End of Sale Notice:

F5 NGINX is announcing the End of Sale (EoS) for NGINX Controller API Management Module, effective January 1, 2024.

F5 maintains generous lifecycle policies that allow customers to continue support and receive product updates. Existing NGINX Controller API- Management customers can continue to use the product past the EoS date. License renewals are not available after September 30, 2024.

See our End of Sale announcement for more details.
End of Sale Notice:

F5 NGINX is announcing the End of Sale (EoS) for NGINX Controller Application Delivery Module, effective January 1, 2024.

F5 maintains generous lifecycle policies that allow customers to continue support and receive product updates. Existing NGINX Controller Application Delivery customers can continue to use the product past the EoS date. License renewals are not available after September 30, 2024.

See our End of Sale announcement for more details.

Add an NGINX App Protect Instance

Learn how to register an F5 NGINX App Protect instance with NGINX Controller for use with the ADC module.

Overview

Follow the directions in this topic to deploy F5 NGINX App Protect and add the instance to NGINX Controller.

Deploy NGINX App Protect

Install NGINX App Protect on a host accessible by your NGINX Controller instance by following the appropriate steps for your operating system in the Using NGINX App Protect with NGINX Controller guide.

Note:
If you install NGINX App Protect by using any of the OS-specific install guides, do not make changes to the nginx.conf file. The NGINX Controller Agent manages nginx.conf settings and will make the appropriate adjustments for you.

Add the NGINX App Protect Instance

Take the steps below to add the NGINX App Protect instance by using the NGINX Controller user interface.

Take the following steps to add an instance to NGINX Controller:

  1. Open the NGINX Controller user interface and log in.

  2. Select the NGINX Controller menu icon, then select Infrastructure.

  3. On the Infrastructure menu, select Instances > Overview.

  4. On the Instances overview page, select Create.

  5. On the Create Instance page, select Add an existing instance.

  6. Add a name for the instance. If you don’t provide a name, the hostname of the instance is used by default.

  7. To add the instance to an existing Instance Group, select an Instance Group from the list. Or to create an Instance Group, select Create New.

  8. To add the instance to an existing Location, select a Location from the list. Or to create a Location, select Create New.

    Important:
    Once set, the Location for an instance cannot be changed. If you need to change or remove the Location for an instance, you must remove the instance from NGINX Controller, and then add it back.
    Important:
    Instances and the instance groups they belong to should specify the same location; however, this requirement is not currently enforced. If different locations are specified, the instance group’s location takes precedence. This is important to remember when assigning locations to workload groups.

  9. (Optional) By default, registration of NGINX Plus instances is performed over a secure connection. To use self-signed certificates with the Controller Agent, select Allow insecure server connections to NGINX Controller using TLS. For security purposes, we recommend that you secure the Controller Agent with signed certificates when possible.

  10. Use SSH to connect and log in to the NGINX instance that you want to connect to NGINX Controller.

  11. Run the curl or wget command that’s shown in the Installation Instructions section on the NGINX instance to download and install the Controller Agent package. When specified, the -i and -l options for the install.sh script refer to the instance name and Location, respectively.

    Note:

    Make sure you enter the commands to download and run the install.sh script on the NGINX Plus system, and not on the NGINX Controller.

    NGINX Controller 3.6 and earlier require Python 2.6 or 2.7. You’ll be prompted to install Python if it’s not installed already. Python is not required for NGINX Controller v3.7 and later.

After a few minutes, the NGINX instance will appear on the Instances overview page.

What’s Next