BIG IQ Reporting for Subscription and ELA Programs Chase Abbott, 2018 08 11 October 2018 Rev:D Scope This document describes the following: When reporting is needed and how the report is used How BIG IQ reporting determines what to include in the report Submission models Manual and Automatic How to find missing reports Detailed Report contents When reporting is needed and how the report is used For subscription and ELA programs, administrator must use BIG IQ to issue licenses to BIG IP VE instances and keep track of usage. By the 10th day of the month, a usage report is submitted from BIG IQ to F5 for processing from the previous calendar month. The report contains information on the license grant and revoke operations across your infrastructure where BIG IQ is managing the licenses. How BIG IQ reporting determines what to include in the report It is important to understand how BIG IQ determines what to include in the report because it affects what you need to send to F5 on a periodic basis. BIG IQ keeps track of all the licensing activities (grant of license, revoke of license) in its database as a time series of events. Each time a report is generated, BIG IQ remembers the end date/time of the report and subsequent reports only report on transactions occurring after the last report. Consider the following reporting activities: Report 1 will contain all transactions plus all outstanding license grants (not yet revoked) from the system s first start up until 6/2/2018 12:12:00Z. Report 2 will contain all transactions plus all outstanding license grants from 6/2/2018 12:12:01Z to 7/3/2018 13:45:00Z. When Report 3 is generated, it will contain all transactions plus all outstanding grants from 7/3/2017 13:45:01Z to the date and time the report was generated. The BIG IQ reporting system thus never takes a date range for administrators to report on, instead, BIG IQ keeps track of what s been reported and what has not been reported so you don t have to keep track of it.
To illustrate, perhaps by an extreme example, consider the following. Perhaps you were testing the reporting capability to see how it works and/or to debug connectivity issues to F5. In this case, the generated Reports 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 and all of those reports must be submitted for the June 2018 reporting period. Reason is report #7 only contains reporting transactions from 6/28/2018 23:21:00Z to 7/3/2018 13:45:00Z. This would leave a reporting gap between 6/2/2018 12:12:01Z (the May report to the far left of the diagram) and 6/28/2018 23:21:00Z. It is OK to generate multiple reports during the month, but please keep each one and when the submission date arrives, send all of the reports in to prevent reporting gaps. Submission models Manual and Automatic There are two ways to submit reports: 1. Automatic submit over the internet directly from BIG IQ 2. Manual extract the report, and EMAIL the report to F5 Automatic Automatic report submission is the least effort method of submitting usage reporting to F5. However, it requires the following: BIG IQ must be able to resolve api.f5.com from your DNS configuration BIG IQ must be able connect to api.f5.com to post 443 (SSL). You can test this by logging into your BIG IQ system as root (SSH connection), and telneting to the service: $ telnet api.f5.com 443 Trying 104.219.110.164... Connected to api.f5.com. Escape character is '^]'. ^C If you see the Trying <ip> address message from telnet, this means DNS is working and your BIG IQ system is able to resolve the IP address for api.f5.com. If you see the two yellow highlighted lines, it means BIG IQ was able to connect to api.f5.com on port 443. This usually indicates you ll be able to submit a report to F5 automatically.
If this does not work as described and you want to submit automatically, you ll need to enable a firewall rule (or whatever ACL'ish thing you're using) allowing your BIG IQ to reach api.f5.com over port 443. Alternatively, BIG IQ can be configured to use a network proxy to make a connection to api.f5.com. The proxy configuration is shown in the screen shot below: Please note, because BIG IQ is transferring the report over SSL, the content is encrypted in transit from your BIG IQ to F5 s api.f5.com end point. To submit a report automatically, log into BIG IQ as admin or a License Manager persona, click the Devices table, open LICENSE MANAGEMENT on the left navigation, then click Licenses. This is shown below:
Next, in the type, select Utility Billing Report, select and move the Licenses you are using to license your BIG IPs, and click Generate and automatically submit report to F5. In the lower right, click submit, and the system will attempt the transaction and indicate if it was a success or failure. NOTE: If the automatic submission failed, you ll need to manually extract, download and email the report to F5. Currently, there is no way to retry sending an already created report. Manual Manual report submission is needed when your BIG IQ cannot submit a report automatically. For manual submission, you ll extract the report from BIG IQ, then email it to F5 to SalesLicensingPrograms (at) f5.com. Starting at the same place in the BIG IQ UI, you ll click Report, then pick type as Utility Billing Report, move the licenses you are using as part of the program to the Selected column/box, choose Generate and manually submit report to F5. Please ignore the message asking you to call F5 support unless you ve encountered a product problem doing this workflow. Finally, click Download, then attach the report to an EMAIL and send to vesubscriptions (at) f5.com.
