Introduction to DevCentral Basics

Starting out as a new user to F5 technology can be a daunting task; where do you start?  The DevCentral Basics program is DevCentral’s way to ease your transition from new user to administrator without filling your day with deployment guides or step-by-step how-to articles.  If you’re new to F5 and BIG-IP, this is the place to start.  We scoured the internet search engines to find out what you're asking so we can answer those questions first and provide you a comfortable platform for continuing education.
 
To get you started, we'll start with some basic documentation for you, the new F5 admin:

What Is BIG-IP?

To regular users this question doesn't make sense but it's a very good question for those new to F5.  Here we cover exactly what is F5's BIG-IP and how the ecosystem works together.

What is Load Balancing?

If you want to balance your application traffic load across a bunch of physical servers and make those servers look like one great big server to the outside world, this article will get you started in the right direction.

What are Application Delivery Controllers? Part 1  & Part 2

ADCs are what all good load balancers grew up to be. They can help with application scalability, high availability, and predictability if your website. We give you some of the basic terminology and functionality of these application lifelines.

Your First 30 Days With BIG-IP

You've received one or more boxes in your office.  Or maybe you received a license for a VE.  Now what?  Let's check out what you can do with your license and walking through the interface so you know where everything is.  This is an overview what to expect as a new admin of F5 and take some of the intimidation factor away when you login to the management console for that very first time.

Contacting F5 Support

We'll cover your basic support questions and what to do when there's a problem so you can get in contact with the correct resources as quick as possible.  From using DevCentral and AskF5 to using iHealth, we'll show you where your best support resources are.

Troubleshooting BIG-IP - The Basics

Divide and conquer is your best method to find out why you're receiving server resets or having a tough time understanding why you keep bouncing between web servers.  Reducing your complexity and starting with traffic basics allows you to step through issues and get you up and running.

What is DNS?

Imagine how difficult it would be to use the Internet if you had to remember dozens of number combinations to do anything. Learn how the Internet’s phonebook, DNS, translates the domain names you type into a browser into an IP address so you can find the resource you're looking for on the Internet.

Once you're comfortable with BIG-IP you can move on and branch into learning all of our various products that comprise the BIG-IP architecture.  As we update and build new features for BIG-IP, we'll create new DevCentral Basics content and link to further reading so you don't have to learn BIG-IP through deployment guides.  We'll give you the why, deployment guides will tell you how.