Applies To:
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BIG-IP AFM
- 11.5.2
Summary:
This release note documents the version 11.5.2 release of BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM).
Contents:
- Supported platforms
- Configuration utility browser support
- User documentation for this release
- New features introduced in 11.5.2
- Supported high availability configurations for Advanced Firewall Manager
- Installation overview
- Behavior changes in 11.5.2
- Known issues
- Fixes in 11.5.2
- Contacting F5 Networks
- Legal notices
Supported platforms
This version of the software is supported on the following platforms:
| Platform name | Platform ID |
|---|---|
| BIG-IP 1600 | C102 |
| BIG-IP 3600 | C103 |
| BIG-IP 3900 | C106 |
| BIG-IP 6900 | D104 |
| BIG-IP 8900 | D106 |
| BIG-IP 8950 | D107 |
| BIG-IP 11000 | E101 |
| BIG-IP 11050 | E102 |
| BIG-IP 2000s, BIG-IP 2200s | C112 |
| BIG-IP 4000s, BIG-IP 4200v | C113 |
| BIG-IP 5000s, 5050s, 5200v, 5250v | C109 |
| BIG-IP 7000s, 7050s, 7200v, 7250v | D110 |
| BIG-IP 12250v (requires 11.6.0 HF2) | D111 |
| BIG-IP 10350N (requires 11.6.0 HF2) | D112 |
| BIG-IP 10000s, 10050s, 10200v, 10250v | D113 |
| VIPRION B2100 Blade | A109 |
| VIPRION B2150 Blade | A113 |
| VIPRION B2250 Blade | A112 |
| VIPRION B4100, B4100N Blade | A100, A105 |
| VIPRION B4200, B4200N Blade | A107, A111 |
| VIPRION B4300, B4340N Blade | A108, A110 |
| VIPRION C2200 Chassis | D114 |
| VIPRION C2400 Chassis | F100 |
| VIPRION C4400, C4400N Chassis | J100, J101 |
| VIPRION C4480, C4480N Chassis | J102, J103 |
| VIPRION C4800, C4800N Chassis | S100, S101 |
| Virtual Edition (VE) | Z100 |
| vCMP Guest | Z101 |
These platforms support various licensable combinations of product modules. This section provides general guidelines for module support.
Most of the support guidelines relate to memory. The following list applies for all memory levels:
- vCMP supported platforms
- VIPRION B2100, B2150, B2250, B4200, B4300, B4340N
- BIG-IP 5200v, 7200v, 10200v
Memory: 12 GB or more
All licensable module-combinations may be run on platforms with 12 GB or more of memory, and on VE and vCMP guests provisioned with 12 GB or more of memory. Note that this does not mean that all modules may be simultaneously provisioned on all platforms with 12 GB or more of memory. The BIG-IP license for the platform determines which combination of modules are available for provisioning.
Memory: 8 GB
The following guidelines apply to the BIG-IP 2000s, 2200s, 3900, 6900 platforms, to the VIPRION B4100 and B4100N platforms, and to VE guests configured with 8 GB of memory. (A vCMP guest provisioned with 8 GB of memory has less than 8 GB of memory actually available and thus does not fit in this category.)
- No more than three modules should be provisioned together.
- On the 2000s and 2200s, Application Acceleration Manager (AAM) can be provisioned with only one other module.
Memory: Less than 8 GB and more than 4 GB
The following guidelines apply to platforms, and to VE and vCMP guests provisioned with less than 8 GB and more than 4 GB of memory. (A vCMP guest provisioned with 8 GB of memory has less than 8 GB of memory actually available and thus fits in this category.)
- No more than three modules (not including AAM) should be provisioned together.
- Application Acceleration Manager (AAM) cannot be provisioned with any other module; AAM can only be provisioned standalone.
- Analytics (AVR) counts towards the two module-combination limit (for platforms with less than 6.25 GB of memory).
Memory: 4 GB or less
The following guidelines apply to the BIG-IP 1600 and 3600 platforms, and to VE and vCMP guests provisioned with 4 GB or less of memory.
- No more than two modules may be configured together.
- AAM should not be provisioned, except as Dedicated.
vCMP memory provisioning calculations
The amount of memory provisioned to a vCMP guest is calculated using the following formula: (platform_memory- 3 GB) x (cpus_assigned_to_guest/ total_cpus).
