The demand got here from a niche that general-purpose observability instruments weren’t filling. Clients working instruments like Datadog and New Relic advised F5 they wanted one thing totally different.
F5 Perception pulls from know-how acquired by means of the Menace Stack and Fletch acquisitions and runs on F5’s AI knowledge cloth. It consists of an AI assistant educated on F5’s product information base. Capabilities embrace explaining what an current iRule does when pasted in or producing a brand new iRule from a pure language description. F5 Perception is usually obtainable now as self-managed software program for Large-IP. A SaaS supply mannequin is deliberate, and protection will lengthen to NGINX and Distributed Cloud Companies in future releases.
Large-IP v21.1 modernizes the management airplane
The Large-IP software supply controller (ADC) has lengthy been on the basis of F5’s know-how stack. The brand new Large-IP v21.1 replace addresses two areas: management airplane scalability and post-quantum cryptography readiness. On the management airplane aspect, buyer automation necessities drove the work.
“Clients had been relying an increasing number of on automated workflows,” Wormke stated. “They wanted a management airplane that might scale with it.”
The purpose, he stated, was to verify F5 was not the bottleneck in clients’ automation methods. The discharge introduces the Large-IP Declarative API, designed for patrons working automation at scale throughout massive or regularly altering environments. TMOS, the underlying Linux-based working system for Large-IP, continues to be up to date as a part of the identical modernization effort. Wormke famous that almost all clients run each {hardware} and software program deployments relying on workload.
On the safety aspect, v21.1 provides NIST-compliant post-quantum cryptography ciphers utilizing hybrid TLS cipher teams, which permit organizations to allow PQC help whereas sustaining compatibility with current cryptographic configurations. Large-IP Zero Belief Entry, previously Large-IP Entry Coverage Supervisor, features quantum-resistant TLS and SSL VPN tunneling. Wormke stated the intent is to provide clients an on-ramp earlier than Q-Day arrives.
