Attempting the new path to BIG-IP Certified Administrator
A couple weeks ago I had kjsalchow on for an episode of DevCentral Connects, which you can watch at your pleasure here: I had reached out to Ken and HeidiSchreifels after one our MVPs made a comment on this new path toward certification. I missed the memo (Heidi's article here), but this was big news and I knew we needed to have a conversation with the community. During our chat, Ken mentioned that all five beta tests required to earn your BIG-IP Certified Administrator would be available on-site at AppWorld (as would the recertification test available to ANYONE who has previously held the cert) and that he needed more people to start at #5 and work backwards. And so I did. I had time Tuesday morning before "The Hub" opening party kicked things off, so I knocked out all five beta tests. Here are my thoughts about the experience. I went in completely blind. I did not study, (but the blueprint is here for you) and I did not do the prep work to get my device ready for testing. I did pre-register for tests #3 - #5. When I arrived at the room, the cert team did a great job helping me get the tools set up on my laptop. The test environment downloads a secure browsing session, and there are some known issues with company laptops that lock things down, so you might be best suited to test from a personal laptop. To my knowledge in discussions with them, tablets are not supported. The certiverse delivery was great. Strong improvement from what I recall for the previous versions. Seeing the questions and the diagrams and being able to reference back and forth was far easier to assess the challenges. I always try to use the flagging system for review and that worked great. As this was a beta, I took extra time to provide feedback. For the betas, I had a range of questions from I think 39 to 58 across the five tests and an hour to complete each. For production tests, I believe that will be 30/30. None of them concerned me on time. I really liked the breakdown in the new format. This allows you to progress through the material when studying without having to keep it all upstairs for one test. BIG-IP Administration Install, Initial Configuration, and Upgrade BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Concepts BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Configuration BIG-IP Administration Control Plane Administration BIG-IP Administration Support and Troubleshooting I felt pretty good about the analysis questions, that stuff is pretty cemented in my brain. I work mostly with the BIG-IP APIs now, so I'm less solid on specific tmsh commands or tmui click paths. I put myself in the cone of shame on a few questions because I filmed lightboard lessons for them but I wasn't confident in the right answer. All that said, I have no idea if I passed them, but I think I hit minimally viable candidate on four of them? As they were betas, there were some questions that probably need to be removed, and some questions might need to be refined a little. This is where the always fascinating psychometrics come into play. But for the most part, I though they were a good summary of the knowledge one should have for basic administration. I got the first three tests completed quickly enough to take the other two. Registering for them on-site and jumping into them was painless. The cert team is the bomb-diggity. They're so helpful, friendly, encouraging, and super eager to make everyone successful. It's always a pleasure to cross paths with them! The downside of betas is they are not scored immediately, so I have to wait. Jason does not like waiting... How about you, community? Anyone else take the betas for the refreshed BIG-IP Certified Administrator (or the recertifying exam) and want to share your experience?
Help F5 Transform the BIG-IP Administrator Certification
Many of you received a copy of the BIG-IP Administrator Certification beta exam email announcement earlier this week. We hope you can carve out some time to participate in the beta exams. For anyone who missed this F5 Certified message sent to candidates earlier this week, you can check it out below. If you’re seeing this for the first time, it probably means you’re not a part of the F5 Certified community yet. Now is an ideal time to join! The How do I enroll in the F5 Certified Professionals program? article will guide you through the process. And finally, for those of you who wrote and reviewed items for the new BIG-IP Administrator exams— THANK YOU! You did an incredible job. Thanks to your contributions, we can confidently say that the certifications our candidates attain are in line with the high standards and integrity on which our certification program was established. Please let me know if you have any questions or if you would like to volunteer for additional certification exam development activities. We always need SMEs! Cheers! Heidi The F5 Certification team is excited to announce some exciting changes in our program and invite you to help us transform it by participating in the BIG-IP Administrator beta exams. When considering what changes needed to be made, we asked our candidate community, “What could we do to increase the value of being F5 Certified for you?” Your feedback was clear. You value the F5 BIG-IP Administrator certification, but you want updated, more relevant exams. You want the exams to be easier to take while still providing the same quality items that legitimately test the knowledge, skills and abilities of those who achieve certification. You want the same level of quality and integrity in the program with more options to maintain your certifications. We listened, and are excited to share what has changed, and provide you with a glimpse into what will be changing in the future, in the F5 Certified Program Updates article. Here is how you can help us with a vital step in the transformation. Before we can publish the final version of the new BIG-IP Administrator certification exams, we need you to take the beta versions of these exams. Here are the necessary steps and helpful information in the FAQ: F5 Certified Administrator, BIG-IP BETA exams article, to get you started. Existing candidates, login to the new Education Services Portal. If you are new to the program, login using your F5 SSO credentials to complete registration. For detailed login instructions, see How to Log Into the Education Services Portal article. ALL candidates are eligible to take the BIG-IP Administrator beta exams. Even if you have achieved a higher level of F5 certification, you can participate! We want your input. Schedule the BIG-IP Administrator beta exams by following the instructions in the How to Schedule a Beta Exam article. The beta exams are live today through February 28, 2025. Each beta exam is 60-minutes with up to 60 items. The beta exams are delivered exclusively online at Certiverse. The cost is $20 USD for each exam with promo code F5CABBETA There are five beta exams: BIG-IP Administration Install, Initial Configuration, and Upgrade (F5CAB1-B) BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Concepts (F5CAB2-B) BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Configuration (F5CAB3-B) BIG-IP Administration Control Plane Administration (F5CAB4-B) BIG-IP Administration Support and Troubleshooting (F5CAB5-B) To prepare for all five of the beta exams, refer to the Certified Administrator, BIG-IP Certification blueprint. The beta exams will be scored AFTER the beta period closes. Candidates who have passed all five exams, will achieve Certified Administrator, BIG-IP Certification. For more information about these beta exams, see the FAQ: F5 Certified Administrator, BIG-IP BETA exams article. Complete all five of the beta exams and provide us with the data and feedback necessary to create the final version of the BIG-IP Administrator exams. Thank you for being a valued member of the F5 Certified Community! Please email us at support@mail.education.com with any questions or feedback.F5 Certified Administrator NGINX certification now available!
