The Road to F5 Certification
Over the last 4 months, the DevCentral team has been preparing for the F5 Certification exam. We’ve met a number of times for group study and for each session, we reviewed a particular section of the Exam 101 - Application Delivery Fundamentals Study Guide. We prepared and presented a certain topic and had open discussions about particular use cases, customer scenarios and even played some guessing games as to what might be asked on the exam for that section. Now the time has come to take the test. Since the DevCentral team will be at Agility 2016 in Chicago this year, we decided to take advantage of the Certification Team’s mobile testing center. While you can certainly go to one of Pearson Vue’s test centers, the Certification Team will be on hand at F5 Agility to administer their various exams for those looking to get F5 Certified. It’s a pretty cool set up – almost like a band on a mini regional tour. They’ll have everything you need to take the test. I gotta tell you, I’m a little nervous. I’m sure I’ll be able to nail sections 2-5 since those are the areas I’ve focused on for the past decade…it’s the first part, OSI, that I’m a little weary. Not that I don’t know my 7 layers – All People Seem To Need Data Processing – but maybe some of nuances or lack of recent real world subnetting that concerns me. I’ll use this last month before the exam to keep prepping to make sure I don’t embarrass myself. But let's look at the stats. Recently Ken Salchow, F5’s Sr. Manager Professional Certifications, has posted some interesting statistics about the program, particularly pass rates and certification by region. Ken notes about the pass rate graph, ‘I am also often asked about exam pass rates ... which is not an easy thing to really post. Below is a graph that shows ALL TIME pass rates by exam. It is important to note that these pass rates encompass thousands of exams and even different versions of exams. As such, take these with a grain of salt and realize that if I did a 12-month average, 24-month average and last month average, they would all differ from the below. Oh ... and have I mentioned how much I distrust data coming from our candidate management system?? Yeah ... so ... you've been warned.’ And the graph: So there's a 70% pass rate on the 101. Fairly decent. Ken also posted another chart which shows the breakdown of certification by region as a percentage of the whole. Nice mix of global certifications. We - the DevCentral team - will take some pictures and let you know how we did. If you are at Agility and taking a Certification exam this year, let's compare notes for the final wrap. Pass or Fail. My energy says, 'Success!' ps Related: Jumping on the Rails of the Technical Train Let the Training Begin! .Let the Training Begin!
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was on a journey to getting properly trained and reacquainted with the more technical nuances of F5 solutions with the goal of achieving F5 Professional Certification sometime this year. In fact, most of F5’s DevCentral team is also shooting for certification and we’ve set up our study path. As a refresher, F5 has a number of educational programs to help you get acquainted, get fully trained or become a Certified Professional with F5 gear. From free online courses to instructor led classroom seminars to challenging your knowledge with a certification, F5 can help you, as it is helping me, understand the inner workings of BIG-IP. I began at F5 University with the Getting Started series and was able to get through a number of modules at my own pace. This week, the DC team is in Seattle at the Mother Ship and we decided to kick off our study prep while we’re together. This is for the initial 101-Application Delivery Fundamentals exam and we’re using Eric Mitchell’s excellent Study Guide as our guide. There is also an Exam Blueprint available that goes through the objectives of each section and gives examples of the types of questions asked. Um, what's the purpose and functionality of MTU and MSS again? The 101-Application Delivery Fundamentals test is the first exam required to achieve F5 Certified BIG-IP Administrator status. All candidates must take this exam to move forward in the program. Successful completion of the 101 exam acknowledges the skills and understanding necessary for day-to-day management of Application Delivery Networks (ADNs). The 101 exam is not so much, how do you do this on a BIG-IP but more about the basics of the OSI model, networking, protocols, common traffic management/load balancing concepts, cryptographic services and application delivery platforms in general. The essential knowledge needed to deploy any application delivery controller. We’ve decided to each take and prepare a section of the study guide and present to the team. We’ve set up weekly meetings and each week is an exam section. This week is the OSI model and (theoretically) in 5 weeks, we should be ready to take the exam. If you are prepping or planning to get certified at our Agility event in Chicago this summer, you and your team may want to consider that approach. All the learning benefits, with slightly less stress. So that’s our most recent update as we continue on the certification path. If you’d like a step-by-step guide, including how to register and schedule your exam, check out Austin Geraci’s article Becoming F5 Certified - BIG-IP Administrator Certification - 101 & 201 Exams and/or join the F5 Certified! Professionals group on LinkedIn. Good stuff. psJumping on the Rails of the Technical Train
