VE license for 10.2.0?

The license for the 10.1.0 LTM VE Trial will not work on the 10.2.0 VE LTM.

 

 

10.2.0 is not available as a trial Virtual Editon. It's commercial only and available with several licensing options. It is feature compatible with the Hardware BIG-IP products.

 

 

Here's the 10.2.0 LTM VE Press Release:

 

http://www.f5.com/products/big-ip/product-modules/local-traffic-manager-virtual-edition.html

 

I somewhat dislike how we went from offering that trial to taking the carrot completely away. It's confusing to people. Perhaps this is a good thing though, because it shows how much interest in the VE products we see out there.

Well.. I got an answer from support. Apparently 10.2 isn't available with the free trial.

 

 

H

it seems like 10.2 will not be delivered as a trial.

 

 

the next releases should be delivered for Trial and Production.

 

 

There isn't much LTM enhancements in 10.2 based on the release notes . Is it such an issue not to have 10.2 delivered as a trial edition in such a case ?

So there is 10.1.x support for a trial version of VE, no support for a trial for 10.2.0, but then maybe trial support for 10.2.x or 10.3.x? This isn't very intuitive and hasn't been communicated very effectively by F5. After all of the excitement F5 people showed in pushing VE, this seems like a "less than ideal" way to handle the rollout.

 

 

Aaron

 

Brief Summary:

 

 

10.1.0 = A bandwidth restricted trial version of 10.1.0 LTM. The price is registration and a download - i.e. $0.00.

 

 

10.2.0 = A production version of 10.2.0 LTM delivered as a Virtual Machine - this version is complete (no SSL ciphers have been removed, bandwidth can be licensed to a gigabit per second, etc.). I suspect that 10.1.0 LTM and 10.2.0 LTM don't differ to the point where a bandwidth restricted trial of 10.2.0 would net anyone a lot.

 

 

I'm curious if anyones actually found anything that's in 10.2.0 LTM that they haven't been able to utilize in the 10.1.0 LTM VE Trial, short of the already known limitations of SSL cipher support in the trial version.

 

 

 

 

 

 

10.2.0 is a complete implementation. (Including IIUC ACA, etc). Wheras 10.1.0 is purely base LTM. This means for example where I have ACA iRules, I can't test them on VE but must test them on a physical device (With a real license).

 

 

I don't care about performance for this, just functionality. Plus when developing iControl apps... It's nice when you have several people working on something, you don't have to fight for a single device...

 

 

H

Hamish - Check out the Lab Edition License for 10.2.0 - it's not free, but it sounds like what you need. It's not a real device, but is 10.2.0 in a Virtual Machine with all the fixins available in the larger scale licenses.

 

 

http://www.f5.com/news-press-events/press/2010/20100426b.html

 

 

"In addition, F5 is delivering production and lab versions of its virtual appliance, BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM®) Virtual Edition (VE)."

Hi. I'm the product manager for the LTM Virtual Edition. I'm glad to see such enthusiasm around the trial version. That was the whole point of releasing it.

 

 

I want to try to clear this up. We're not taking the trial away and we have no plans to do that. You can continue to get a 90 day key to trial 10.1 at www. f5.com/trial.

 

 

But our thinking was that since 10.2 is mostly minor bug fixes and enhancements, there was no need to spin a new trial version on that code base. Hamish - 10.2 does not give you ACA on VE either. It's still just base LTM. We'll have to fix that in a future release.

 

 

Qe is on track when he says "I suspect that 10.1.0 LTM and 10.2.0 LTM don't differ to the point where a bandwidth restricted trial of 10.2.0 would net anyone a lot."

 

 

When we have our next major release, you can bet that we'll release a new trial. At that point there will be lots of new functionality that we want to get in to your hands.

 

 

If our thinking on this is wrong, I want to know. Is there some functionality you need in a 10.2 trial that you can't get in 10.1?

 

 

Thanks.

Hi Mike,

 

 

The only things that people might have wanted to trial are EtherIP, XML routing and the RECV disable string.

 

These are listed as new features of 10.2.0

 

 

Specifically I am interesting in the last two but i am also lucky enough to have access to a strong box, others might not be in such a position.

 

However it is good to see that trial editions will be released for later releases.

 

 

Regards

 

 

Paul