F5 Certified Administrator NGINX certification now available! The F5 Certification team is thrilled to announce that the first official F5 NGINX certification is now live! Introducing the F5 Certified Administrator NGINX certification. The NGINX Certification validates a candidate's understanding of how NGINX works and their ability to perform basic functions related to the administration of NGINX acting as a web and proxy server. To achieve the F5 Certified Administrator NGINX certification, candidates must be a part of the F5 Certification program and pass all four of the following NGINX exams: NGINX Management NGINX Configuration: Knowledge NGINX Configuration: Demonstrate NGINX Troubleshooting About the NGINX certification exams: Each exam contains 30 questions and is 30 minutes long. Each exam costs $50 USD. Each exam is delivered online through Certiverse and can be taken in any order. Preparation for the NGINX Certification exams begins with the NGINX OSS Blueprint. The NGINX certification is based on NGINX Open Source Software, not NGINX+. NGINX Certification FAQs. You can register here for the F5 Certification program to schedule NGINX exams. Note*: This link takes you to a non-F5 site where you will need to establish an account login if you haven not already done so.* Go to F5 Certification Program site for additional NGINX training resources. For additional information, refer to the NGINX Certification FAQ page. If you have additional questions, please email support@mail.education.f5.com And check out Buu Lam's conversation with Dylan Thomas, one of the first people to be NGINX Certified, to learn about how to prepare for the exam.
F5 Certified Practice Exams
Thinking of taking the F5 Certified 101 or 201 exams but not sure if you are ready? Ease the anxiety by taking a F5 Practice Exam! That’s what I did, and it sure helped. If you remember, back in August I attempted the 201-TMOS Administrator exam and successfully failed, missing by a few questions. I’ve been wanting to try again and had an opportunity last week but I hadn’t studied since that initial attempt at Agility. If I failed again, I’d have to wait another 45 days to give it another go. So instead, I decided to take a practice exam. Practice exams provide candidates with an accurate prediction of their performance for the live, production exams. Other than the section-level score reports, they are not intended to be used for study or learning purposes. Their entire value is based on their similarity to the production exams and their validity in predicting your performance. If you think you’re getting a sneak peek to real questions, think again. They use entirely different questions on the live exams, so unless you actually learn the underlying knowledge, 'knowing' the practice questions is completely useless and becomes waste of time. The Practice Exams are designed to mimic the real tests with 80 questions timed to 90 minutes. There are exhibits to consider, you can flag questions to review and you get instant feedback on your results. You can complete on your own device and you can ‘alt-tab’ to look up the answers if you so desire. Not that you should – defeats the purpose. While you do not get an actual score, you do get an indication if you Passed or Failed and insight (Below/Borderline/Meets) on how you did on the sections. As you can see, 4 months of not studying doomed my fate. The 201 is no fly-by and really requires daily hands on experience. If I had done well, I could have taken the real exam the following day. This way, I know exactly where I need to focus and what I need to do to finally pass the 201. They don't allow unlimited access to the practice exams and recommend using the practice exams no more than two, at most three, times as part of your preparation. Once you become familiar with the questions, the practice exam loses its value. Practice exams are delivered via their Zoomorphix Exam Studio system and only available to registered candidates. They have 101 and 201 rehearsals with 301a, 302 and 303 practice exams coming soon. If you’re preparing for a @F5Certified exam, you can review some of the F5 Certification study materials that are available. Good luck! psBecoming F5 Certified - BIG-IP Administrator Certification - 101 & 201 Exams
How Do I Become a certified F5 BIG-IP Administrator? There are two exam you'll need to pass to become an F5 BIG-IP Administrator; Exam 101 – Application Delivery Fundamentals Exam 201 – TMOS Administration The 101 exam is mandatory, you will not be able to jump ahead to the 201 exam, or the 300 level exams. You may not like that, but once you take it you will really appreciate why F5 did this. If you work with F5 on a daily basis you are well aware there is more to becoming an F5 expert than memorizing commands and configuring BIG-IP modules. True application delivery administrators / engineers know you need skills ranging from networking, server administration, security, to development. That is the key to what separates a good F5 admin / engineer, from someone who is only comfortable adding a VIP or modifying pool members. The 101 exam was built to asses foundation knowledge in most of those areas. Not so much on the dev side, but basic iRule concepts are indeed on the 101 blueprint. About the Author Guest author Austin Geraci is a subject matter expert in F5 Networks Technology, and has worked in the ADC space for 10+ years. When he's not working with & evangelizing F5's cutting edge technology, you can find him on the squash courts, going for a ride around Lady Bird Lake, or listening to some live music in ATX. Check out WorldTechIT to read more from Austin. Step 1 - Sign up / Register yourself