Hello DevCentral Team,
I am a network engineer currently building out a nested local home lab inside VMware ESXi on my laptop to study for my F5 certifications and practice TMOS traffic management.
Unfortunately, I do not have a corporate email address to pass the automated F5 Product Trials | F5 registration page (my personal domain extension was flagged and filtered by the system).
Could a community manager or moderator kindly assist me with manually generating a 30-day or 90-day evaluation registration key for a BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) instance so I can initialize my lab environment?
Thank you for your time and help!
Hello @jchimpo73
Through DevCentral we do not have the ability to generate any licenses. For this I would suggest contacting sales for options they may have available for a lab license.
Hi jchimpo73,
While you wait for a moderator, here are a couple of options that don’t depend on the automated trial form:
1) Public cloud PAYG (AWS/Azure Marketplace): You can deploy BIG-IP VE as a pay-as-you-go instance from the AWS or Azure Marketplace listings (“BIG-IP Virtual Edition - GOOD/BETTER/BEST”), using the free credits new cloud accounts typically get. This sidesteps the corporate-email check entirely. Just be careful: PAYG billing is hourly (instance cost + BIG-IP software meter), so a lab left running for several days can burn through free credits faster than expected and trigger real charges - use the smallest tier (GOOD/200Mbps) and stop/deallocate the instance when you’re not using it.
2) F5 Developer/Lab License via CDW (worth checking first): F5 has a dedicated low-cost path for exactly this use case that skips F5 Product Trials | F5 entirely - the BIG-IP VE Developer Lab License (SKU F5-BIG-VE-LAB-Vxx, 10 Mbps cap), purchasable online through CDW (US) or CDW Canada, no corporate email required. It’s a one-time low cost, it’s perpetual (not a 30-day trial), and F5 emails you the key after the order is fulfilled - you then grab the VE image files from my.f5.com. Search DevCentral for the KB article “How to get a F5 BIG-IP VE Developer Lab License” for the full steps.
Given the choice, I’d try the Developer Lab License first - no expiration, no surprise cloud bill, and it’s built for exactly this scenario. The PAYG route is a solid fallback if you’d rather not spend anything upfront and can keep a close eye on usage.
Good luck with the cert study!