I see the NED for the F5 is "generic" and not CLI based.
What does this mean in terms of how NSO will connect/communicate with the BigIP device.
Is it using an API instead of an SSH session?
Yes, it would be using some sort of API. A REST API in this case IIRC. The transport could very well be SSH anyway, but in this case probably HTTP/TLS.
I've read through the README included with the NED. It indicates a target port should be specified when creating the device in NSO but I'm not sure what port that would need to be.
Also , is there a specific service/interface I need to have configured on the F5 BigIP?
Ideally the README would be clear on this, but if not, I guess you'd have to look up the API port in the F5 docs.
Apart from the device list setup in NSO, the NED type should not really matter. From an NSO perspective, there is no particular service or interface you need to configure to use the device. The device will of course need to have a suitable base config to work with NSO, and your use case might benefit from an NSO service package.
xx