in F5s Credential Management System The very first thing you are required to complete before you schedule your actual exam is sign up for the F5 Certification program in the F5s Credential Management System. Once you do that you will receive an authorization email from F5 clearing you to schedule the 101 exam. The site is relatively intuitive once you register. This will be your home-base for things like F5 provided blueprints, study guides, and certification logos you can use on your website / business cards. I should note, the study guides you will find on this site are not full blown / the only thing you will need to pass the exams. They are outlines and examples of the objective topics. They will include references to material you should be basing your studies from. On the cred mgmt site you will also find an option to publish credentials, which allows you to send a certified email with your certification credentials from the credential verification services @ PEARSON VUE - note the email comes from a slightly different domain than you may be familiar with from PEARSON - CredentialVerificationServices@pearsoncred.com. This can be a handy tool to send your official creds to potential employers, boss or maybe even tease your co-workers ;). Step 2 - Schedule your test with Pearson Vue Some people will prefer to start studying before they schedule their first exam, other will take the opportunity to light a fire under their posterior. Either way, once you're cleared to test from F5 you can go ahead and schedule your F5 101 exam at F5s Certification landing page at PEARSONS VUE. Once you're registered & logged in at the PEARSON site you will see the 101 exam under pre-approved exams, go ahead and click on it - you will then be brought to a page with the exam details and a big blue button that says "Schedule this Exam". From there you will proceed to the test center search and pick a day and time that work best for you. Give yourself ample time to prepare and review all the blueprint material. I personally like morning exams, as I feel the most fresh in the am - but somehow it seems I'm always landing an afternoon slot that works with my schedule ;). When you do take the actual exam, make sure you are rested up, fed, and stress free the day of the exam. I have a friend who actually checks himself into a hotel the day before. This might sound extreme, but if you have a big family at home, the distraction free zone might prove to be worth it. However you prep in the days before, avoid cramming - it doesn't work for these types of tests. Step 3 - Preparing for the 101 Application Delivery Fundamentals Exam It's important you fully understand what you're getting yourself into before you go gung ho and schedule your exam. Review F5s 101 – Application Delivery Fundamentals Blueprint and create a plan & time-line to pass the exam. Be realistic and take it seriously, there's nothing like blowing money on the exam for a reality check, but some of you will inevitably need that motivation ;) You can go through the blueprint and create your own study guide, or you can opt to purchase the Application Delivery Fundamentals Study Guide by Philip Jönsson & Steven Iveson. There is also a free F5 101 exam study guide put together by Eric Mitchell on university.f5.com (requires login.) What did I do? I took a good look at the blueprint, and said phh I know this stuff! I then gave some quick study to sections I haven't hit on in a while. Even though I have a good background in networking and work on F5 gear on a daily basis, I found myself pressed for time, but I did indeed pass. If you are in a similar situation, I would not underestimate the exam, take your time to prepare. I didn't have Erics guide or the paid version when I took the exam - if I were to take the exam today I would probably do all 3, shell out $9.99 for the paid version, take a look at Erics study guide, and suppliment with some of my own material. F5 101 Exam Hands-On & Tips The 101 exam wasn't designed to run you ragged with hands on questions, but hands on preparation will definitely not hurt you. If you're not working on F5s BIG-IP software everyday, I would highly recommend you set yourself up with a virtual machine and purchase a license for the F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. For just under $100 bucks, you can have access to practice on just about all the F5 BIG-IP modules - the Policy Enforcement (PEM) & Link Controler (LC) modules are not included. You are also limited to 10mb bandwidth, and there are some limitations with the APM module, but that's no problem for the testing you'll need it for. It was a bold move by F5, which clearly shows their commitment to building competency on their platform. You can also get a free 90 day VE trial. If you do set up a VE box, make sure you get v11.4 up and running for the 101 (not always going to be v11.4), that's what the test (at this time) is based on. Remember this is a fundamentals exam, once you go through the blueprint you will see there are a lot of topics on fundamental knowledge of Network Engineering & Application Delivery. In other words, you won't have to go crazy with hands on - but it's not going to hurt & it will help you for the 201 test. Here are some quick tips to keep in mind when taking the 101 exam: Version # The test is currently based on TMOS v11.4 Number of questins on the 101 exam There are 70 questions on v1, and 80 on v2. V2 is going live sometime in Q1 of 2015. 