An excellent resource for preparing for Certification exams is to use the BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) to study the behavior and operation of BIG-IP software modules.
There are a number of licensing options, but the Lab license option is meant to be a low cost option used in a laboratory environment for training/self-study, before proceeding to a production environment. Lab licenses do not expire.
A Lab license can be purchased from your authorized F5 vendor, either through our direct sales team, partner, or distributor. Support must be purchased in order to upgrade/downgrade lab licenses. The only way to modify the lab license is by purchasing the support portion along with the lab license.
We highly recommend buying at least two lab licenses to simulate an HA pair of F5 devices, with support for both. In addition, if web servers are required to build out the environment, we highly recommend NGINX. For more information follow this link: https://devcentral.f5.com/s/articles/f5-developer-edition-how-to-obtain-a-developer-license-key
Purchasing a BIG-IP VE Lab license
US residents can purchase a Lab license from this site: https://www.cdw.com/search/Software/Networking-Servers/Network-Management/?lfr=1&w=FL4&key=F5-BIG-VE-LAB
Canadian residents can purchase a Lab license from this site: https://www.cdw.ca/search/Software/Networking-Servers/Network-Management/?lfr=1&w=FL4&key=F5-BIG-VE-LAB
UK residents can purchase Lab licenses from these two vendors:
https://www.softcat.com/
https://www.infradata.co.uk/partners/f5-networks/support/
When purchasing a Lab license, the SKU has the general format of F5-BIG-VE-LAB-VX, where X represents the highest version of BIG-IP TMOS software that can be activated with the license. As an example, a Lab license with a SKU of F5-BIG-VE-LAB-V16 can be used to activate software up to version 16.x of BIG-IP TMOS.
Please note that there are no Lab licenses for physical hardware and that they are limited to 10 Mbps throughput.
If you have questions about the various license options, you can contact F5 Sales from here: https://www.f5.com/products/get-f5#contactsales
Trial Options
As an alternative to purchasing a Lab license, there are free trial options, that can be accessed from this link: https://www.f5.com/trials.
Trial options are intended for full proof of concept deployments in customer environments with actual application traffic.
Trial licenses last for 30 days and cannot be renewed. There is no support offered for trial licenses but questions can be posted at https://devcentral.f5.com
Community Labs
Once you have your BIG-IP Virtual Edition license, be sure to check out the Community Labs that are available here: https://clouddocs.f5.com/training/community
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