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Release Note: BIG-IP AFM 11.4.1

Original Publication Date: 05/20/2014

Summary:

This release note documents the version 11.4.1 release of the new module, BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM).

Contents:

- Supported platforms
- Configuration utility browser support
- User documentation for this release
- New features introduced in 11.4.1
- Supported high availability configurations for Advanced Firewall Manager
- Installation overview
     - Installation checklist
     - Installing the software
     - Post-installation tasks
     - Installation tips
- Known issues
- Fixes in 11.4.1
- Contacting F5 Networks
- Legal notices

Supported platforms

This version of the software is supported on the following platforms:

Platform name	Platform ID
BIG-IP 800 (LTM only)	C114
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, BIG-IP 5200v BIG-IP 5x50 (requires 11.4.1 HF3)	C109
BIG-IP 7000s, BIG-IP 7200v BIG-IP 7x50 (requires 11.4.1 HF3)	D110
BIG-IP 10x50 (requires 11.4.1 HF3)	D112
BIG-IP 10000s, BIG-IP 10200v	D113
VIPRION B2100 Blade	A109
VIPRION B2150 Blade	A113
VIPRION B2250 Blade (requires 11.4.1 HF1)	A112
VIPRION C2400 Chassis	F100
VIPRION B4100, B4100N Blade	A100, A105
VIPRION B4200, B4200N Blade	A107, A111
VIPRION B4300, B4340N Blade	A108, A110
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 on the platform or provisioned guest. For vCMP support and for Policy Enforcement Module (PEM), Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT), and the BIG-IP 800 platform, the following list applies for all memory levels:

vCMP supported platforms
- VIPRION B2100, B2150, B2250, B4200, B4300, B4340N
- BIG-IP 5200v, 7200v, 10200v

PEM and CGNAT supported platforms
- VIPRION B2150, B2250, B4300, B4340N
- BIG-IP 5200v, 7200v, 10200v
- BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) (Not including Amazon Web Service Virtual Edition)
- PEM and CGNAT may be provisioned on the VIPRION B4200, but it is not recommended for production, only for evaluation. PEM may be provisioned on the VIPRION B2100, but it is not recommended for production, only for evaluation. Use the B4300 or B4340N instead.

BIG-IP 800 platform support
- The BIG-IP 800 platform supports Local Traffic Manager (LTM) only, and no other modules.

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.

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.
Note that Global Traffic Manager (GTM) and Link Controller (LC) do not count toward the module-combination limit.

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.
Note that GTM and LC do not count toward the module-combination limit.
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.

VIPRION and vCMP caching and deduplication requirements

Application Acceleration Manager (AAM) supports the following functionality when configuring vCMP and VIPRION platforms.

AAM does not support disk-based caching functionality on vCMP platforms. AAM requires memory-based caching when configuring it to run on vCMP platforms.
AAM supports disk-based caching functionality on VIPRION chassis or blades.
AAM does not support deduplication functionality on vCMP platforms, or VIPRION chassis or blades.

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 and 9.x
Mozilla Firefox 15.0.x
Google Chrome 21.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 11.4.0 Documentation page.

New features introduced in 11.4.1

The Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) introduces several new features with release 11.4.1:

iRules can be an AFM Rule Action

iRules support for AFM has been added in this release. Please visit F5 DevCentral for more information.

Per Virtual Server Network DoS rate limiting

Network DoS can now be configured as a separate DoS profile, and assigned per virtual server. These features are an early release. For 11.4.1, these features have the following restrictions.

There is currently no GUI support for this feature.
unlike the Global Flood Limits, Relative thresholds are not supported at this time.
These features should be configured only with the assistance of your sales representative

The dos-network profile can be configured within a security DoS profile.

Add a security DoS profile for network DoS:

[create | modify | delete] security dos profile <profile_name> dos-network add { <profile_name> }

Set flood limits for UDP floods, TCP-SYN floods, and TCP-RST floods:

[create | modify | delete] security dos profile <profile_name> dos-network [add | del | modify] { <profile_name> { network-attack-vector add { tcp-syn-flood { rate-limit <value> rate-threshold <value> } } } }

Add the profile to a virtual server:

modify ltm virtual <virtual-name> profiles add <profile_name>

Software SYN Cookie Protection for nPath Routing

“In this release, you can now configure SYN cookie protection in a nPath routing environment. When configured, SYN traffic will be challenged with an RST handled solely on the BIG-IP device. Clients that attempt to reconnect will be accepted. If a client completes the challenge, the client is cached and traffic is allowed through to the configured pool. The system db variable TM.FlowState.Timeout controls how long entries are cached.