Automated Reports Currently, BIG IQ does not have a scheduling mechanism. You can automate your monthly reports by leveraging a sample script on GitHub and then using your crontab scheduler (or equivalent) to create by the 10th day of the calendar month. Ensure that you have chosen the Generate and automatically submit report to F5 Reporting Option. How to find missing reports In the event you get a notice from F5 for a missing report for a time period during the reporting period, you can find the reports directly on your BIG IQ system. The reports are written to /var/config/rest/license reports simply log into BIG IQ as root and SCP (secure copy) the reports from BIG IQ to your system, then attach and send the reports to F5 manually to SalesLicensingPrograms (at) f5.com. Please note: If you are using BIG IQ in an HA cluster, the contents of /var/config/rest/license reports is not replicated between the active and standby BIG IQ systems. If there was a failover event during the month, you may need to look the contents of /var/config/rest/license reports in both systems to locate the missing report(s). Report Contents The report is JSON format the table below describes each field and following the table is a sample JSON report. Elements product version reporttype pooltype regkey poolregkey poolname periodstarted periodended Description Identifies the F5 product submitting the report Indicates the version of the F5 product sending the report Indicates the type of reporting being sent Indicates the type of license pool BIG IQ system regkey Service catalog regkey Name of your pool Report coverage starting date & time Report coverage ending date & time
For Each Device: id address hostname type sku uom granted revoked Unique BIG IP id, if device is licensed as 'managed' or 'unmanaged' IP address of BIG IP Name of BIG IP, if device is licensed as 'managed' or 'unmanaged' How device was licensed: managed, unmanaged, unreachable Service catalog assigned to device Unit of measure (yearly for subscription and ELA) Date/time of license grant Date/time of license revocation (if still licensed, this is omitted) Sample Report { } "product": "big iq", "version": "5.0.0.0.0.3007", "reporttype": "pool usage", "pooltype": "CLPv2", "regkey": "U8917 466961 104 8159544 3215874", "poolregkey": "xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx", "poolname": "xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx", "periodstarted": "2016 06 03T17:20:07Z", "periodended": "2016 06 04T12:24:14Z", "records": [ { "id": "f80f00e0 000f 4f4f 8012f 1fee0f6ff500", "address": "10.128.10.10", "hostname": "BIG IP 001.sassy.molassy", "type": "MANAGED", "sku": "F5 BIG MSP LTM 200M", "uom": "hourly", "granted": "2016 06 02T21:41:09Z" }, { "id": "a3225f5f 8ffb 40ff 90ff 9547d00f755f", "address": "10.128.10.20", "hostname": "BIG IP 002.sassy.molassy", "type": "MANAGED", "sku": "F5 BIG MSP LTM 200M", "uom": "hourly", "granted": "2016 06 02T21:44:10Z", "revoked": "2016 06 03T21:45:07Z" } ] Support Need additional help or have questions?
Need additional help or have questions? Contact your SE for any additional questions or email SalesLicensingPrograms (at) f5.com. As always, let us know what else we can write about regarding licensing and how we can help you manage your BIG IP environments. Happy adminining. F5 Networks, Inc. 401 Elliot Avenue West, Seattle, WA 98119 888-882-4447 f5.com F5 Networks, Inc. Corporate Headquarters info@f5.com F5 Networks Asia-Pacific apacinfo@f5.com F5 Networks Ltd. Europe/Middle-East/Africa emeainfo@f5.com F5 Networks Japan K.K. f5j-info@f5.com 2018 F5 Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. F5, F5 Networks, and the F5 logo are trademarks of F5 Networks, Inc. in the U.S. and in certain other countries. Other F5 trademarks are identified at f5.com. Any other products, services, or company names referenced herein may be trademarks of their respective owners with no endorsement or affiliation, express or implied, claimed by F5. CS04-00015 0113