I used to be technical, highly technical. You know the kind…more comfortable with CLI rather than GUI, limited use of CAPS at the beginning of sentences and proficient at configuring & troubleshooting a slew of devices from multiple vendors. But after a couple role changes over the years, my technical acumen has slightly diminished. Again, you probably know the drill that if you’re not tapping away at it daily, some of those skills dwindle. Plus, with new technology replacing the stuff you knew 10 years ago, it often feels like starting over. But don’t fret! As with anything, you can regain some prowess and learn new tricks with a bit of training. Get on that bike and ride! That’s what I’m going through now. When I joined the DevCentral team, I quickly realized that our community is much smarter than I when it comes to the intricacies of our solutions. My initial reaction to many of the questions that get posted on DevCentral sound like the ‘Aaaaaahhhhhh, Ahhhhhh,’ from Bevis and Butthead. I have no idea. I’ll Alt-Tab to the AskF5 Knowledge Base to check if there is already an answer and often there is. But when it is a unique situation or something with iRules, I look blankly at the screen and wonder, ‘How can I help, when I don’t even know.’ One of the great things about working at F5 is that they allow us to take whatever training is needed to be proficient at our job. Over the last couple weeks I’ve been doing just that – initially digging in to F5’s free Web Based Training. F5 has a number of educational programs to help you get acquainted, get fully trained or become a Certified Professional on F5 Solutions. From free online courses to instructor led classroom seminars to challenging your knowledge with a certification, F5 can help you, as it is helping me, understand the inner workings of BIG-IP. I began at F5 University with the Getting Started series and was able to get through a number of modules at my own pace. We have programs for both partners and customers and is a great way to learn the fundamentals of the BIG-IP system. Next for me, will probably be some classroom training with hands on configuration and the entire DevCentral team will embark on a path to F5 Certification. Hear that Ken? We’re coming for ya!! We’re going to start a mini-study group using many of the resources available and chronicle our progress. The idea is that we’re like you – we know a lot already but want to get deeper in our understanding and for me, better at providing the details of our technical solutions. Join us over the next bunch of months as we share our experiences of becoming an F5 Certified Professional. psAgility 2014–Lab Day and the Inaugural Geekfest!
This year’s kick off for the labs was amazing. Customers and partners arrived Monday morning for a day and half of technical training, ranging from iRules and other programmability exercises to hard core deep dives into Secure Web Gateway, Application Policy Manager, Viprion, and more. The week started far earlier for most of the tech team. John and I arrived Sunday afternoon, but the core team that made this year such a rousing success arrived Friday and spent the bulk of the weekend prepping gear and rooms and then testing everything to ensure Monday was spent on the important stuff—equipping attendees. I can’t say enough good things about the team simply willing this toward excellence, and all the feedback I’ve received has been fantastic. I had the privilege of sharing teaching duties in the iRules 201 class with several of F5’s finest sales engineers, as did John in the iRules 101 class. The classes were packed across the board. For the iRules courses, all material (lab exercises, presentations, etc) is in the DevCentral downloads section, linked below for your convenience. I’ll add the other labs as the teams share their documents. Agility 2014 iRules 101 Agility 2014 iRules 201 Agility 2014 iRules 301 After training, John emceed a couple hours of invite-only tech goodness we’re calling geekfest. John came prepared to sing, dance, and read emo poetry as ice breakers, but it turns out this community likes to talk. Quite a few people stepped forward to share what they learned or loved about F5. It was a little tough to hear at times, so I won’t claim direct quotes here, but to share the paraphrases: - “I had no idea you could use the iControl REST API to configure an LTM…it’s amazing to know how fast and efficient it is” - ”I learned more in one day attending the Agility labs than I have in 5 years of trying all this on my own” - ”We run several web applications and it’s awesome that we can use GTM to show the outside world one IP address for them all…it makes things so much simpler” - ”I’m brand new to F5 technology and I’m already in love with DevCentral…what a huge differentiator and great resource for all my technical questions!” - ”F5 is the swiss army knife of network appliances…it can do ANYTHING!” - ”You can literally do anything with an iRule…the flexibility and power is amazing” Agility is one of my favorite events for a couple reasons. First, it’s an opportunity to mingle with a ton of people, exchanging ideas, networking, building relationships, etc. Second, customers and partners get a broad spectrum of technical resources in a short amount of time. Whether it’s lab day training classes or break out sessions, the quality content and interaction is an unstoppable force. If you haven’t been to an Agility event, I highly recommend you make the trip next year to Washington, DC. I promise a 5 minute dance video by John that you will not be disappointed! Oh, and for all you members out there that swung by the DevCentral booth to say hi (still have a shot 5-7 tonight!) we'll float you 25 devpoints!