10 of those v2 questions are unscored Passing score You will need a ~69% to pass the exam (may change with v2) Partial Credit No, All questions are scored equally, and no partial points are awareded. Time Limit 90 Minutes (non-native English Speaking residents automatically get 30 additional minutes. Time managment Manage your time appropriately, don't dwell on hard questions - especially if you're taking v2 - the question might not even count! So answer what you know and move on. Utilize the mark question feature and review what you didn't answer at the end of the exam, the back button is your lil friend. Step 4 Preparing for the 201 TMOS Administration Exam Allright, you made it this far - you passed the 101! Give yourself a pat on the back, but don't get carried away, the fun has just started ;). In about a day from passing the 101 you should receive an official pass letter and an authorization email from F5 clearing you to schedule the 201 exam. I'll take this opportunity to mention some people have reported failing the exam at the testing center but passing when they received their email from F5. I'm not sure what the deal with that is, I only mention this so you don't lose all hope if you fail at the testing center. Again, you can go ahead and schedule the 201 exam now, or take the time to review the 201 TMOS administration blueprint and study to fully assess the time frame for the task at hand. At the time of publishing this article, the only public F5 201 study guide is the one completed by the gentleman and scholar, Eric Mitchell, also available on university.f5.com. I used this Study guide and filled in some of the lighter sections with my own -I passed the exam. I was more mindful of the time crunch this time, but I still cut it close on the limit. From discussions in study groups this is done on purpose by F5, as part of their assessment on you. F5 201 Exam Hands-On & Tips If you take a look at the 201 Blueprint you'll quickly see the topics cover actual administration of the Traffic Management Operating System (TMOS). You will absolutely need hands on experience to pass this exam. If you're not working with the gear everyday, and you didn't take my advice to setup that BIG-IP VE for the 101- Now would be a good time. Let me be clear, you will not pass this exam unless you have experience working on BIG-IP Software and in particular the Local Traffic Manager (LTM) module. Keep in mind this test is geared to measure your "administration" skills, particularly from the GUI. The 300 level exams will test more of your working knowledge of the CLI. With that in mind, don't rule out all of the CLI - pay attention to the blueprint and don't put 100% faith in someone elses study guide. Here are some quick tips to keep in mind when taking the 201 exam: Version # The test is currently based on TMOS v11.1 Number of questions on the 201 exam 80 with 10 of those questions being unscored (F5 testing out new questions) Passing score You will need a ~69% to pass the exam Partial Credit No, All questions are scored equally, and no partial points are awarded. Time Limit 90 Minutes (non-native English Speaking residents automatically get 30 additional minutes. Time management You will need to work efficiently, and effectively - manage your time appropriately!! I can't harp on this enough, I almost ran out of time - it came right down to the wire for me! Remember, only 70 of the 80 answers count - answer what you are confident in, then move on. Once you've answered all you know do some quick math of reaming time divided by remaining questions and try to stick to that limit when going back to them. BIG-IP Administrator Recertification You may be wondering how do I recertify my BIG-IP Administrator Certification? First, you should know your certification is good for 2 years from the time you became F5 certified. As long as you are within the 2 years, you can take the 201 exam again, or achieve F5 CTS status. Which means passing the 302, 303, 304, or 301A & B exams. To clarify further, you need to pass both 301A & B, one won't cut it, opposed to the other 300 level exams that only consist of one exam. If you let your two years pass, you will indeed need to retake the 101 exam. Make sure you stay on top of your time-line, and create a plan that leaves you plenty of time before the 2 year expiration. What's next? Hopefully by this point you've received the victorious pass letter from F5 with the subject line "You have been certified as an F5 Certified BIG-IP Administrator!". Take some time to celebrate and acknowledge your accomplishment - you're now officially an F5 Certified BIG-IP Administrator ;) Don't stop there, if you log into F5s Credential Management System you will see you now have access to all the 300 level Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) blueprint & study guide. Note the 301b exam will only be available for you to take with PEARSON after you pass the 301a exam. Some people opt to conquer the 301a/b first, since they just finished the 201 exam, others take a break and hit one of the other exams. There is no right or wrong here, it's all a mater of preference. Which path are you going to choose? Here is a list of all the 300 level F5 CTS LTM Exams Exam 301a – LTM Specialist: Architect, Setup and Deploy Exam 301b – LTM Specialist: Maintain and Troubleshoot F5 CTS GTM Exams Exam 302 – GTM Specialist F5 CTS ASM Exams Exam 303 – ASM Specialist F5 CTS APM Exams Exam 304 – APM Specialist What has your experience been like with the F5 Certification program? Any tips or insights of your own you'd like to share? Maybe a question or two about the certification process? (NOT an actual cerfication question. Sharing certification exam details can result in loss of certification and expulsion from the program for life!) Well jump on in and comment below!F5 Certifications Mega Meta Series: Congratulations, you have passed!
