Module 2 – iWorkflow

In this module we will explore how to use F5’s iWorkflow platform to further abstract application services and deliver those services to tenants. iWorkflow has two main purposes in the Automation & Orchestration toolchain:

  • Provide simplified but customizable Device Onboarding workflows
  • Provide a tenant/provider interface for L4 – L7 service delivery

When moving to an iWorkflow based toolchain it’s important to understand that L1-3 Automation (Device Onboarding, Networking, etc) and L4-7 (Deployment of Virtual Servers, Pools, etc) are separated and delivered by different features.

L1-3 Networking and Device Onboarding are delivered by ‘Cloud Connectors’ that are specific to the third party technology ecosystem (e.g. vCMP, AWS, Cisco APIC, VMware NSX, BIG-IP, etc).

L4-7 service delivery is accomplished by:

  • Declarative: Consuming F5 iApp templates from BIG-IP devices and creating a Service Catalog.
  • Imperative: Consuming the iWorkflow REST Proxy to drive API calls to BIG-IP devices

The labs in the module will focus on the high level features in place to achieve full L1-7 automation. As mentioned above, iApps are a key component of this toolchain. For our purposes we will use the f5.http iApp to create simple examples. For more advanced use cases it’s often required to use a ‘Declarative’ or ‘Deployment-centric’ iApp template. A community-supported template of this nature called the App Services Integration iApp is available at https://github.com/0xHiteshPatel/appsvcs_integration_iapp for this purpose.