F5 Distributed Cloud Synthetic Monitoring Lab Guide

📋 Overview

This repository contains a comprehensive lab guide for F5 Distributed Cloud Synthetic Monitoring. The guide covers application observability and digital experience monitoring, helping teams ensure their applications are continuously available, performant, and measurable from the external user perspective.

🎯 Learning Objectives

• Create HTTP synthetic monitors for multiple endpoints
• Configure monitor validation using status codes and receive strings
• Run monitors from selected AWS and F5 Distributed Cloud locations
• Observe service-level health and identify intermittent behaviour
• Configure alert receivers and create alert policies
• Review TLS scores and detailed reports
• Create & observe DNS synthetic monitors

📚 Lab Contents

Section	Description
Prerequisites	Setting up MyF5 account and accessing the lab environment
Section 1	Configure HTTP Synthetic Monitors for Arcadia Finance
Section 2	Observe HTTP Synthetic Monitors and analyze health status
Section 3	Create Alert Policy for critical event notifications
Section 4	TLS Report analysis and security assessment
Section 5	DNS Monitor configuration and observation

🏗️ Target Application

The lab uses Arcadia Finance as the target application with three services:

Service	URL
Arcadia Main	https://arcadia.f5xc.cloud/
Arcadia Trading	https://arcadia.f5xc.cloud/trading/login.php
Arcadia API	https://arcadia.f5xc.cloud/rest/api/v1

📁 Repository Structure

.
├── README.md                                          # This file
├── F5_Distributed_Cloud_Synthetic_Monitoring_Lab_Guide.md  # Full lab guide
├── images/                                            # Screenshots and diagrams
│   ├── image1.png
│   ├── image2.png
│   └── ... (59 images total)
└── NCC_Group_Bedrock_Letter_of_Engagement_Oct_10_2025_1 (1).docx  # Original document

🚀 Getting Started

1. Prerequisites: Ensure you have a MyF5 account
2. Sign In: Access https://account.f5.com/myf5
3. Accept Invitation: Check your email for lab invitation
4. Follow the Guide: Open F5_Distributed_Cloud_Synthetic_Monitoring_Lab_Guide.md

📖 How to Use This Guide

1. Open the main lab guide: F5_Distributed_Cloud_Synthetic_Monitoring_Lab_Guide.md
2. Follow each section sequentially
3. Screenshots are provided for each step
4. Complete all exercises to gain hands-on experience

🔧 Key Features Covered

• HTTP Synthetic Monitoring: Monitor web application endpoints
• Response Time Analysis: DNS lookup, TCP connection, TLS handshake, server processing
• Health Policies: Configure thresholds and evaluation periods
• Alert Management: Email notifications for critical events
• TLS Security Reports: Analyze TLS scores and ratings
• DNS Monitoring: Monitor domain resolution health

📝 License

This lab guide is provided for educational purposes.

🤝 Contributing

Feel free to submit issues or pull requests to improve this lab guide.

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F5 Distributed Cloud - Enabling digital experience monitoring and application observability.