In this series of articles, I have gone into the details of how the exams are developed (...as far as I know at least), and how I think you can improve your chances of passing them. And now that you have, enjoy! Enjoy the rest of the day, and soak up the rays of a job well done! Second, party! Third, tell everyone about it! Especially us techies aren’t good at boasting about our achievements, but passing these F5 exams, I would definitely call an achievement. Guest Author: Alex Tijhuis An evangelist for anything software designed and security, and a self-described massive network geek, Alex is an F5 trainer and consultant at ABCT.net. While certified and highly skilled and interested in all things F5, he's just as happy pulling cables in a data center and designing scalable systems as he is messing around with the latest cool kids toys our fine industry has to offer. Once the celebrations are over, you should also receive your mail from F5 to confirm that they have ratified your results – assuming you haven’t tried to do something nasty. With this, you can then look online to check your passing score, which will give you an indication of how close you were (https://certification.f5.com/). Keep in mind the MQC (Minimally Qualified Candidate) metric that F5 uses – no matter if you have barely passed or easily passed, you have passed! And when it comes to telling people about it – they really don’t care. As another wise colleague once said; “boast about the fact that you made it, not about how closely you almost didn’t pass.” Badges are also a useful feature. On the same site, you will be able to find them and you can show them to the world! Most exams nowadays have it, but if anyone ever asks you to confirm that you indeed have this exam, you can send them the badge, which links to the F5 page that confirms that this certification is still valid. Too many people have been boasting about certificates that they don’t actually have, or are no longer valid. This validation system is a great way to confirm from the source that you still have the accreditation. What’s next? Not to say you have to change your job, but as we have now seen, these certifications are worth their time and money and if you were thinking about looking for something better, now might be the right time to do it! Of course, good managers will recognise potential before it leaves the building and will happily give you the work (and hopefully pay rise) that comes with it. In my case, the F5 certifications helped me to leave my 24/7 helpdesk job and move into presales, then training, and nowadays running my own business. Even if you don’t immediately want to change or take on the new skills, you can still take pride in the knowledge that you know your stuff. And why not take this further? Which exam are you looking at next? I’m aware that there’s lots of other exams to be had, but if you are enjoying these, why not try some more? Each 300 level exam gives you access to more opportunities and options. Going for a 400-level one will only expand on that, with the added bonus that you can do less exams every time when renewal comes up. Talking about renewals; in order to keep your certification valid, you need to renew them roughly every two years. Though with the recent lockdowns, F5 has extended the validity of most certifications so that nobody would be uncertified due to not being able to sit the exam. Dr. Ken Clarifies... F5 has not “extended the validity of most certifications so that nobody would be uncertified due to not being able to sit the exam”. We extended the “grace period”. The difference is subtle, but it is critical. Certifications expiring during the pandemic will still expire and, once expired, they cannot be used to satisfy the prerequisites of a higher-level exam/certification. Extending the grace period simply gives candidates more time to renew those certifications without having to go all the way back to exam 101. ALSO, taking a higher-level “exam” will not renew any prerequisite certifications. Achieving a higher-level “certification” will. Again, it is subtle, but can be important. Passing exam 302 confers the F5-CTS, BIG-IP DNS certification, which in turn will renew/extend the prerequisite F5-CA, BIG-IP; HOWEVER, taking and passing exam 301a does not result in a certification and, thus, does not renew/extend the F5-CA (it makes you eligible for 301b, which if passed then confers a certification and renews the prerequisites). Personally I find the 2-year renewal period a bit short, but I get why they do it. The technology changes so rapidly that in order to keep up, you should keep yourself up-to-date as well. Funny enough, when it comes to recertification, I have found that it takes much less time to prepare for them than I did for the original exams. This year I recertified my 402 and 202. For neither of them did I actually spend more than half a day on preparation – maybe a day at most. Remember, you don’t have to know the facts, you need to understand the scenarios and the rough F5 environment. As long as you keep getting exposed to F5 systems, recertification shouldn’t be too difficult. Alternatively, when it comes to recertification time, why not go for that higher-level one? Depending on which exam you have done, you can do a higher-level exam the next time around and it will automatically renew your previous exams (check the F5 exam policies for an exact overview of possibilities - https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K90101564 Again, as long as you are being exposed to F5 systems, you will probably find this easier than you might think! Where to next? If you ever thought about moving to a different place or country, these exams can also help for sure! Because of their international recognition, and a chronic shortage of good F5 engineers worldwide, there is always a job going somewhere that will interest you! Having lived in many different places myself, I can honestly say it’s the best way to expand your knowledge and understanding – brave the unknown! Get out of your comfort zone, pick up new things and try new ideas. If anything, use the certifications as a proof to yourself that you apparently DO know something. Even though we techies often don’t value ourselves that highly, clearly we have done well – so trying something new might not be such a bad thing after all. The trolls (ahem) of the exam development group have tried to make you fail, but in the face of danger, you laughed and came out victorious! Congrats and whatever you try next – go for it! Dr. Ken Says... I’d only add that, having been a practicing engineer who achieved a lot of certifications, I really wanted our program to be something people could be proud of. It is not easy and achieving it will likely require more work and effort than most of the any other certifications you may have. Most of the “complaints” I get basically all say the same thing, “it’s too difficult to get your certifications, why can’t you make it easy like everyone else?” To them I say, “why would you want something that anyone else can get?” Achieving an F5 certifications, especially the F5-CTS or F5-CSE certifications, is really an achievement. You should be proud of your accomplishments; I know we are.F5 Certifications Mega Meta Series: Congratulations, you have failed!
