPS (passive), SMTPS, POP3S, and IMAPS protocols inspection.
  • ICAP advanced filtering via LTM CPM policy (relies on an existing CPM policy).
  • URL filtering as a function of the Access per-request service chaining policy.
  • Authentication headers - ability to define additional HTTP headers to pass to inline security services.
  • vCMP support - ability to select existing VLANs for inbound and outbound to/from inline services.

SSLO 5.0 includes the following updates:

  • Guided Configuration user experience, a complete refresh of the SSLO UI based on the Access Guided Configuration engine.
  • Discreet "topology" definitions and the ability to define how SSLO listens for and processes traffic flows.
  • Re-entrant, wizard-driven workflows. Based on the selected topology, SSLO 5.0 presents an intuitive workflow UI that walks the user through a simplified object creation process.

Attention

Viprion chassis platform support is not available in SSLO 4.0 and 5.0.

What's new in SSLO 5.X?

SSL Orchestrator 5.4 contains bugfix updates to the product and is therefore recommended (over 5.3) for customer environments. Additional information about SSLO 5.4, including updates and fixes, can be found in the official release notes: https://techdocs.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/ssl-orchestrator/releasenotes/product/relnote-sslorchestrator-14-1-0-iapp-5-4.html SSL Orchestrator 5.4 is available on the F5 downloads site, https://downloads.f5.com, under the SSL Orchestrator section, as f5-iappslx-ssl-orchestrator-14.1.0-5.4.47.rpm.

SSL Orchestrator 5.3 contains bugfix updates to the product and is therefore recommended (over 5.2) for customer environments. Additional information about SSLO 5.3, including updates and fixes, can be found in the official release notes: https://techdocs.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/ssl-orchestrator/releasenotes/product/relnote-sslorchestrator-14-1-0-iapp-5-3.html SSL Orchestrator 5.3 is available on the F5 downloads site, https://downloads.f5.com, under the SSL Orchestrator section, as f5-iappslx-ssl-orchestrator-14.1.0-5.3.7.rpm.

SSL Orchestrator 5.2 contains bugfix updates to the product and is therefore recommended (over 5.1) for customer environments. Additional information about SSLO 5.2, including updates and fixes, can be found in the official release notes: https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/ssl-orchestrator/releasenotes/product/relnote-sslorchestrator-14-1-0-iapp-5-2.html SSL Orchestrator 5.2 is available on the F5 downloads site, https://downloads.f5.com, under the SSL Orchestrator section, as f5-iappslx-ssl-orchestrator-14.1.0-5.2.261.rpm.

SSL Orchestrator 5.1 was released on December 17th, 2018, a few days after the release of BIG-IP 14.1 with SSLO 5.0. SSLO 5.1 contains significant updates to the product and is therefore recommended (over 5.0) for customer environments. Additional information about SSLO 5.1, including updates and fixes, can be found in the official release notes: https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/ssl-orchestrator/releasenotes/product/relnote-sslorchestrator-14-1-0-iapp-5-1.html SSL Orchestrator 5.1 is available on the F5 downloads site, https://downloads.f5.com, under the SSL Orchestrator section, as f5-iappslx-ssl-orchestrator-14.1.0-5.1.254.rpm.

Note

This lab guide and corresponding Ravello lab environment are prepared for SSLO 5.4. If installing a fresh BIG-IP 14.1 instance, it is recommended to immediately download the 5.4 package and install over the built-in 5.0 version. To do this, in the SSLO UI, click on :menuselection:` SSL Orchestrator --> Configuration --> Upgrade SSL Orchestrator`, choose the downloaded SSLO 5.4 package and then upload and install.