As an example, for the B2100 with two guests, provisioned memory calculates as: (16-3) x (2/4) ~= 6.5 GB.
Configuration utility browser support
The BIG-IP Configuration Utility supports these browsers and versions:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.x, 11.x
- Mozilla Firefox 27.x
- Google Chrome 32.x
User documentation for this release
For a comprehensive list of documentation that is relevant to this release, refer to the BIG-IP AFM / VE 11.5.0 Documentation page.
New features introduced in 11.5.2
There are no new features in Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) 11.5.2.
AFM introduced several new features with release 11.5.0.
IP intelligence whitelists and blacklists
This release introduces robust enhancements to the IP intelligence system that include the ability to blacklist or whitelist IP addresses. IP addresses that are blacklisted or whitelisted can be assigned to pre-existing or user-defined blacklist classes (called categories in tmsh), and firewall actions can be applied based on those categories. Advanced Firewall Manager can be configured to query dynamic lists of blacklist or whitelist addresses, called feeds, and update the configuration accordingly.
Nested address lists and port lists
Address lists can contain combinations of single IP addresses, IP address ranges, geographic locations, and other address lists. Port lists can contain single ports, port ranges, and other port lists.
Geolocation for source or destination addresses
Firewall rules can use geolocation addresses, such as country, region, and state codes, in source or destination addresses.
Stale, redundant, and overlapping rules detection
You can more easily check for and remove stale rules that either have never been hit, or are hit infrequently. You can also see rules that are redundant or overlap other rules.
DoS white list
You can specify addresses to exclude from denial-of-service (DoS) detection, by adding them to a DoS whitelist.
DoS sweep and flood detection
You can configure thresholds for DoS sweep and flood attack protection from the DoS device configuration.
Maximized Enterprise Application Delivery Value
To make it easier and more affordable to get the Software Defined Application Services capabilities all organizations need, F5 introduces three software bundle offerings: Good, Better, and Best.- Good
- Provides intelligent local traffic management for increased operational efficiency and peak network performance of applications.
- Better
- Good plus enhanced network security, global server load balancing, and advanced application delivery optimization.
- Best
- Better plus advanced access management and total application security. Delivers the ultimate in security, performance, and availability for your applications and network.
Supported high availability configurations for Advanced Firewall Manager
Advanced Firewall Manager is supported in both active-standby and active-active configurations with BIG-IP systems.
Installation overview
- Upgrade from 11.x configurations: BIG-IP Systems: Upgrading 11.x Software
- Upgrade from 10.x Active-Standby configurations: BIG-IP Systems: Upgrading Active-Standby Systems
- Upgrade from 10.x Active-Active configurations: BIG-IP Systems: Upgrading Active-Active Systems
Installation checklist
Before you begin:
- Use BIG-IP iHealth to verify your configuration file. For more information, see SOL12878: Generating BIG-IP diagnostic data using the qkview utility (10.x - 11.x).
- Update/reactivate your system license, if needed, to ensure that you have a valid service check date.
- Ensure that your system is running version 10.1.0 or later and is using the volumes formatting scheme.
- Download the .iso file (if needed) from F5 Downloads to /shared/images on the source for the operation. (If you need to create this directory, use the exact name /shared/images.)
- Configure a management port.
- Set the console and system baud rate to 19200, if it is not already.
- Log on as an administrator using the management port of the system you want to upgrade.
- Boot into an installation location other than the target for the installation.
- Save the user configuration set (UCS) in the /var/local/ucs directory on the source installation location, and copy the UCS file to a safe place on another device.
- Log on to the standby unit, and only upgrade the active unit after the standby upgrade is satisfactory.
- Turn off mirroring.
- If you are running Application Acceleration Manager, set provisioning to Minimum.
- If you are running Policy Enforcement Manager, set provisioning to Nominal.
- If you are running Advanced Firewall Manager, set provisioning to Nominal.
