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!