F5 BIG-IP

F5 BIG-IP provides features such as load balancing, application security, SSL offloading, and application acceleration to ensure the availability, security, and performance of applications in data centers and the cloud.

F5 is a paid appliance, so to install it on lab, we need to request for a trial key.

Requesting Trial Key

Go to F5 Website, register for an account, and request a trial for BIG-IP VE (Virtual Edition)

You’ll get several trial keys, the one we’re interested in is the BIG-IP one

Then go to download section, just pick the latest Virtual Edition of BIG-IP

And depending on what platform this will be installed, pick the appropriate one.

Installing BIG-IP F5 on ESXI

The installer you got should be in ova format, so just deploy it as usual

After spinning the VM up, it’ll automatically get an IP through DHCP

Access the IP on the browser, the default credentials are admin/admin

Input the 30-day trial registration key

Select the modules that you wish to install, this trial key gives quite some modules to play around with.

Configuring BIG-IP F5

First, set the management IP address, make sure it is on different segment with other interfaces.

Next configure the internal facing interface, give it an untagged vlan if you dont plan to play around with vlan.

Then configure the external facing interface, pretty much the same configguration as the previous one.

And all is done. The F5 BIG-IP is up and operational.