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

(applies to BIG-IP TMOS Edition)


To assist DevOps teams improve their development for the BIG-IP platform, F5 offers a low cost

developer lab license. This license can be purchased from your authorized F5 vendor.  If you do not have an F5 vendor, you can purchase a lab license online:

 

Once completed, the order is sent to F5 for fulfillment and your license will be delivered shortly after via e-mail.  F5 is investigating ways to improve this process.

To download the BIG-IP Virtual Edition, please log into downloads.f5.com (separate login from DevCentral), and navigate to your appropriate virtual edition, example:

Note: There are also 1 Slot versions of the above images where a 2nd boot partition is not needed for in-place upgrades. These images include _1SLOT- to the image name instead of ALL.

The below guides will help get you started with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition to develop for VMWare Fusion, AWS, Azure, VMware, or Microsoft Hyper-V.  These guides follow standard practices for installing in production environments and performance recommendations change based on lower use/non-critical needs fo Dev/Lab environments.  Similar to driving a tank, use your best judgement.

 

Note:  F5 Support maintains authoritative Azure, AWS, Hyper-V, and ESX/vCloud installation documentation.  VMware Fusion is not an official F5-supported hypervisor so DevCentral publishes the Fusion guide with the help of our Field Systems Engineering teams.
Updated May 14, 2024
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  • Stephan_Schwar1's avatar
    Stephan_Schwar1
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jun 08, 2019

    I'd still like to know how non-US users can obtain a LAB license.

     

    Kind regards,

    Stephan Schwarz

  • Stephan_Schwar1's avatar
    Stephan_Schwar1
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    May 23, 2019

    I receive the same error, for a couple of months already.

    The CDW website used to be available, I'm guessing it might be some GeoIP blocklist (at least I'm unable to access the site from various Dutch ISP's).

     

    Our F5 vendor doesn't sell these licenses, since they tell us the effort it takes, costs them money.

    It shouldn't be so hard to acquire these licenses.

  • Hendry_Chandra's avatar
    Hendry_Chandra
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    May 23, 2019

    Response on the 2 CDW Links above:

     

    Access Denied

    You do not have permission to access the site on this server.

    Reference#:18.94070572.1558592844.2bd5034d

    Time: May 23 2019 06:27:25

     

    Access Denied

    You do not have permission to access the site on this server.

    Reference#:18.9f070572.1558592845.24a1ec9a

    Time: May 23 2019 06:27:26

     

    Perhaps this article is not related/valid anymore? But it was just released?

     

    The DevCentral Team (F5 Networks) published this new Knowledge.

    May 14, 2019 at 7:40 PM

     

    Thanks

  • Chase_Abbott's avatar
    Chase_Abbott
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Jan 23, 2019

    @Sjoerd_Krol. Easy? No. For non North American end users, purchasing through a partner is the only method currently available. Do you have a partner you currently work with?

     

  • Sjoerd_Krol_340's avatar
    Sjoerd_Krol_340
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jan 14, 2019

    I can't order them via cdw....both Canada and US are blocking Europeans I guess.... Any other easy way to obtain a lab license?

     

  • Colin_Stubbs's avatar
    Colin_Stubbs
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Dec 17, 2018

    You can already order a lab license for BIG-IQ, SKU should be F5-BIQ-VE-LAB or similar, there's SKU's to add additional device management capacity, e.g. F5-ADD-BIQ-LAB-25

     

  • Chase_Abbott's avatar
    Chase_Abbott
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Nov 06, 2018

    I've reached out to our CDW team to find out what's going on. I used an alternate account for the CDW US to make my purchase and I haven't been rejected so we'll see what we can find out.

     

    I suggest we take this offline so we can discuss order specifics. Please use the https://devcentral.f5.com/contact to hit up my team and I can continue this conversation. The contact form goes to my team only so only DC admins (5 of us) will review the content.