8 ms·

A big F5 rig is basically Linux with a CLI/admin interface on top.

joshAg 8y ago
It's way more than that. Yeah the base OS on the machine is Linux, but there's a lot of extra stuff they do all the way down to the hardware layer.
- rhacker 8y ago
  So what does the likes of AWS (for example) use for load balancing for data coming into its various private clouds... f5s?
  - ikiris 8y ago
    the short version is "magic". The long version is, "varying degrees of horror"
  - kevan 8y ago
    This article provides some info: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-web-services-secret-weapon-custom-made-hardware-network/ https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-web-services-secret-wea...
  - ignoramous 8y ago
    Here's the ever excellent Eric Brandwine explaining what AWS does at L3 wrt VPC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qln2u1Vr2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qln2u1Vr2E Here's the super versatile Colm Mac explaining what AWS does at L4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gc2DgBqo9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gc2DgBqo9U --- Google has been very open about their network infrastructure, here's a nice summary from 2015: https://ai.googleblog.com/2015/08/pulling-back-curtain-on-googles-network.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2015/08/pulling-back-curtain-on-go... and not mentioned in that blog... their NetworkLoadBalancer, Maglev: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/google-shares-software-network-load-balancer-design-powering-gcp-networking https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/google-shares-sof... (AWS equivalent of which would be HyperPlane: https://atscaleconference.com/videos/networking-scale-2018-load-balancing-at-hyperscale/ https://atscaleconference.com/videos/networking-scale-2018-l... allegedly based on S3's load balancer).
gbuk2013 8y ago
(I work for F5.) This is not true - Linux is really just userspace to run our own data-plane code.
- pbarnes_1 8y ago
  Serious question: what does it actually do in non-corp speak, though?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - gbuk2013 8y ago
    Pretty much everything. :) L4-L7 load balancing, distributed DNS, SSL offload, WAF, DPI, data centre firewall and other things. With a nice WebUI to configure all that. The Tcl iRules allow you to hook into pretty much any stage of the request or the response L4-L7 at FPGA speeds to do whatever you wanted to the request / response data. It's a very powerful product.
    - tommu 8y ago
      "..a nice WebUI" I challenge that assertion!
      - gbuk2013 8y ago
        And you probably have a point, but it's all relative to configuring all that stuff by hand in the CLI, or worse using some other enterprise vendor's attempt at a "usable" UI ... ;)
      - throw0101a 8y ago
        > I challenge that assertion! For simple things it's adequate, but the fact that one can SSH is also helpful as there's a RHEL/CentOS base to work on. We're able to get Let's Encrypt working with a bash-only ACME client (dehydrated) is short order. Heck, run Ansible on it: * https://www.ansible.com/integrations/networks/f5 https://www.ansible.com/integrations/networks/f5 * https://github.com/F5Networks/f5-ansible https://github.com/F5Networks/f5-ansible
astrodust 8y ago
It used to actually a BSD rig with a CLI/admin interface on top.
- chupasaurus 8y ago
  It's not about that. FPGAs behind engineering solution to digest packets at big PPS behind interface is what it does. You know, Cisco's IOS XR is built on Linux, but all the real parts are behind their private kernel modules running on ASICs and FPGAs, traffic doesn't even touches the TCP/IP stack of the OS. Cisco ASAs have Celeron/Atom CPUs which obviously couldn't hold the specified loads.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  The control plane can be a raspberry pi. Its what allows you to modify the rules how you route. Its the interface. The data plane is where you have high speed logic and data traveling. That's where you do the multiple 100GBps software defined networking, and its crazy fast chips doing it. And the control plane has interconnects to program the data plane chips to the rules you want. So the data never hits the control plane at all. Its kind of like a water faucet where the knob doesn't touch the water but controls the floodgates.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    That may be the case now, but ages ago it was just a fancy BSD box as far as I could tell. I used to be a reseller for their product circa 2000 and I wasn't aware of any proprietary hardware inside, just a really lean networking stack. We were getting slammed on duty for the product and we were looking at ways of getting the appliances built locally using licensed F5 software, as the software itself wasn't as heavily taxed as the physical hardware. Everything in it seemed fairly commodity, except for the big F5 logo on the front. It was an appliance that worked fantastically well. One deployment had an uptime of over ten years.

