Setting Up API Discovery for Third-Party Gateways

Objective

This document provides instructions on how to configure Out-of-Band API Discovery for API gateways using F5 Distributed Cloud Services's universal log collection capability. This non-intrusive approach enables comprehensive API visibility across any API gateway that can export logs in the specified format, without requiring network topology changes or inline deployment.

By collecting and analyzing access logs through a dedicated Customer Edge (CE) deployment, organizations gain complete API inventory management, security visibility, and governance across multiple platforms and vendors while maintaining application performance. This solution addresses critical security blind spots in complex multi-cloud and hybrid architectures, providing visibility into shadow APIs and enabling unified API governance from a single console regardless of the API gateway vendor.

Important: This is an Early Access (EA) feature. To request access, sign up at F5 Beta. A known issue in the November release prevents the EA label from appearing in the UI under Multi-Cloud App Connect > Manage > Service Discoveries. This will be corrected in an upcoming release. The expected General Availability (GA) is January 2026.