In this series of articles, I will go into the details of how the exams are developed (...as far as I know at least), and how I think you can improve your chances of passing them. Everyone fails an exam every now and then - my exam history is a definite testament to that. If you never fail an exam, I suspect you spend more time on preparing for an exam than you really should. Let’s have a look at some of things you can do so that it doesn’t happen too often though. Guest Author: Alex Tijhuis An evangelist for anything software designed and security, and a self-described massive network geek, Alex is an F5 trainer and consultant at ABCT.net. While certified and highly skilled and interested in all things F5, he's just as happy pulling cables in a data center and designing scalable systems as he is messing around with the latest cool kids toys our fine industry has to offer. Let’s try again! F5’s exam policy (https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K90101564) stipulates when you are allowed to retake exams again; wait 15 days after first fail, 30 days after second, 45 after third and a year after fourth. This has been done to ensure that nobody will keep doing the exam in the hope of memorizing questions and passing by accident. I quite agree with that. Still, everyone can have a bad day, and everyone will fail every now and then – as I said, my own exam history is a perfect example of that. But when you fail, don’t let that keep you from trying again! Here is how I look at the number of tries: First time failed? Meh, nobody cares, everyone fails now and then. Brush up on what you think may be missing and see if you can find some other sources of material. Second time failed? Not to worry, hope you have recognised the areas that you need to focus on and you better rebuild some of the scenarios in your lab or find some more study material for those areas. Third time failed? Okay, you really need to straighten up now and prove that you are actually trying! Fourth fail? You may want to rethink your career plans. I will leave it up to you to decide when is a good time to try again, but don’t put it off too far, or it will be “conveniently” forgotten about. If it was worth doing it a first time, it’s worth trying again. “It is better to have tried and failed, than to have never tried at all” Wait, is that how that saying goes? But it is right. I’m not saying waste your tries, but don’t hold back either, failing isn’t such a bad thing! Learn from your mistakes Although your initial result at the exam centre doesn’t tell you your score, once the results have been uploaded to F5, you should find your exam score in the Exam History section of the Certification portal (https://certification.f5.com/). I believe that nowadays the exam score runs from 100-350 points with 245 (or in hex…F5!) being the passing mark. It’s not much consolation, but knowing how close you are to the passing mark, gives you an indication of how much extra work you should be putting into preparing for the next time. If you were close to the pass mark, you should have a good feeling of which questions you were struggling with and what topics you didn’t know enough about. If you can’t remember, it's likely that everything was difficult and you are best off starting from the beginning again. Remember, these exams are designed to distinguish between those who can and those who cannot. So if you were just “wingin’ it”, you'll get beaten up by the exam. Go back to the blueprint and see if you can match up those topics you were struggling with. That’s your starting point for the next phase. What to change? When you are going back to your study material to find out what you have missed, don’t stick with just the same material. My daughter being a prime example who keeps doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. “But I’m trying!” No you’re not, you are just too stubborn to stand back for a few seconds and think about what you are trying to do, and changing it if needed – oh how I recognise my younger self in her... Just like the hackers that are trying to attack your F5 really. If they notice that an attack doesn’t work, they will change their approach – no point in trying something that doesn’t work. So should you change tack too. The material you may be using might not be of the level you require. Maybe you are just not understanding what the material is trying say, or the material is simply not covering the topics that you need. Find some other resources to study, ask some other people for help and build out some more scenarios in your lab. If you do this right, I am certain that there will be a few times that you say “aaahhh, of course, that’s what I missed” when you go through it. Of course there is no guarantee that you will get the same questions again next time around, but you have at least covered off yet another gap in your knowledge, and have gone on to improve yourself – and isn’t that what the whole certification program is for anyway? A few years ago, I coached someone for the 401 exam. He had a great background in networking and security, but limited knowledge of F5’s. He managed to pass most of the 300-level exams in a few months’ time! By the time we met, he was ready for the 401. After spending a day with him talking about a variety of topics, and letting him lab up various scenarios for a week, he sat the 401 exam…. And failed. Meh, no real problem, we had another chat afterwards, discussed some of the topics he recognised he was struggling with, spend another week in the lab, …and passed! Well done and well deserved for sure! Before you ask, no, I do not suspect any foul play. I have never seen such a feat repeated again and am still in awe of this guy’s brilliance. (If you read this, you know who you are...) For most of us, that's not the case though and we actually have to make an effort... ;) Long story short, for me that was a perfect example of someone used to passing, but still failing from time to time. Meh, it