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

(applies to BIG-IP TMOS Edition)

To assist operational teams 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, and you are in either Canada or the US 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, log into my.f5.com (separate login from DevCentral), navigate down to the Downloads card under the Support Resources section of the page. Select BIG-IP from the product group family and then the current version of BIG-IP.

You will be presented with a list of options, at the bottom, select the Virtual-Edition option that has the following descriptions:

For VMware Fusion or Workstation or ESX/i: Image fileset for VMware ESX/i Server
For Microsoft HyperV: Image fileset for Microsoft Hyper-V
KVM RHEL/CentoOS: Image file set for KVM Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS

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 for development or 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 Mar 12, 2025

Version 4.0