Hardware and software requirements for the Splunk Add-on for F5 BIG-IP

Prerequisites

You need to know the credentials for the F5 BIG-IP servers from which you want to collect data. The F5 BIG-IP user that is used to collect data with this add-on needs to be created in the Common partition and have permission to access all other partitions from which you want to collect data. Also, only one F5 BIG-IP user can be used to collect data from a single F5 BIG-IP server. In other words, multiple user accounts cannot be used to collect data from any one F5 BIG-IP server.

Splunk platform requirements

Because this add-on runs on the Splunk platform, all of the system requirements apply for the Splunk software that you use to run this add-on.

• For Splunk Enterprise system requirements: see System Requirements in the Splunk Enterprise Installation Manual.
• If you are managing on-premises forwarders to get data into Splunk Cloud, see System Requirements in the Splunk Enterprise Installation Manual, which includes information about forwarders.

The field alias functionality is compatible with the current version of this add-on. The current version of this add-on does not support older field alias configurations.

For more information about the field alias configuration change, refer to the Splunk Enterprise Release Notes.

Best configurations for optimal data collection

If you are collecting iControl API data via Telemetry Streaming, these are the best configurations for optimal data collection performance.

• A single Splunk platform instance (HF/IDX/UF) monitors no more than three F5 BIG-IP servers concurrently.
• Use one input to assign all the templates for which you want to perform the data collection for a given server.
• An input monitors no more than one F5 BIG-IP server at a time.
• Assign no more than one input to an F5 BIG-IP server.