BIGIP – AAM (Application Acceleration Manager)

What is AAM ?

BIGIPs AAM (Application Acceleration Manager) is a set of modules used to optimize web traffic. The modules include :

  • Web Optimization
  • WAN Optimization
  • Profiles – this includes profiles used to deploy various optimization techniques such as SPDY, HTTP compression, OneConnect etc.
  • Bandwidth Controller
  • Rate Shaping

Core vs Full

AAM comes in 2 flavors – core and full.

  • Core – Core AAM is a built in feature. It is provided by default and does not require a license or any form of resource provisioning.
    • Symmetric adaptive compression
    • HTTP 2.0 and SPDY gateways
    • Bandwidth Controller
    • Dynamic compression
    • Caching
    • Compression
    • TCP Express
    • OneConnect
    • Multipath TCP (MPTCP)
    • TCP rate pacing
  • Full – Is a fully licensed module which also requires the appropriate resource provisioning.
    • DNS prefetch
    • Concatenation
    • Intelligent Browser Referencing (IBR)
    • Intelligent Client Cache
    • Image optimization
    • Content reordering
    • Dynamic caching/deduplication
    • Multi-protocol optimizations (HTTP, FTP, MAPI,
    • UDP)
    • Forward error correction
    • Parking Lot (GET request queuing)
    • MultiConnect
    • PDF Dynamic Linearization
    • Pre-defined and generic acceleration policies for
    • Performance dashboard
    • Flexible deployment (symmetric and asymmetric)
    • Scalable clustering
    • E-commerce stand-in capability
    • BIG-IP APM, ASM, and AAM layering
    • iApps support

 

Web Optimization

Intro

Deployment Types

There are two deployment types for AAM. They are,

  • Asymmetric – The AAM(s) are installed in the same location as the origin servers.
  • Symmetric – AAM(s) are deployed geographically on both sides i.e in the same location as both the origin servers and also the clients.

Configuration

There are quite a few settings for configuring web optimization. Below provides the steps,

  • Web Application Policy – Create your Web Application Policy. This contains your match rules (when it is triggered) and also the acceleration rules (the action that occurs).
  • Application – Define an Application. Within the Application the previous Policy is assigned and also the hostname(s) it is assigned to configuration.
  • Web Application Profile – Create a Web Application Profile. Within this Profile the previous Application is assigned.
  • Virtual Server – Within your Virtual Server the Web Application Profile is assigned.

Web ACCELERATION Policy

 

NameUI LocationDescription
Virtual Server
Web Acceleration Profile
ApplicationsDefines the hostname
– PoliciesContains the Matching and Acceleration Rules
— Matching Rules
— Aceleration Rules
     Variation
     Assemby

 

Acceleration Rules

  • Variation – Based on your configured parameter it allows you to serve variations of the cache. i.e serve a variation of the cache based on the country the client is coming from.
  • Assembly –
    • Content Assembly
      • Intelligent Browser Referencing – 
      • MultiConnect – Also known as domain sharding. There are 2 main options to multiconnect,
        • MultiConnect To – Rewrites embedded URLs with unique subdomains.
        • MultiConnect Within – Rewrites URLs within externally linked CSS files with unique subdomains.
      • Content Compression – As the name suggests performs compression. When configuring its important to note that a HTTP Compression Profile must still be assigned to the Virtual Server (i.e in addition to your Web Acceleration Profile).
      • Content Assembly on Proxies – Ensures that (if enabled) IBR and Content Compression is applied to content even it is not served from the BIGIP cache.
      • Javascript/CSS Minification – Reduces the size of JS and CSS files by removing whitespaces and comments.
    • Advanced Assembly
      • PDF Linearization – Downloads and displays the current page that the user is viewing first and then downloads the remainder of the PDF in the background.
      • Assembly Compression OWS – Instructs the BIGIP to request compressed content from the origin server.
      • Reordering – The CSS/JS files are reordered so that the page appears to render quicker.
      • Inlining – JS/CSS and images are placed directly into the HTML. This reduces the number of requests that client needs to make.
    • Image Optimzation
  • Proxying –
  • Lifetime –
  • Invalidations –
  • Responsed Caches –
  • Video –

Reference

https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/13000/800/sol13878.html

https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/make-your-cache-work-for-you

Provisioning

show sys provisoning shows allocaton totals. db variable is used but you caculate from the aam memory. this is dedciated memory unlike before with ram cache aam core which uses shared.

Rick Donato
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