3.3. Testing the Application Deployment

Congratulations! You have now deployed a simple HTTPS application on BIG-IP Next. The next step is to test your application from a client environment and verify that everything is working properly.

3.3.1. Accessing the Client VM

The UDF lab environment provides an Client VM (Ubuntu Linux) instance with access to an interactive shell for command line testing, as well as a GUI desktop to run web browsers and other tools.

The application tests performed in the next section will require you to execute commands from the Linux shell. The shell session can be accessed via either a Web Shell or a Terminal shell from within a WebRDP desktop GUI session.

For this lab module, we recommend using the Web Shell access method.

1. In the UDF Deployment tab, find the Ubuntu-Client resource.
2. Under Ubuntu-Client, click on ACCESS to see the list of available access methods.
3. Click on Web Shell to open a new web browser tab that connects to the console shell of the Client VM.

Note

If you want to use the Client desktop GUI option instead, click on the WebRDP access method under the Ubuntu-Server (not the Ubuntu-Client) resource. This opens a new browser tab that connects to the Client desktop GUI. Enter the username (user) and password (user) to login. From the Client desktop, you can launch a Linux Terminal window to issue shell commands.

3.3.2. Test Access to the HTTPS Application

You will now test the HTTPS application by sending a command line cURL request to the BIG-IP Virtual Server.

1. In the Client VM shell (or a Terminal shell running on the Client VM desktop), enter the following command:

   curl -vk https://10.1.10.20
   

   Tip

   To avoid errors in typing the shell commands, hover your mouse over the right side of the gray text block to reveal the copy shortcut. Click on it to copy the text block to your local workstation's clipboard.

   You can paste into the Web Shell with the following keyboard shortcuts:

   • Windows: <Control-Shift-V> or <Shift-Insert>
   • Mac: <Control-V>

   The output of this command will contain the full HTML payload of the web page.

2. To see just the headers and TLS handshake output, add the I flag:

   curl -vkI https://10.1.10.20
   

3. Look for the Server certificate section. You should see that the subject field's Common Name (CN) attribute is *.f5labs.com.

   

   This confirms that the site is being presented from the BIG-IP deployed application.

Attention

This is the end of the lab module.