Manual Chapter : Self-Service Application Deployment

Applies To:

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BIG-IQ Cloud

  • 4.3.0
Manual Chapter

About self-service application deployment

Cloud service providers customize iApps application templates based on your needs as a cloud tenant. For example, they specify such things as an IP address for a virtual server, identify hosts and server pools, set connection limits, and so forth. This customization eliminates the need for you to perform complicated networking tasks, and ensures that your settings are optimized for your resources. When these customized applications are associated with you as a tenant, you have the option to further modify the applications as required, and deploy them as needed.

Additionally, BIG-IQ Cloud provides you with optional self-service access to SSL certificates that you can deploy on demand to your managed BIG-IP devices.

Deploying applications

Before you can deploy and use an application, your cloud service provider must add you as a user and a tenant, and associate you with at least one cloud connector.
When a cloud administrator adds you as a cloud tenant user, they contact you with the details about the resources to which you have access. These resources are provided to you in the form of an application template. As a cloud tenant user, you can customize these application templates and deploy them.
  1. Log in to the BIG-IQ Cloud with your tenant user name and password.
  2. Hover over the Applications header, and click the + icon when it appears.
  3. In the Name field, type a name for this new application.
  4. From the Application Type list, select an application.
  5. From the Cloud Connector list, select the cloud connector associated with where you want to deploy your application.
  6. To configure BIG-IQ Cloud to automatically provision additional resources when traffic to your application increases, select Enable from the Server Elasticity list and specify the settings for the server elasticity options that display. This option is available only for the EC2 connector. For automatic server provisioning to work, your cloud service provider must have enabled the Server Elasticity setting for this EC2 connector.
    1. From the Node Image list, select the image from which to create new application servers when capacity is met and additional servers are required.
    2. In the Min. # of Servers field, type the minimum number of application servers you want running at any given time.
    3. In the Max. # of Servers field, type the maximum number of application servers you want running when additional servers are required.
    4. From the Monitor By list, select the category associated with the statistic on which you want to base the threshold value.
    5. For the When setting, select a specific statistic, the associated relational operator, and a type a number in the field for the threshold. Base the threshold on the maximum amount of traffic a server can reasonably process for this application to ensure that BIG-IQ Cloud adds additional resources at the right time.
    6. In the Add Servers field, type the number of application servers you want BIG-IQ Cloud to add when this threshold is met.
  7. To define a new SSL certificate and private key for this application, for the SSL Certificate Options, paste the PEM (CRT or CER) text representation of the certificate and private key. The SSL certificate and private key must be unbundled Base64 encoded ASCII text with PEM header and footer.
  8. Alternatively, select the Use Existing option to use a SSL certificate and private key already stored on the device.
  9. You can further customize this application by specifying an IP address for the virtual server and adding pool hosts. If your cloud service provider assigned IP addresses for the Servers, Pool Hosts, and Pool Members for this application, the addresses display. If these addresses were specified as not editable, you cannot change them.
  10. When you are finished, click the Deploy button located at the top of the New Application panel.
You can now use this new application, and any application server associated with this new application displays in the Server panel.