Note: Hardware SYN cookie protection must be disabled to use this feature.

tmsh [create|modify] ltm profile fastl4 <profile_name> { loose-close enabled software-syn-cookie enabled hardware-syn-cookie disabled } }

Note: nPath Routing is also known as Asymmetric Routing or Direct Server Return (DSR). For more information, refer to the Introducing nPath Routing section of the BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager: Implementations guide.

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.

You can learn more about these new software bundles from your F5 Networks Sales Representative.

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

This document covers very basic steps for installing the software. You can find complete, step-by-step installation and upgrade instructions in BIG-IP Systems: Upgrading Active-Standby Systems and BIG-IP Systems: Upgrading Active-Active Systems, and we strongly recommend that you reference these documents to ensure successful completion of the installation process.

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

You can install the software at the command line using the Traffic Management shell, tmsh, or in the browser-based Configuration utility using the Software Management screens, available in the System menu. Choose the installation method that best suits your environment.

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

After the installation finishes, you must complete the following steps before the system can pass traffic.

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.)

Note: You can find information about running the Setup utility and provisioning the modules in the BIG-IP TMOS implementations Creating an Active-Standby Configuration Using the Setup Utility and Creating an Active-Active Configuration Using the Setup 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.

Known issues

This release contains the following known issues.

ID Number	Description
393176	Self IP and Virtual Server firewall rules that contain ICMP specifications are not enforced by the system. A workaround is to create such firewall rules either in the global or corresponding route domain context.
397146	DNS Services/DNSSEC/GTM licensing is required in order to use the DNS firewall.
401090	Currently, various TCP option attacks cannot be detected without hardware assistance if the packets have a fixed pattern.
401181, 404377	Due to limitations with the kernel version, and with libraries available, IPv6 stats and logs are not supported on the management port.
401696	In the current release, when an ICMP packet matches a firewall rule, the firewall log lists `source_port` and `dest_port`. These values represent the ICMP Header fields `Identifier` (source_port) and `Type` field (dest_port).
402624, 389799	In this release, if the rule contains several values such as addresses and ports, regardless of whether it is assigned to the rule or defined explicitly in the rule, the number of rules will be equal to a multiplication of the values. For example, if each rule has 20 source ports, 20 destination ports, 20 source addresses and 20 destination addresses, each rule is in fact 160,000 rules. The limitation for the release is 20K rules.
406062	NAT and SNAT rules do not appear as implied rules in the firewall, though they do pass traffic.
408187	If the default firewall action is set to either `Drop` or `Reject`, NAT functionality does not work as expected and traffic destined to a NAT object is dropped or rejected. As a workaround, create a global or corresponding route domain firewall rule with the action `Accept Decisively` and all the other required parameters (such as Source Address/Port, Destination Address/Port, Protocol etc.) as appropriate for the specific NAT traffic.
408760	A staging policy on a particular context might not behave the same when staged, after changing it to an enforcement policy. Because there can be multiple staged policies on different contexts, the staged policy results you see (in logs and stats) are actually the aggregate of all staged policies on all contexts. Thus, if you enforce a previously staged policy on one or more contexts but still have other staged policies on other contexts that you do not enforce, the actual enforced results might differ from what you expected per the log and stat results.
4142281	Currently, any traffic to a DS-lite tunnel is reported to AVR as a Virtual default rule match. If default rule logging is enabled, any traffic to the DS-lite tunnel is logged as a Virtual default rule match.
415075	Currently, log translations are not written to the log for Global and Route Domain context rules, even in the case of ICMP forwarding.
415452	Currently, DoS attack detection for the ssl-renegotiation vector does not occur. Stats, logging and analytics do not report any data for SSL renegotiation vector attacks.
415772	Currently, when a network firewall rule matches a VLAN that is in a VLAN group, the VLAN group name appears in the log, instead of the VLAN name.
421016	Currently, when the Network Firewall is configured in Firewall mode (default deny), WOM traffic may be dropped. The Network Firewall does work with WOM when configured in ADC mode (default allow for self IPs and virtual servers).

Fixes in 11.4.1

There are no fixes in release 11.4.1 of the Advanced Firewall Manager.

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/
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