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!


ps

DevCentral's Featured Member for December - Kevin Davies

When we prepare for our Featured Member series, I typically send out a questionnaire and the DevCentral member writes out their answers. With the opening question I'll do a bit of editing and use that for the intro. This month however, airloom's Kevin Davies did such a great job with the opening, I decided to simply let him tell his story. A long-time DevCentral member and always engaged with the community, Kevin Davies is DevCentral's Featured Member to close out 2017. Congrats Kevin!

DevCentral: First, please explain to the DevCentral community a little about yourself, what you do and why it’s important.

Kevin: I suppose my interest in technology came from a desire to know how things work. My first job in computers was doing exactly that, building them at a small computer store in Brisbane. I have always been technical, being the pioneer in my family I immediately saw the potential they would bring and how it might shape the world…

I remember a quiet night alone in the office struggling to understand SCO Unix, as I’d come from a MS-DOS background. Yet I persisted, and using the SLIP protocol with static IP addressing, I successfully connected our business to the University, so we could receive email. This was back when Universities were connected globally and world wide web as we know it today, did not exist… yet.

My next role was to join an ISP as a help desk guy. Always in search of more knowledge, I figured the quickest way to get it was to immerse myself. Dealing with 10,000 users you rapidly discover the problems people are faced with as they try to get a handle on these things called modems! It was a great experience, and I attained my CCNA certification there. By the time I left three and a half years later, I was literally running the network.
Then I joined Unisys in a security role, to further expand my knowledge of firewalls and the way they operated. This required a deeper understanding of protocols, there were some very interesting problems you would come across. I lived for those moments and always found troubleshooting something I really enjoyed. During this job I transitioned from a Brisbane country town to Sydney the big city.
After various contracts and the GFC, I ended up at CSC doing more security, this time Checkpoint firewalls. It was here that I worked with my first BIG-IP. A load balancer, I mean what’s there to learn I thought? You send traffic here, you send traffic there… how little did I know. It wasn’t until I joined Red Education doing professional services that I came to understand the true capability of the device. Where I learned iRules provide customers with tremendous flexibility and iApps, API and automation toolsets make these devices scale and deploy in hybrid environments.
Now I work for airloom, the #1 F5 engineering partner in A/NZ, APJ and joint #1 globally providing solutions that no-one else could deliver. My first week at airloom I sat my 401 exams. My second week I was learning a completely new product. The third was sitting down with customers. They have a consistently high level of expertise that is not found elsewhere in Australia. They recruit and maintain the best, to deliver the outcomes customers need. After eight years F5 experience I thought would arrive here at least on par with the guys within the team. I was wrong.

DC: You are a very active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?

KD: I’ve always enjoyed helping others, it’s part of my DNA being a consultant. It is why I have enjoyed being an instructor as well as doing professional services for the last eight years. I’ve found that giving back to the community that has helped me is my way of saying thank you. From an airloom perspective the team is entirely focused on helping customers being successful so giving is what we do day in and day out.

DC:Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

KD: I have enjoyed making the BIG-IP do magic for customers. It really is a powerful integration toolset in the right hands. Everyone needs to get traffic from A to B. With one of these the capability to add world class protection at any layer, multiple layers of authentication or even inspection becomes possible. That’s on top of providing high availability and redundancy for any application. Its level of detail and control is quite astonishing.

I’ve made stateless applications stateful, one protocol talk to another, the list goes on. My favorite has been iRules, I used to have a motto on the wall when I worked in one place for a few months… “iRules for breakfast, how many do you do?” That stateful piece was all written using iRules and saved the business over a million dollars in project costs whilst delivering projects quicker and with less errors. 

I have deployed nearly every product, my most recent has been migrating customers from legacy F5 physical appliances into virtualized appliances running vCMP. Instead of just running one BIG-IP they can have eight of them on a mid-range appliance. F5’s zero contention virtualization platform means customers can have the speed and the flexibility to provision BIG-IP’s with N dedicated processing cores.

