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

CDW and SHI should be back processing credit card orders for VE lab (v18) without needing a quote. CDW should be able to process orders from many places around the world through their international offices: https://www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/solutions/international.html

We're still working on making this easier to buy VE lab licenses with a credit card, but hopefully this helps in the meantime.

Aaron

Got my licenses, everything took 7 days. Started with my initial contact on 9/10. The order was released from the distributor to F5 on 9/15, and F5 emailed my license keys and support contract on 9/17. The entire time Sean was PROACTIVELY emailing updates. Thank you @WeaverJK for posting about this vendor!

Adapture (F5 Guardian Partner)

Sean Conway

404-626-4540

sconway@adapture.com

  Drop me an email and I will provide you with a quotation for a LAB VE V18

SHI.COM experiment complete:

On Sunday, September 13, 2020 10:52 PM, Inquiry <Inquiry@shi.com> wrote:

Hi,

Thank you for contacting SHI!

Unfortunately, we are unable to fulfill your request. SHI is a business-to-business (B2B) solutions provider that currently only provides services to organizations. We are unable to process personal purchases or create accounts with non-business domains (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.)

SHI Inquiry

Innovative Solutions. World Class Support.

I was actually emailing with a human, and got this automated email when I replied that I wasn't with a business. That's a real class move there.

@CAbbott My last order on 06/06/2016 was definitely personal. The one before that, may have been with my corporate account but still using a credit card. I cant find that receipt.

I have contacted Sean Conway, from the WeaverJK post in this thread, and got a reply from him within 30 minutes. You will need to fill out a new customer form, and a credit card payment form (both PDFs that will delivered via email), but he claims licenses within 72 hours. I will probably ditch my CDW quote and go that route. I will be buying the longest support contract available so I don't have to go through this again anytime soon.

I have also contacted my account team about this. He suggested giving SHI.COM a try, an sent this link: https://www.shi.com/Products/ProductDetail.aspx?SHISystemID=ShiCommodity&ProductIdentity=37718336. There is no quote button when I opened it, BUT you need to be a customer. I filled out the required "contact us" link and submitted my request to be added. Tried to call to speed things up but was directed back to the "contact us" link and wait for a contact rep to email or call.

I am torn between waiting for SHI.COM to see if a standard purchasing method will work, or staying with the email contact just to get it done. The issue I had with the SHI link is that I couldn't find a service contract link to extend the license to give me 3 years of updates.

Will update with my experience. I may buy from both.

P.S. I just heard back again from the Adapture rep Sean Conway regarding an adjustment to the quote for my purchase. So essentially, from initial contact and two quotes 1 hours passed. This is great, but he is doing this on his own and this isn't company policy. I let him know that I have christened him St Sean.

@gblydenburgh - Were the previous purchases using a corporate account or personal account? My bad experience was when I registered a personal account and tried to use that as opposed to my corporate account with CDW which is met with no issues (of course I have an amazing account rep that helps at every step).

This post doesn't provide any new insight. I just wanted to keep the thread going with new reports. I ordered from CDW on 8/25 and am still waiting to hear back for the initial quote. This seems to be consistent with all the other previous reports.

I have purchased the VE license twice in the past from CDW and never had an issue. In fact, both times I had my licenses within 24-48 hours after ordering through the web portal. There was never a "Request a Quote" process My last purchased version was v13. What happened between now and then?

Just ordered mine through Adapture

Contact

Sean Conway

404-626-4540

sconway@adapture.com

Thanks for this detailed info, WeaverJK! If I place an order via Adapture, is the license only tied to me, or is it attributed to Adapture as a parent licensee?

ALLCON: if you purchase from one of the companies I've listed here or from any company for that matter, would you please provide the community some feedback as to what company you worked with, who you worked with there, what their contact details are, and how smoothly the transaction went (and if it went through to completion):

Here's an update on a few companies:

Carahsoft - doesn't seem to know what they are doing. Sad, as they claim to be owned by F5. They said they don't sell to individuals. Later, they said "maybe," but it would be best if you worked for a government agency.

Access IT Group (aka "AITG) - seriously does not know what it's doing. They informed me that I had to already own a full product and support license in order to buy a lab license. I educated them otherwise, but they chose to blow me off and not respond.