Create Virtual Site

Objective
Prerequisites
Create a Custom Label
Apply a Custom Label
Create a Virtual Site
Concepts
API References

Objective

This guide provides instructions on how to create a custom label and then apply it to create a virtual site. A virtual site provides a mechanism to perform operations on a group of sites, reducing the need to repeat the same set of operations for each site. Each label consists of a key-value pair. There are no limitations on the type of sites that can be grouped together. Both cloud and physical sites can be grouped together to create a virtual site. To learn more about virtual sites and labels, see Virtual Site and Labels, respectively.

You can use virtual sites to deploy applications, discover service endpoints, and advertise services across a number of sites selected per the site selection criteria of the virtual site.

Labels can be provided by the system (existing) or can be user-defined (custom). For more information, see Labels.

Using the instructions provided in this guide, you can create and assign custom labels to your sites and group them together to create a virtual site using a selector expression.

Prerequisites

An F5® Distributed Cloud Services Account. If you do not have an account, see Create an Account.
A site deployed in an enterprise tenant. To create and deploy a site, see Site Management.

Create a Custom Label

Perform these steps to create a custom label:

Step 1: Create the custom key.

Click Shared Configuration.
Select Manage > Label > Known Keys.
Click Add Known Key.
In the form that appears, perform the following:
- In the Label key (Required) field, enter the name of the new custom key.
- In the Label description field, optionally enter information to describe this new custom key.
- In the Label values field, enter a potential value that can be used with the new custom key. Click + Add Label Value to add more than one value.
- After you finish, click Add Key.

Step 2: Verify the custom key and value.

Navigate to Select Manage > Label > Known Keys to verify all keys.
Navigate to Select Manage > Label > Known Labels to verify all keys and their values.

Apply a Custom Label

Perform these steps to apply a custom label:

Step 1: Navigate to the list of sites.

Click Multi-Cloud Network Connect.

Find your site and then click ....
Click Manage Configuration.

Click Edit Configuration.

Step 2: Enter a value for the corresponding key.

Navigate to the Labels field in the Metadata section.
Select Add Label and performing the following:
- Enter the name of the newly created custom key and then select it.

Enter the name of the value to assign to the key.

Click Save and Exit.

Step 3: View the newly applied label.

Navigate to your site from Site List and expand the metadata JSON section.
Expand "labels" to view the newly applied site label.

Note: The "metadata" field contains all labels associated with your site. As sites are registered, Distributed Cloud Services automatically populates some labels, such as hw-vendor, provider, hw-model, etc. You can determine the existing labels assigned to your site by checking the site schema from Console or using APIs.

Create a Virtual Site

Create a virtual site using the selector expressions to group sites together.

Note: The steps below show how to create a virtual site in the Distributed Apps service. This option limits the virtual site to a specific namespace. You can also create a virtual site in the Shared Configuration service. With the Shared Configuration service option, multiple site objects across different namespaces can use the same virtual site and be grouped together.

Step 1: Start creating the virtual site.