How to get a F5 BIG-IP VE Developer Lab License

For years now... F5 has been all talk and no action, an insult to the engineers around the world who support its products.

No resolution at this point. Just wanted to let you know that I did previously speak with my F5 sales engineers and with someone in sales at an F5 subsidary. Unfortunately, at that time, they agreed that they were not geared to sell lab licenses to individuals, only to businesses.

I reached out to our sales engineers again today. They are again reaching out internally.

Thanks for your personal effort on our behalf, WeaverJK. My comment is not a reflection on you (your effort today is deeply appreciated) but rather the company policy not to sell individual licenses. It's not practical for engineers to have to do this through their employment and contracts. Most of us have dev networks at home. We absolutely must have access to full lab licenses at home, so we can learn about modules that are out of work scope. This allows us to bolster our skill sets to qualify for other jobs as well as recommend services at work that are being ignored. Make no mistake, we are the ones primarily being unduly punished by this policy. But, I also think F5 is shooting itself in the sales foot by limiting exposure to its expanding product ecosystem by us, the engineers that make the F5 world go around. It is counterproductive from every perspective. I'm being forced to obtain licenses through my contractor POC (still unresolved, as I only have temp licenses). My goal is to setup and practice with containerization via NGINX, something under consideration but not embraced at work. Hopefully, this gets the point across.

Jer,

You are

welcome.

No

worries. I didn’t take anyone’s post personally.

You are

preaching to the choir. I agree. I have home labs. I try to keep skills up. F5

should support such efforts.

i will

post again if/when I have an update.

Best

wishes to all!

Someone at F5 give this man a raise... and listen to him.

Team- I am on the F5 Federal Sales team so I'm not likely aligned with most of you but I am happy to help anyone here get connected with your appropriate F5 team to ensure that they can walk you through the process. These are available from any F5 reseller and it should be a straight forward process to obtain a quote and order the license or support renewal. My email is d.purkey@f5.com

Hi  ,

Most of the resellers don't want to sell the LAB VE license. There is no discount on the license and support ( a little on support). So no profit for them. Creating a quotation, sales order and invoice is costing them more then the price of the VE (136 dollar with 3 years support).

I am one of the few F5 partners that want to help engineers. I am selling without any profit.

Cheers,

Kees

Dustin,

Thank you

for taking the time to chime in here.

Dustin

and his sales partner, Paul, are two amazing people who have gone out of their

way to ensure the teams where I work have a full understanding (as much as

needed) of their products and have the support we need.

Dustin,

when your average engineer looks for an F5 reseller, all Google serves up is

CDW. While I got my lab licenses through CDW, CDW had no way of selling

follow-on support service.

This type

of support would be valuable to the F5 community:

·       a list of retailers that have verified they are willing to sell lab licenses to individuals

·       Verification from those retailers that they will sell support licenses to individuals

·       a validated Point Of Contact list for the correct team or person in each company who can assist with these sales

Dustin, you

and I can take this offline if you wish. With your assistance, I would be happy

to develop and validate such lists. For now, I believe a small group of five to

ten such companies would be welcomed by the F5 community.

Would

anyone else like to chime in? I plan to have a conversation with Dustin this

week.

John

To quote The Princess Bride in relation to the word Reseller, "You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means." As others have pointed out, F5 Networks has lost touch with the experience on the ground for us engineers that want to obtain individual lab licenses (I currently need three). Let me be clear. I DO NOT WANT TO OBTAIN A LICENSE THROUGH WORK NOR NON-COMMERCIAL VENDOR. The only resource I've ever found that offered what I and my peers need is CDW, and their cart is COMPLETELY DYSFUNCTIONAL. It leads to weeks of debates through email and phone, one part of the company looping into another like a snake eating its tail. I've been able to buy licenses from CDW in the past, but I tried twice recently and failed. It's a joke. I appreciate people on this board trying to help, but I don't want to purchase outside of the US, and I shouldn't have to. The company is here. I work here. And I don't want to purchase licenses under the umbrella of another organization, my purchase attributed to them. The problem is that F5 Networks thinks it has a system in place to help engineers, but that system is completely broken. Give is a direct line to purchase these. Make a page available for individual logged-in users, allowing us to buy LAB VE licenses with a credit card. How hard can that be? F5 doesn't need to give money to a middle party who has no compelling interest in these small transactions. Or... just fix this awful situation with CDW. I'm sensing denial on the part of F5's role in that system no longer working. And CDW has made it painfully clear that they can't obtain the licenses from F5 Networks when people order them. F5 keeps coming back with intractable red tape. Last two times I tried to order, CDW said that F5 required some kind of prior company invoice, and so the cycle of horror begins, back and forth, until we finally give up. And then come here when all else fails.

ALLCON:

I spoke with Dustin Purkey today. He is going to work two avenues to see if we can gain traction on support for this subject within F5.

Me? I reached out to a few handfuls of F5 Resellers and inquired as to whether or not they would like to sell F5 lab licenses and service agreements to individuals. Please see below for details.

Find a Reseller:  

https://f5.com/partners/find-a-partner?res=1&type=Value%20Added%20Reseller&country=United%20States

Today, I e-mailed the following companies:  

App Delivery Works

World Wide Technologies

Carahsoft

Arrow Electronics, Inc.

Accudata Systems - HQ

Access IT Group

CompuCom - HQ

Blue Chip Tek (not happy with these guys as I couldn't submit the form unless I optned in to receiving spam mail from them. They should know better than to treat potential customers this way.)

Bed Roc

AugustSchell

Adapture

Iron Bow Technologies

Datec Inc.

Logicalis

Layer 3 Communications

LaSalle Solutions

Nexum, Inc.

One Technology Corporation

My e-mails identified the need (F5 lab licenses and continuing support agreements for individuals), noted that F5 stated that any F5 reseller is able to sell the lab licenses, asked if the companies would like to sell the lab licenses to individuals, and, if so, that the companies provide one or more points of contact (name, e-mail address, and phone number) and that they inform such POCs to expect to be contacted by individuals whom wish to purchase the lab licenses.