F5 1500 LTM license

For home lab you're much better off running the Lab virtual edition. You can run it in VMware workstation or the free version of ESXi. $125 with maintenance should be a lot cheaper than maintenance on the 1500 and you will be able to support modern TMOS versions.

I would not take the 1500 as lab unit. It is way obsolete, there are two generations of hw after it (1600 and 2000 series..) BIG-IP 1500 was launched in 2004 and end of sales in 2009. Has limited memory (2GB) and does not support current sw 11.x versions. And support contract is expensive (related to past list price).

 

For lab I would suggest to buy a virtual lab appliance: BIG-IP VE Lab version (ca 100 USD + support fee), which you can run on most of common hypervisors (vmware, hyper-v, xen, kvm). It is fully supported and supports current and coming major releases (11.x, 12 & 13). The VE Lab license has all the necessary functions and most optional software modules licensed. It has 10Mbps throughput limitation and may not be used in production.

 

Many thanks Steve, i will definitely look in buying two of those, but still i also want the real one to get used to it, in regards to licensing are they perpetual? as i said i am pretty new to F5, dont want to buy F5 the hardware one, then it will not function. dont know how F5 licensing works. regards

Sorry Steve, i also wanted to mark your reply as answer but it does not give me the option. many many thanks