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, 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 supported template of this nature called the App Services Integration iApp is available at https://github.com/F5Networks/f5-application-services-integration-iApp for this purpose.