Installing the software
| Installation method | Command |
|---|---|
| Install to existing volume, migrate source configuration to destination | tmsh install sys software image [image name] volume [volume name] |
| Install from the browser-based Configuration utility | Use the Software Management screens in a web browser. |
Sample installation command
The following command installs version 11.2.0 to volume 3 of the main hard drive.
tmsh install sys software image BIGIP-11.2.0.2446.0.iso volume HD1.3
Post-installation tasks
- Upgrade from 11.x configurations: BIG-IP Systems: Upgrading 11.x Software
- Upgrade from 10.x Active-Standby configurations: BIG-IP Systems: Upgrading Active-Standby Systems
- Upgrade from 10.x Active-Active configurations: BIG-IP Systems: Upgrading Active-Active Systems
- Ensure the system rebooted to the new installation location.
- Use BIG-IP iHealth to verify your configuration file. For more information, see SOL12878: Generating BIG-IP diagnostic data using the qkview utility (10.x - 11.x).
- Log on to the browser-based Configuration utility.
- Run the Setup utility.
- Provision the modules.
- Convert any bigpipe scripts to tmsh. (Version 11.x does not support the bigpipe utility.)
Installation tips
- The upgrade process installs the software on the inactive installation location that you specify. This process usually takes between three minutes and seven minutes. During the upgrade process, you see messages posted on the screen. For example, you might see a prompt asking whether to upgrade the End User Diagnostics (EUD), depending on the version you have installed. To upgrade the EUD, type yes, otherwise, type no.
- You can check the status of an active installation operation by running the command watch tmsh show sys software, which runs the show sys software command every two seconds. Pressing Ctrl + C stops the watch feature.
- If installation fails, you can view the log file. The system stores the installation log file as /var/log/liveinstall.log.
Behavior changes in 11.5.2
| ID number | Description |
|---|---|
| 519474 | Inline firewall rules have been removed from AFM in this release. Inline rules are those which are added directly to firewall contexts (global, route domain, virtual server, and self IP). Management port rules are excluded, and are still configured inline. In place of inline rules, users should create firewall policies which are attached by reference to firewall contexts as necessary. During an upgrade, existing inline rules associated with these contexts are moved into new auto-generated policies. These auto-generated policies are prepended with VersionUpgradeAutoGenPolicy- to simplify identification. Auto-generated policies are automatically enforced on the respective context to which the previous inline rules apply. For HA pairs, auto-generated policies that are applied to non-floating self IPs are usable only for that self IP, and are not synced among HA peers. This behavior replicates the previous behavior for inline rules applied to non-floating self IPs. Other auto-generated policies are not affected. However, if a policy generated for another context is later applied to a non-floating self IP, the sync for that policy will be permanently disabled. |
Known issues
This release contains the following known issues.
| ID number | Description |
|---|---|
| 404876 | When an existing rule is modified or when it transitions from active to inactive due to scheduling, the associated hit counters are reset. |
| 407452 | The virtual server does not have the capability to detect DoS attacks or anomalies. As a workaround, attach the corresponding base protocol profile to the virtual. |
| 414228 | Creating a DSlite tunnel may cause the network firewall to log messages indicating that the tunnel matched the virtual server default rule. |
| 415107 | When creating a firewall rule with both rule list and IP protocol specified in the tmsh command, no IP protocol validation error message will be shown. Instead, the IP protocol field will be silently ignored. |
| 415442 | Configuring the network firewall of a VCMP guest to log to local-db can result in performance degradation and loss of traffic in environments with significant load. F5 recommends using the High Speed Logging (HSL) feature to log off the box. |
| 415772 | Currently, when a network firewall rule matches a VLAN, the VLAN group name appears in the log, instead of the VLAN name. |
| 419263 | In the event of an ARP flood attack, the AVR reporting message does not have show the correct source IP address. |
| 426274 | If the daily schedule for a rule starts before the start date and time specified in the schedule. For example, assume the current time is 2013-07-26 16:20:00. If you specify the following schedule and associate it with a rule, the rule will not get scheduled at all. tmsh modify security firewall schedule sched1 {date-valid-start 2013-07-26:16:24:00 date-valid-end 2013-07-26:16:29:00 daily-hour-start 16:23 daily-hour-end 16:27 } As a workaround, make sure that date-valid-start is not before daily-hour-start. A working example, assuming the current time is 2013-07-26 16:20:00. Configure the date-valid-start to be the previous day: tmsh modify security firewall schedule sched1 {date-valid-start 2013-07-25:16:24:00 date-valid-end 2013-07-26:16:29:00 daily-hour-start 16:23 daily-hour-end 16:27 } |
