BigIP Report just got an upgrade

BigIP Report delivers information to colleagues in an format that gives good overview. It saves administrators time by avoiding questions about where things are hosted, the status of pools and members or even when looking for things themselves across their whole environment.

I’ve been working hard the last couple of weeks to improve the tool and figured the results warranted a post about the recent feature additions.

New style

Been considering this for a long time but just never came around to it. Until now that is. The new report has a brighter theme and even more important, a consistent one. Where there was previously different looks you’ll find that most, if not all, of the report sections has been updated to use the same style.

Polling

For those that wants to have updated member states more often there’s now an option to configure polling of member states. This ensures that the states of the members are up to date.

The console

Device overview

Devices breaks down, serial numbers change upon replacement and people forget to update. When logging a case with F5 you’ll sometimes have to log in to the device and check the serial number. If you have many devices you’ll know what I’m talking about.

This overview gives you dynamically updated table of your device so when a device is being replaced the new one will automatically appear here. Along with version, model and more. Check out the picture below to see an example.

Defined iRules

This part used to be available in the main report section but has now been moved to the console. All iRules can be shared if you choose to do so. But in case you want to only share some, here’s where you do it.

Certificates

This part gives you an overview of all your certificates. Checking if there are any certificates expiring soon is as easy as sorting by expiration dates in the table.

Logs

Does something look strange, or is the polling failing or disabled? Checking the logs section of the console might give you an idea of what’s wrong.

Help

Contains tips and tricks on things that users might not be aware of.

Improved sharing

The new version has a more modern way of letting users share what they’re seeing. Using the hash URI instead of query strings makes it possible to simply copy the URL in the browser. It’s now possible to share iRules, Data Group Lists, Virtual server details and every piece of the new shiny console.

Export to CSV

A bunch of people asked for the ability to export searches to CSV. If you enable it in the report configuration a button will be added to the main view where you can export the existing view to CSV.

Want to try it out? Installation instructions are available here:

https://loadbalancing.sebigip-report/#Installation_instructions