It's way more than that. Yeah the base OS on the machine is Linux, but there's a lot of extra stuff they do all the way down to the hardware layer.

rhacker 8y ago
So what does the likes of AWS (for example) use for load balancing for data coming into its various private clouds... f5s?
- ikiris 8y ago
  the short version is "magic". The long version is, "varying degrees of horror"
- kevan 8y ago
  This article provides some info: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-web-services-secret-weapon-custom-made-hardware-network/ https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-web-services-secret-wea...
- ignoramous 8y ago
  Here's the ever excellent Eric Brandwine explaining what AWS does at L3 wrt VPC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qln2u1Vr2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qln2u1Vr2E Here's the super versatile Colm Mac explaining what AWS does at L4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gc2DgBqo9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gc2DgBqo9U --- Google has been very open about their network infrastructure, here's a nice summary from 2015: https://ai.googleblog.com/2015/08/pulling-back-curtain-on-googles-network.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2015/08/pulling-back-curtain-on-go... and not mentioned in that blog... their NetworkLoadBalancer, Maglev: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/google-shares-software-network-load-balancer-design-powering-gcp-networking https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/google-shares-sof... (AWS equivalent of which would be HyperPlane: https://atscaleconference.com/videos/networking-scale-2018-load-balancing-at-hyperscale/ https://atscaleconference.com/videos/networking-scale-2018-l... allegedly based on S3's load balancer).

gbuk2013 8y ago

(I work for F5.) This is not true - Linux is really just userspace to run our own data-plane code.

pbarnes_1 8y ago
Serious question: what does it actually do in non-corp speak, though?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- gbuk2013 8y ago
  Pretty much everything. :) L4-L7 load balancing, distributed DNS, SSL offload, WAF, DPI, data centre firewall and other things. With a nice WebUI to configure all that. The Tcl iRules allow you to hook into pretty much any stage of the request or the response L4-L7 at FPGA speeds to do whatever you wanted to the request / response data. It's a very powerful product.
  - tommu 8y ago
    "..a nice WebUI" I challenge that assertion!
    - gbuk2013 8y ago
      And you probably have a point, but it's all relative to configuring all that stuff by hand in the CLI, or worse using some other enterprise vendor's attempt at a "usable" UI ... ;)
    - throw0101a 8y ago
      > I challenge that assertion! For simple things it's adequate, but the fact that one can SSH is also helpful as there's a RHEL/CentOS base to work on. We're able to get Let's Encrypt working with a bash-only ACME client (dehydrated) is short order. Heck, run Ansible on it: * https://www.ansible.com/integrations/networks/f5 https://www.ansible.com/integrations/networks/f5 * https://github.com/F5Networks/f5-ansible https://github.com/F5Networks/f5-ansible

astrodust 8y ago

It used to actually a BSD rig with a CLI/admin interface on top.

chupasaurus 8y ago
It's not about that. FPGAs behind engineering solution to digest packets at big PPS behind interface is what it does. You know, Cisco's IOS XR is built on Linux, but all the real parts are behind their private kernel modules running on ASICs and FPGAs, traffic doesn't even touches the TCP/IP stack of the OS. Cisco ASAs have Celeron/Atom CPUs which obviously couldn't hold the specified loads.
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
The control plane can be a raspberry pi. Its what allows you to modify the rules how you route. Its the interface. The data plane is where you have high speed logic and data traveling. That's where you do the multiple 100GBps software defined networking, and its crazy fast chips doing it. And the control plane has interconnects to program the data plane chips to the rules you want. So the data never hits the control plane at all. Its kind of like a water faucet where the knob doesn't touch the water but controls the floodgates.
- astrodust 8y ago
  That may be the case now, but ages ago it was just a fancy BSD box as far as I could tell. I used to be a reseller for their product circa 2000 and I wasn't aware of any proprietary hardware inside, just a really lean networking stack. We were getting slammed on duty for the product and we were looking at ways of getting the appliances built locally using licensed F5 software, as the software itself wasn't as heavily taxed as the physical hardware. Everything in it seemed fairly commodity, except for the big F5 logo on the front. It was an appliance that worked fantastically well. One deployment had an uptime of over ten years.