One of my favorite F5 product modules is APM. The visual policy editor is a brilliant tool for building your own custom security policy and provides incredibly flexibility. The authentication point to end all authentication points… SAML, OAUTH, OTP, AD, Radius, Tacacs, DIY. You can roll your own N factor auth with built-in/external MFA and have all of it layered using SSO. It really is the authentication cornerstone of the products and is a joy to work with.

DC: You are a Distinguished Engineer at airloom. Can you describe your typical workday and how you manage work/life balance?

KD: On Monday’s I prepare for the weekly briefing, check outcomes from the previous week and start planning the day. Then tee myself up a list of things to do, including client meetings and begin preparation for them. These continue till the end of the day. I might be in the office one day, working remotely or both. We have no local infra except for a printer and wireless access points, everything we do is in the cloud. This means we are free to work from any location be it at home, office or customer site.

The role of an airloom Distinguished Engineer is a pretty awesome one, we report to our CTO Adrian (Nobby) Noblett who was the former F5 Solution Architect for APJ. Our role as DE’s is to help our client’s get the most out of their technology investments, however we are also given the creative license to develop new solutions we believe will help our clients. We have several goals to work towards on a regular basis, and they are not just about projects but also coming up with industry leading solutions no one else is across so we stay ahead of the curve and ensure our clients have access to the best solutions ahead of the entire market.

DC: You have a number of F5 Certifications including Technology Specialist (LTM) certifications. Why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

KD: I am certified in LTM, GTM, ASM, APM. I also just recently attained the Security Solutions Expert. F5 certifications are serious business. They provide assessment and recognition of technical skillset. This is valuable to airloom & valuable to my career and on top of my experience shows that someone is serious about maintaining their knowledge level on a product. I appreciate F5 are diligent about detecting and eradicating shortcuts as this maintains the value of the certification. The blueprints and study guide provided with each exam are highly relevant and far more than many other vendors provide to help professionals prepare themselves. From an airloom perspective it is a requirement that all DE’s are 401 level certified to hold the DE title at airloom, and we actually have the equal most number of 401’s in the world in our team!

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

KD: There have been many. The biggest was an iRule solution that a customer refused to implement as a black box solution! The data flow was deemed mission critical so they required on going monitoring. This meant writing another iRule to collect statistics. Then another to display them. The solution itself used about 100 subtables, the statistics around 1000 as it tracked not only the success or failure but all possible execution outcomes, effectively profiling the solution behavior per transaction.

This was then output not only as a html web page showing the effectiveness of the solution, but also available in XML format to be polled by a 3^rd party monitoring platform. Their monitoring dashboard had graphs for each transaction type showing its effectiveness over time. It seemed overkill at the time however over three weeks the effectiveness of the solution gradually tapered off from 98% to 0% and by that time we were furiously troubleshooting with F5 support. 

It turned out about 1 in 200,000 calls to a certain command would return an undocumented outcome. Once known the code was updated, the problem now was the BIG-IP contained hundreds of invalid table entries that never expire. Failing over was not a solution because the HA device maintained an identical copy through session table mirroring. The most effective solution involved a fourth and final iRule to iterate through every permutation and remove the invalid table entries.

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

KD: I think a tour guide. I love talking to people and seeing new things. I could probably travel for ten years and only see half what the world has to offer. Human beings are quite creative people and cultural differences produce an amazing diversity of ideas around the globe.

Thanks Kevin! Check out all of Kevin's DevCentral contributions, connect with him on LinkedIn and visit airloom or follow on Twitter.

DevCentral’s Featured Member for November – Nathan Britton

Nathan Britton works as a Principal Security Consultant in the UK for a security solutions provider called NTT Security, part of the NTT Group. They work with customers to design and implement security solutions and his team specializes in application delivery and security in particular. His specific role is focused on solution design and technical governance. Nathan is a BIG-IP ASM SME, a DevCentral MVP and our Featured Member for November!

DevCentral: You are a very active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?

Nathan: Hands down it’s the best community forum I’ve ever participated in and, over the years, I’ve taken a lot from it. As such, I like to ensure that, time and my knowledge permitting, I give back to the community whenever I can. Also, there are always new things to learn, so being active on DevCentral makes sure I see what other community members are doing to solve other peoples’ issues and I keep on top of new features of the products.

