Disclaimer – Resources mentioned here or the sequence should be considered just as a suggestion. Everyone have their unique way of learning, so make an informed decision on how you want to invest your time.
If you are new to BIG-IP and don’t know where to start, it can be overwhelming. Last year I decided to spend some time learning BIGIP LTM, GTM/DNS products as part of my daily job. So I’ve put together a small list of resources I came across. I hope this helps.
- (FREE) Start with F5 courses on their F5 learn site. These are short courses 30-60 minutes topic by topic and build very good foundations. Because its same underlying platform whether you use LTM or GTM/DNS or APM or AFM, I suggest you start with “Getting started with BIGIP” then go product by product.
Yes, whether you deploy HW or virtualized, based on your licensing, these are just module you can enable according to your requirements. You can have multiple modules on the same server based on resources (RAM) available.
If you don’t manage the BIGIP servers as part of your day2day job, these free courses should be enough ( in other words, if you just want to skim the topic, to get a little bit of understanding so you can speak the same language as someone who manages your BIGIP infra).
Beyond getting started series, they have some self-paced free courses including lab. These are super good. You may need to signup for a free account though.
https://www.f5.com/services/training/free-training-courses
or search on Google “F5 learn free-training-courses” - (FREE) F5 offers very good Unofficial – F5 Certification Exam Study Guides and Labs. These are live documents and go beyond the basics. Can be helpful whether you are interested in Certs or not. They do provide images and 30 days of trial licenses to create labs in your own environment.
https://clouddocs.f5.com/training/community/f5cert/html/
or search on Google “f5 certification guide”
https://www.f5.com/trials/big-ip-virtual-edition
or search on Google “Try BIG-IP and BIG-IQ Virtual Edition” - (FREE) YouTube channels – I think they have multiple YouTube channels. I find these 2 very good for learning about their products.
F5 Networks WW Field Enablement – WWFE <– YouTube channel name
F5 DevCentral <– YouTube channel name - (PAID Trainings) For advance training, you can take their Subscription bundle, instructor-led training via partner or directly from them. I attended LTM and BIG IP DNS training from their partner, It was good.
https://www.f5.com/services/training#instructorled
You may also find some budget-friendly courses on Udemy. I haven’t attended any BIGIP course from there so I can’t give any reviews.
