How to get a F5 BIG-IP VE Developer Lab License
(applies to BIG-IP TMOS Edition) To assist DevOps 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, you can purchase a lab license online: CDW BIG-IP Virtual Edition Lab License CDW Canada BIG-IP Virtual Edition Lab License 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, please log into downloads.f5.com (separate login from DevCentral), and navigate to your appropriate virtual edition, example: For VMware Fusion or Workstation or ESX/i:BIGIP-16.1.2-0.0.18.ALL-vmware.ova For Microsoft HyperV:BIGIP-16.1.2-0.0.18.ALL.vhd.zip KVM RHEL/CentoOS: BIGIP-16.1.2-0.0.18.ALL.qcow2.zip 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 fo Dev/Lab environments. Similar to driving a tank, use your best judgement. DeployingF5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition on VMware Fusion Deploying F5 BIG-IP in Microsoft Azure for Developers Deploying F5 BIG-IP in AWS for Developers Deploying F5 BIG-IP in Windows Server Hyper-V for Developers Deploying F5 BIG-IP in VMware vCloud Director and ESX for Developers Note: F5 Support maintains authoritativeAzure, 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.Deploying F5 BIG-IP in Microsoft Azure for Developers
F5’s BYOL (Bring Your Own License) model allows you to purchase a developer/lab license and install it in Microsoft Azure. This model provides a stable development instance for the following software components of BIG-IP: LTM, GTM, DNS, AFM, ASM, APM Lite (10 users), AAM, CGN, SSL Forward Proxy, Advanced Protocols, and Crypto Offload all at a 10Mbps rate limit. The Good/Better/Best options in Azure help guide you to suggested compute provisioning resources but since we’re deploying a Developer Lab license, we can chose any option and select a much lower cost virtual machine size. This allows MSDN Subscriptions with Azure credits to maintain a working F5 BIG-IP environment and stay within the monthly reoccurring billing cycles (assuming you power off (deallocate) your environment when not in use). Please refer to these resources to get started in Microsoft Azure How to get a F5 BIG-IP VE Developer Lab License F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition Setup Guide for Microsoft Azure @ support.f5.com F5 BIG-IP ADC: Application and Security Services @ Microsoft Azure Marketplace Recommended Azure Computer Tiers for Developer & Lab Environments NOTE:DevCentral recommends 2 cores and 8GB to 14GB of RAM. The DevCental team uses D11 so we don’t have to reprovision as many modules for testing and lab work; we deallocate resources when we’re not using it to save cost. The BIG-IP Virtual Edition in Microsoft Azure at this time only supports 1 NIC so plan accordingly in regards to network security groups and network planning.