happens, brush yourself off, learn from your mistakes, try again and succeed! Dr. Ken Says... Many will know that I spent many years pursuing certifications when I worked as an engineer. In the many, many exams I took, I only ever failed two exams. The first one was Novell 4.0 print services (yes, that dates me a bit), which I took a second time and passed. The other was F5’s 201: TMOS Administration exam. For context, I have been with F5 for over 21-years now and my original role was as a field systems/sales engineer: I sold, designed, installed, and provided support on F5 systems around the globe. My second role was as one of the first “Security Architects” at F5, working with TrafficShield and FirePass (again, dating me a bit if you recognize the product names). I was, I believe anyway, a fairly well-respected F5 engineer. The point being … I’m no novice when it comes to F5 equipment. So, why did I fail 201? I failed 201 because it I took it nearly a decade after I quit working as a full-time F5 engineer. Not only had many things changed, but knowledge and skill are perishable; they decline over time. While I didn’t fail 201 by much (and I didn’t study for it at all), the assessment correctly determined that I was no longer capable of doing the job. Yes, it hurt my ego a little, but I’ll have to admit it was a fair assessment. I wouldn’t hire me to do the job anymore either. As the author intimates, failing an exam doesn’t make you a failure, it just means you need to work a bit more to pass the exam; it’s not personal. In case you’re wondering, no I haven’t retaken exam 201. Primarily, it is because I don’t do the job and having the F5-CA, BIG-IP doesn’t have much value in my current role. At the same time, I will admit that I like to tell this story because it underscores the validity of the assessment, and why we have some of the policies we have. 2-year renewal; knowledge is perishable. Complain to me that you can’t pass an exam even though you’ve worked with F5 gear for 10-years; you and me both!! Note: For another perspective on pushing through, check out Peter Silva's successful failure with the 201 exam .F5 Certifications Mega Meta Series: You need to study? Stop reading and start building
In this series of articles, I will go into the details of how the exams are developed (...as far as I know at least), and how I think you can improve your chances of passing them. One of the biggest killers in F5 exams is the time pressure. Most of the ones that I’ve done, I’ve ran out of time, and no, not just the 400 levels. I believe that I had the same problem when recertifying my 202 recently. Why is that? Well, apart from me maybe just not being as good at this stuff as some of you, I do believe it has something to do with what the exam is testing; can you figure out real life stuff, rather than regurgitating facts. Guest Author: Alex Tijhuis An evangelist for anything software designed and security, and a self-described massive network geek, Alex is an F5 trainer and consultant at ABCT.net. While certified and highly skilled and interested in all things F5, he's just as happy pulling cables in a data center and designing scalable systems as he is messing around with the latest cool kids toys our fine industry has to offer. As mentioned in my previous article; the exams are scenario-based rather than knowledge-based. With knowledge-based questions, it’s easy; you know it or you don’t. No matter how much time you are given, it won’t influence your answer. With scenario-based questions, it’s quite the opposite; if I give you enough time, you should be able to figure most of the stuff out. The difference between a good engineer and a bad one, is not that the good engineer knows more. For me, a good engineer can quickly spot where a problem MAY lie in a complex environment, and how to start testing for things to get to the bottom of problems quickly. Nobody walks in to a problem and just “knows” what the answer is. Okay, unless they are the ones that have caused the problem to begin with, but maybe we’ll leave that one for another day. So, in order to really understand the stuff you are dealing with on the exams, you NEED a lab. The 101 maybe not yet, and you could wing it through the 200 level exam(s) without it, but the 300-level and upwards, you don’t really have a choice. Having hands-on experience immediately helps you recognise scenarios, certain features and their behaviour as well as general experience of how things work in real life. What to put in a lab? An F5… or 2. I’ve got about 40 F5’s, together with a bunch of BigIQ’s, but I wouldn’t recommend that to the average user. A physical F5 is not needed and is very noisy, so no point in going for those (…unless your lovely boss gives you access to them of course!) If you have the capacity to run a few systems on your laptop, great, but keep in mind that you will need at least a few servers running at a time, which often overwhelms all but the best of laptops. Instead, have a look around eBay and the likes for some cheap second-hand servers. There are often all kinds of devices lying around with a wide range of specs and at various prices. If you are in the UK/EU, I love these guys: https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/* If you are lucky, you can find some high-spec silent servers if peace and quiet is a must for you, but even some basic servers are often good enough. I am running all my kit on a bunch of second-hand cloud servers that I bought for about 500 dollars each – and that included 128GB ram and 16 CPU cores! Finally, grab a bunch of el-cheapo hard drives from eBay* and you are all sorted! I’m not saying it’s cheap, but having a decent lab environment doesn’t have to cost the earth. As a hypervisor, you can basically take whatever you prefer, but I’m a big fan of Proxmox*, a free hypervisor that is very easy to set up and highly scalable Of course, if you like their work, buying a support license would always be nice! Once that’s