| 429106 | Overlapping rules are not detected if one rule has geolocation defined and the other has the explicit IP address, which is matching the defined geolocation. For overlapping checking purposes, IP address and geolocation are considered different matching fields. The overlapping rule check will not check across different fields, such as IP address and geolocation. |
| 429401 | Overlapping checks will not report the overlapping status of firewall rules, that contain the property schedule. Those firewall rules are not always active and are not considered when performing overlapping rule checks. In the current release, the overlapping rule check only reports overlapping status for rules that are always active. |
| 430754 | AFM prevents BIG-IP from responding to traceroute utilities. |
| 431677 | Due to the way compilation time of firewall rulesets is calculated, the time may appear to be understated. Compilation time does not include time when the compilation process is blocked waiting for other processes. |
| 432661 | When traffic is across multiple modules, DoS Sweep and Flood detection accuracy may not be optimal. For example, for 2 blade system, for threshold = 1200, detection happens around ~1150 rate; for threshold = 3000, detection happens around ~2800 rate. |
| 436058 | The DoS Device whitelist does not work for a system in vCMP mode. The DoS whitelist must not contain any entries to provision vCMP. |
| 436691 | Most firewall contexts follow the standard rules for referencing objects outside their own partition. For example, a firewall policy in partition /A may not be assigned, either as an enforced or staged policy, to a virtual server in the /Common partition. The global firewall context, however, is not subject to the standard restrictions on cross-partition assignment. If any firewall policies exist in partitions other than the /Common partition, a Firewall Manager or a more privileged user may assign these policies to the global firewall context. |
| 441597 | When displaying stats user will see a 0 count for network category of IP intelligence statistics. That category is not in use in the system. |
| 455530 | Global Default rule should not have "Latest Match = 'Never'" when its counter is non-zero |
| 456420 | Wrong counters for rules in rule-list in global staging policy |
| 459294 | When the global log throttling rate limit is configured using the "global-network" logging profile, you might not see log drops reported through the period dropped digest log message. No configuration warning is provided to the user when the log publisher is missing from the log profile, whenever rate limits are set. |
| 462536 | When a DoS UDP port list is configured via sys db variables dos.udplimiter, the configuration is not automatically migrated during the upgrade to 11.6. |
| 462997 | If an IPFIX log publisher is configured, it does not generate logs, and creates a configuration error. |
| 463558 | When a management port rule is configured, and another management port rule is added or changed, counters for the management port rule are not correct. |
| 465292 | Overlapping rule status for unassigned policies is not displayed. |
| 465415 | AFM DoS has not been tested or qualified with QinQ tunnels. |
| 469600 | Traffic statistics on a multiple blade system are reported for each blade, but they are also reported in aggregate for the primary blade. |
| 470917 | Calendar widget pops after custom search in Event_logs-Network-Firewall |
| 475604 | Summary screen widget options show different options |
| 478538 | Error on empty search results for HTTP Security Profiles or DoS Profiles |
| 494504 | error message is not clear when creating a new rule with a new policy without entering the policy name |
| 496179 | Creating new Active Rule to assign policy to a VIP forces user to create rule |
| 496278 | "Disabling/enabling Rule within Rule List causes disabling/enabling of other Rule with the same name in a single Policy on Active Rule Page in GUI." |
| 497004 | Policy field is not marked as containing errors when we try to create Rule without Policy |
| 497311 | Can't add a icmpv6 type and code to a FW rule |
| 497424 | Policy name field is appeared on Rule creation page even Policy is selected |
| 497691 | Error occurs on "Security Event Logs" pages because of wrong date format if "date to" was changed in Custom Search |
| 498150 | "General database error retrieving information" appears on Self IP Security page after removing a rule and refreshing the page |
| 498490 | Wrong Overlapping statuses are shown for assigned Policy on Policy page (the same names of Rule and Rule in Rule List) |
Contacting F5 Networks
| Phone: | (206) 272-6888 |
| Fax: | (206) 272-6802 |
| Web: | http://support.f5.com |
| Email: | support@f5.com |
For additional information, please visit http://www.f5.com.
Additional resources
You can find additional support resources and technical documentation through a variety of sources.
- The F5 Networks Technical Support web site: http://www.f5.com/support/
- The AskF5 web site: http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us.html
- The F5 DevCentral web site: http://devcentral.f5.com/
- AskF5 TechNews
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