Deploying F5 BIG-IP in Windows Server Hyper-V for Developers

F5’s BYOL (Bring Your Own License) model allows you to purchase a developer/lab license and deploy into your Microsoft Hyper-V environment. This provides a stable development instance for the following software components of BIG-IP:  LTM, GTM, DNS, AFM, ASM, APM Lite (10 users), AAM, CGN, SSL Forward Proxy, Advanced Protocols, and Crypto Offload all at a 10Mbps rate limit.

Please refer to these resources to get started with Microsoft Hyper-V

• How to get a F5 BIG-IP VE Developer Lab License
• F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition Setup Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V @ support.f5.com
• Hyper-V Overview @ Microsoft Technet

NOTE:  For Development and Lab environments, DevCentral recommends 2 logical processors and no less than 4GB RAM, preferring 8GB.  This will allow you to run more than one BIG-IP software module at a time, i.e. BIG-IP DNS & LTM.  As you change development requirements you can enable and disable other modules within the Developer Lab license as needed.  You can even build multiple environments and enable different modules accordingly using multiple Developer Lab licenses.  For staging and production environments, follow F5 recommended guidelines; DevCentral recommendations are for development and sandbox environments.