SOLUTION BRIEF

Puppet and F5
Operations teams are expected to manage increasingly complex heterogeneous
environments while meeting enterprise-class service levels for application delivery.
DevOps best practices enable applications to scale rapidly and efficiently without costly
manual interventions. Extending this functionality to the application delivery controllers
(ADCs) is a critical facet of any full-featured DevOps software package.
F5 and Puppet provide the functionality for operations teams to deploy, automate,
and manage the configuration of an entire application infrastructure stack. This gives
application developers the ability to elastically expand and contract infrastructure
resources, automate application tests, and reduce application development time frames.

Benefits
Eliminate time-consuming handoffs between systems and networking teams.
Automatically enforce configuration of your F5 BIG-IP devices and reduce outages.
Increase speed of application delivery.
Manage compute and network infrastructure with the same tool for greater efficiency.

The Puppet Enterprise solution

Puppet Enterprise provides a unified, software-defined approach for automating the management
of compute, network, and storage resources, helping organizations deliver applications in
a seamless manner. With its declarative, model-based approach to IT automation, Puppet
Enterprise enables you to perform diverse functions, from automating simple, repetitive tasks to
deploying large-scale clouds. The ability to model, test, and then deploy configuration changes in
private, public, and hybrid clouds ensures efficient use of your infrastructure resources.

F5 Networks, Inc.is a multinational company headquartered in the United States.

F5 specializes in Application Delivery Networking (ADN) technology that optimizes
the delivery of network-based applications and the security, performance and
availability of servers, data storage devices, and other network resources.

Learn more at puppet.com

How Puppet Enterprise Works

Define the desired state of compute, storage
and networking devices using a simple and
powerful declarative configuration language.

Configure the desired state of

your machines, and automatically
remediates configuration drift.

Orchestrate configuration changes before

taking them live, so you know exactly what
will happen when a change is made.

Report in detail on the exact

configuration of your systems,
including when changes were made.

reboot
(3.1.0)

netscaler
(3.7.0)

mysql
(3.0.0)

concat
(3.0.0)

apt
(3.3.0)

java
(3.
0.0)

Orchestrate

Configure

Define

Report

Managing load-balanced applications with F5 and Puppet

Configuring F5 devices to deliver large enterprise applications is complex. You have to set up nodes,
monitors, and profiles, deploy virtual IP addresses, and more. Thats where a configuration management
tool like Puppet comes in. Puppet allows you to create repeatable configurations to automate the
entire deployment process, from bare metal and Level 2 connectivity up to the application and Layer 7
services, while F5 load balancers make it easier to scale your infrastructure.
Including F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) in your overall infrastructure modeling is essential for
proper testing and configuration of your application deployments. With F5 and the Puppet Enterprise
module for BIG-IP LTM, you can now automate and test your application deployments before moving to
production, ensuring proper application sizing and performance.

Solution Brief Puppet and F5

Puppet Master

F5 Switch
iControl REST
Load Balancer
BIG_IP Platform

App Server 1

App Server 2

App Server 3

Streamline migration to the cloud

Migrating an application to the cloud is a complex process. You have to consider application
performance, security, infrastructure cost and management complexity. If you use the Puppet
Enterprise module for BIG-IP LTM, you can ensure consistent application configuration and
deployment, whether your applications are deployed on premise or in public cloud infrastructures.
The Puppet master provides management and automation for the BIG-IP platform via F5 iControl
REST interface. Puppet provides configuration management for application servers via preinstalled
agents on the servers. This lets your system administrators provision and manage an entire stack.

F5 is a member of the Puppet Supported Program

The Puppet Supported Program provides fully tested, certified and supported solutions for managing
compute, network and storage resources. Puppet and F5 have committed to creating a joint solution
that helps F5 customers configure and automate not only their LTM load balancers, but also their
entire IT infrastructure, with Puppet Enterprise. And because it is part of the Puppet Supported
Program, you can rest assured that youll get professional support should any problems arise.

The Puppet Enterprise Module for F5s BIG-IP LTM:

Is configured through iControl REST.
Extends application automation to Layers 4 through 7.
Is the first Puppet Supported ADC module.

Get more
Visit forge.puppet.com to explore Puppet Supported modules and thousands
more modules that help you automate management of your IT infrastructure.

The shortest path to better software.

Learn more at puppet.com