In the last couple of months I’ve been working on a project that includes vRA+vRO+NSX+F5. Really cool combination!

But, despite these products need to work together seamlessly, it is not always the case.

For example, vRA with NSX integration has a lot of capabilities for multi machine blueprints, but none for single blueprint. So you’ll have to use vRO to automate you processes such as Tagging Virtual Machine.

During the the design sessions for the project I tested the NSX-v Dynamic Types plugin. The NSX-v DT plugin has much more capabilities then the NSX-v official plugin in terms of extensibility (for more information about Dynamic Types enter here).

When I saw the Official F5 LTM plugin, I realized that I’ll have to use DT in order to fully automate that load balancing processes as the OOTB workflows were very limited and the inventory was not exists.

In order to develop the plugin I used the Dynamic Types Plugin Generator v2, that makes the developing process even more easier for REST API integrations.

The first release of the plugin has the following capabilities:

• Import/Delete Certificates
• Import/Delete Keys
• Create/Delete Self IP
• Create/Delete Vlan
• Create/Delete/Update HTTP/HTTPS Monitor
• Create/Disable/Enable NAT
• Create/Delete Node
• Create/Update/Delete Pool
• Add/Remove/Disable/Enable Pool Member
• Create/Delete Client SSL/Server SSL Profile
• Create/Delete SNAT
• Create/Delete SNAT Pool
• Create/Update/Delete Virtual Server
• vRealize Automation Load Balancer as a Service Samples

Here some screenshots from the plugin inventory:

Create Root Object Like Virtual Server, Pool, etc.

Day 2 Operation for Pool

Day 2 Operation for Virtual Server

The Plugin Inventory Includes iRules, Certificates, Keys and more.

How to Install:

• Download the package from flowgrab
• Rename the downloaded package com.vmware.sddc.f5.ltm.dynamictypes.v1.2.package
• Import the package
• Run the “Plugin gen -1- Install plug-in” workflow, select the package you renamed
• Import the LTM Server certificate to vRO using the vRO Configuration page or “Import a certificate from URL” workflow
• Run the “Plugin gen -2- Add new host” workflow. Enter a host URL starting with https:// (and not just the host name or http://)
• After a few minutes you can browse the inventory (Recommended: restart the vRO Server service to get better inventory performance)

Pre-req Versions:

• vRO 5.5.2.1 and above (tested on 5.5.2.1 and 6.0.1)
• LTM 11.6 (tested on 11.6 VE, the plugin won’t work on 11.4/11.5)
• Dynamic Types Plugin 1.0.0 and above (tested on (1.0.1)
• HTTP-Rest Plugin 1.0.3 and above (tested on 1.0.7)

I’m sure that this will help a lot of customers that looking for automate the LTM load balancing process not only for vRA use cases.

In the next post I’ll show you how to extend the plugin for your own needs, so stay tuned!

Please feel free to drop feedback’s and feature requests.

Huge thanks to Christophe Decanini that developed the dynamic types plugin generator and helped me during the developing process!

Enjoy!