Welcome to the F5 Distributed Cloud (XC) with Customer Edge Deployment mode This lab, presented by WWT and powered by F5 vesctl command line tool, will guide you through aspects of managing configuration within AWS, Kubernetes using F5 Distributed Cloud (XC) in Customer Edge deployment mode. This hands-on experience guides you through deploying a multi-cloud application across AWS, which is accessible via Private IP through an F5 By harnessing the capabilities of the F5 HTTPS Load Balancer, routing traffic within AWS environments privately.

Several of the fundamental principles of F5 Distributed Cloud (XC) are highlighted in this lab environment. You will be simulating a customer during the lab who needs to verify the safety of an application. The objective is to verify the applications safety of on-premises or application on cloud before and after enabling F5 Distributed Cloud Console WAAP Capabilities by sending attacks to the application.

This deployment mode is ideal for protecting backend applications that require direct internet traffic with no intermediary processing, ensuring maximum security and privacy. It's also suitable for local traffic scenarios where all traffic originates and terminates within the same customer site. In this mode, XC WAF is configured on the Customer Edge (CE) devices deployed at the customer's premises. In this case Azure Kubernetes cluster acted as customer's premises. End-users connect directly to the CEs, bypassing the XC Global Network. Meanwhile, the CE sites remain managed through the XC Cloud-based console ensuring centralized control and visibility.

F5 Distributed Cloud WAF deployed on Regional Edge and App Connect Deployment mode. This deployment model offers an optimal solution for scenarios where backend applications are inaccessible from the internet, lacking a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) or Public IP. In this case Customer Edge sites can be deployed to connect these "private" customer sites to the XC Global Network via IPSEC tunnels opened from Distributed Cloud Customer Edges to the closes two REs sites. Distributed Cloud WAF is deployed on the Regional Edges, where the services are being advertised to the Internet through anycast IPs. Customer Edges are being deployed on the customer sites and connect to the closest RE and traffic will be inspected by the WAAF security policy. The traffic will then be forwarded across the distributed cloud global network towards an egress Regional Edge and then over an IPSEC tunnel to the Customer edge site where it will be forwarded to the backend applications as pure IP-based traffic.

This WWT Lab will provide a hand on experience of F5 Distributed Cloud WAF deployed on Regional Edge in deployment mode. This deployment mode is better suited when protecting backend applications which are already public accessible from the internet via FQDN or Public IP. F5 Distributed Cloud WAF is deployed on the Regional Edges, where the services are being advertised to the internet through anycast IPs. The end users will connect to their closest Regional Edge and the traffic will be inspected by the WAF security policy. The traffic will then be forwarded across the XC Global Network towards an egress Regional Edge and then towards the customer site as regular internet traffic. The customer will filter the traffic, only allowing traffic forwarded by the XC platform.

In this lab, users will experience F5 Distributed Cloud Web App and API protection (WAAP), where organizations can simplify their path to effective security without sacrificing continued business innovation and customer demand. An API-driven approach to application protection enables improved collaboration between networks, security operations, and developers. This lab will use Terraform to deploy a Web App and API protection solution that protects an existing application

Users will explore how to easily protect your AWS CloudFront distributions with F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense. We will take advantage of AWS Lambda@Edge and the AWS Serverless Application Repository (SAR) to integrate with the F5 XC Bot Defense API through this lab

Using ATC VMware to build mutli-cloud networking Private Data Center Site CE and an AWS Cloud CE Site to show the ease in deployment. We also show how to quickly stitch these together for secure private communication.