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
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  • Chase_Abbott's avatar
    Chase_Abbott
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Sep 06, 2016

    @F5Drive;

     

    For customers or curious individuals, you'll need to contact an F5 Partner who can resell the Lab license.

     

  • Matt_Fahrner_82's avatar
    Matt_Fahrner_82
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Sep 19, 2016

    I have a lab edition that I purchased in November of last year. It has the same part number as what is being sold on CDW today (F5-BIG-VE-LAB-V13), however when I try to use BIGIP 12.1 I get:

     

    Sep 19 09:18:21 localhost err ql[21932]: 01180006:3: Software version not covered by service agreement service check date 20151102 version date 20160318.

     

    It looks like based on this:

     

    https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/7000/700/sol7727.html

     

    The latest version I can use is BIGIP 12.0. My colleague has the same problem.

     

    I've validated and the license is still under "warrantee" - does anyone know what one needs to do to be able to use 12.1.x?

     

    Thanks.

     

  • hadighz_293720's avatar
    hadighz_293720
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Oct 02, 2016

    Hi Matt, I'm having the same problem. I contacted support and they accepted to release the license so I can use it once again. but couple of hours later, i checked the registration key using the license validation tool (https://secure.f5.com/validate/validate.jsp) and it returned locked status for the license. currently, I can not reuse the license on another ova version. please let me know if you have found any solution. Thanks

     

  • Matt_Fahrner_82's avatar
    Matt_Fahrner_82
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Nov 16, 2016

    Note that I did try "reactivation" and that didn't work. Talking to F5 support while they could reactivate it for 12.0, they couldn't for 12.1. I am contacting our sales to find out more.

     

  • Colin_Stubbs's avatar
    Colin_Stubbs
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Feb 17, 2017

    Apologies all; due to the way in which F5 insists on selling... e.g. a ~$100 product in the same way as they sell a ~$1,000,000.00 product... offering lab licenses to the general public is no longer viable for Equate or the distributor we have to use to fulfill the order. It costs too much in terms of staff time to handle.

     

    I strongly suggest you contact F5 directly, via any AM/SE's etc that you have access to, and ask them when F5 will jump forward to the year 2017 and provide a portal which will accept credit card payment in multiple currencies; in order to automate the very simple process of providing a generated registration key for an entirely digitally delivered product that's desired globally.

     

  • Chase_Abbott's avatar
    Chase_Abbott
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Feb 17, 2017

    @Colin Stubbs;

     

    I agree 100% with you and this bothers many of us at F5 who find out people cannot get dev/lab licenses easily. I've raised your comment to my mgmt team as further evidence that this process is very broken.