Optimized Operating System

F5® Distributed Cloud App Stack provides a scale-out infrastructure services layer that can be deployed across heterogeneous private/public, network and edge infrastructure. This homogeneous layer provides a consistent workflow to provision and upgrades customer sites across heterogeneous environments. A key component of the scale-out infrastructure services layer is the operating system. App Stack includes a low footprint operating system optimized to run containers, VMs and Lambda workloads. App Stack optimized operating system runs on heterogeneous private/public, network and edge infrastructure sites. On the private cloud and edge specifically, App Stack optimized operating system runs on both F5 Distributed Cloud hardware and certified third-party commodity hardware. The operating system provides programmatic and role-based access to peripherals such as ethernet and USB ports. Moreover, the operating system includes strict security controls preventing errant or malicious containers from impacting other containers or the shared kernel.

Operating System Upgrades

The operating system supports remote upgrades and rollbacks. Upgrades and rollbacks of a single node work as follows:

• When the user wishes to upgrade the operating system on a specific node from version A to version B, App Stack first downloads version B and validates the integrity of the image.
• Then, it installs version B in another a separate space on the filesystem, while version A continues to be the active version.
• Next, a reboot is triggered to boot version B. App Stack service continuously monitors the node to ensure it is healthy with version B.
• If the node is unhealthy, a reboot is triggered back to version A.

Installation of the operating system is described in the Zero-touch provisioning section

Concepts

The following concepts are used by Optimized Operating System features. Click on each one to learn more:

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