up-and-running, it’s time to start building VM’s! For anyone with a partner F5 account, there is the vLab section on the F5 Downloads page. For anyone who works at an F5 partner, but doesn’t see the vLab section at the bottom of the page, have a chat with your account manager of presales contact. This page contains the images of some backend servers, as well as a big package of demos and exercise guides – gold dust really! For anyone else, I’d recommend just building a server yourself using an Ubuntu image, or if you have gone for Proxmox, you can download preconfigured webserver containers in a few minutes. The only thing you then need, are a few F5 boxes. You can get lab licenses for about 100-200 dollars (a great investment), or you can request trial licenses via https://www.f5.com/trials - so no reason to not have them. With these licenses, you can download the F5 images from the Downloads page and you should be ready to go! Here is a trick by the way for getting a few lab licenses paid for by your boss; “Everybody has a lab, some people are lucky enough to have a lab that’s separate from their live environment.” – I can’t remember where I heard this quote first, but it sure will make your boss shiver and pay up quickly! Even the process of building the lab is already a good exercise for the exam to be honest. It will bring back your networking skills, your troubleshooting skills when things eventually go wrong and your cloud skills of course! When you have a good setup, I can also recommend taking a few snapshots of your systems, so you can always rollback to a working state of your systems – it’s pretty painful if you have been playing with the kit, have got it all stuck and have no clue on how to recover from it (yet). Being able to roll back to a working state will save you lots of time and frustration. What to do now? …whatever you want, really. The blueprint (see a previous article) should give you some indications on what you still need to learn about certain topics. Also see if you can indeed find that package of lab guides under the vLab section of the Downloads page. If you still have any old manuals from training courses, that’s also perfect. Or last but not least, have a look here: https://clouddocs.f5.com/training/community/ There is a treasure trove of good lab exercises available. Software upgrades are also a good one to practise in the lab, and how to do this in clustered setups, with different modules and different upgrade paths. Okay, not necessarily all required for the exams, but still something that may come in very handy next time you need to do an upgrade in your live environment. Talking about software versions; every exam is linked to a specific version of software (the blueprint will tell you what version it is based on), but to be honest, don’t worry too much about it. The vast majority of questions are version-agnostic, so there shouldn’t be any questions that ask you about a specific command structure that only is available in very specific versions of software. But since they HAVE TO decide on a software version that is valid for all questions, they normally pick the one that is leading at that moment. As a last closing thought, you may now wonder that, if it is so important to have a lab for the exams, then why are all exams multiple-choice and is there no lab-based exam? I was curious about that myself at first, until it became clear to me that these multiple-choice questions ARE testing your lab skills because of their scenario-based questions. On top of that, it was explained to me that if F5 were to have lab-based exams, there would only be a few locations worldwide where this would be possible, and likely at an increased cost. This negates one of the principles behind the F5 exam program; anyone worldwide with the right skills, should be able to sit and pass an exam irrespective of your background or financial means. Something I fully agree with – F5 to all! Dr. Ken Says... This article approaches one of the topics near and dear to my academic research. It is all about the difference between knowing “what” (facts and bits of knowledge), and knowing “how” (how all those pieces fit together into a whole). As the author has stated numerous times, you can get “what” from Google, but that doesn’t mean you know “how” to use that knowledge. While each person requires a different amount of experience to develop expert know-how, very few will ever get this simply from reading a book; you have to practice implementing that knowledge before your brain transforms it into a highly efficient “mental model” of how it all fits together. Once that is done, you have become an expert and will approach problem solving in an entirely new way. To wit, the author mentions the dissonance between having lab skills but using multiple-choice questions to test that knowledge/skill. There is no disconnect here. Our questions are designed to evaluate a candidate’s mental model, not whether they can type fast or manipulate a GUI. It is just as simple, and more cost effective, to ask questions that determine if a candidate has done the work, than design an environment to test them doing it. One issue I have with practical exams is they not only test what you “know”, but they expect you to implement that knowledge the way we would, rather than being open to novel or innovative solutions. As such, they inadvertently limit what might be “correct”, simply because it is based on our perspective rather than being open to equally correct solutions that are accomplished in new and interesting ways. The goal should always be to determine whether the individual has the knowledge and the ability to implement that knowledge, not whether they implement it solely the way we would. It’s nuanced, but it is important. *Disclaimer; I have no affiliation with any of the sites/products I mention in this post. I’m happy with them at the time of writing, but things can change of course. If you like them, great! If you don’t, great!