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

NB: My main background has been BIG-IP LTM and ASM. I was a customer of F5 for around 5 years where we had a number of BIG-IPs load balancing internal applications, and also a pair of ASMs protecting our internet facing web applications. I still recall the day I joined the team and was asked to look after the BIG-IP that had been a little bit neglected and not knowing my F5 from my BIG-IP and what was an application delivery controller anyway! Fortunately, some free F5 University training and some lurking on DevCentral soon got me on track.

DC: You are an Engineer at NTT Security. Can you describe your typical workday and how you manage a work/life balance?

NB: As a consultant there is no typical working day. One day I could be onsite at a customer workshop going through a solution design on the whiteboard, the next day could be working on proposals which we hope will turn into a new customer engagement and other days I could be assisting colleagues with technical governance on one of their projects. Part of the enjoyment of being a consultant, rather than an end user, is the exposure to varied work on a day by day basis.

DC: You have a number of F5 Certifications including Technology Specialist (LTM) certifications. Why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

NB: As a consultant working for an F5 partner it is vital for us to have certified members of the team, in fact NTT Security attained the highest partner status in F5’s Guardian Professional Services program. On a personal note I think the certifications have been vital in ensuring I have a breadth of knowledge as you never know what feature or module a customer may choose to implement. To that end, the self-study and lab work needed to achieve the certification has been invaluable. I’ve also helped design questions for the 401 exam so, as you can see, I’m very invested in the certification process. I think Ken and his team, especially Heidi, have done a great job.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

NB: My first challenge was the fact that I did not know anything about F5 or BIG-IP when I first got my hands on them. DevCentral, with its 101 series back in the day was a great starting point, and for that I need to thank the likes of Jason, Colin and Joe. Since then the security sessions with Josh and now John are invaluable and useful to my everyday work. Since being more comfortable with the technology DC has helped enormously when presented with very specific use cases to solve by customers, especially if iRules are required, there’s always a codeshare item that can be used as a basis for a custom solution. It saves a lot of time and head scratching.

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

NB: Growing up I was fascinated by true crime books and TV shows. So if I had my time again I would definitely be a lawyer, a barrister perhaps…although I’m not sure how the wig would look on me!

Thanks Nathan! Check out all of Nathan's DevCentral contributions, connect with him on Twitter and visit NTT Security or follow on Twitter.

DevCentral’s Featured Member for October – Jad Tabbara

Jad Tabbara has been a Security Engineer with e-Xpert Solutions in Switzerland since 2014.

He graduated from INSA de Lyon FRANCE with a master degree in telecommunications and nowadays, work takes the most part of my time, but happy to succeed in his endeavors.
As hobbies, he enjoys playing sports (soccer, tennis), traveling, sharing time with family and is DevCentral’s Featured Member for October. Our second Featured Member from e-Xpert Solutions!

DevCentral: You are a very active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?

Jad: First, I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity. 

I have never contributed to a forum other than DevCentral. Compared to other editors, I must admit that DevCentral is well designed such as all other F5 websites, articles and documentations. DevCentral is a great place to learn and a simple access to information regarding iRules, iControl, etc. 

As a part of my personality, I like to share my experience and help others to achieve what they are doing, this is what I found at the community and keeps me involved.

DC: You are an Engineer at e-Xpert Solutions SA. Can you describe your typical workday?

JT: There is no typical workday at e-Xpert Solutions since we always have new challenges, projects and customers. As part of my work, I implement security solutions mainly based on BIG-IP LTM, APM and ASM modules. I participate to all phases of a project (design, install & configure, maintain and troubleshoot).

DC: You have a number of F5 Certifications including Technology Specialist (LTM) certifications. Why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

JT: As good news, I’ve just added the 304 APM to my certification list. My objective is to get all remaining certifications before next year (BIG-IP ASM, DNS and 401). These certifications help me to learn more about BIG IP features and prove my technical skills. I believe that it’s a differentiator for me and e-Xpert Solutions. Finally, for customers, it guarantees a high level of expertise.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

JT: There are many situations where DevCentral and iRules helped me a lot! Let me share with you one of the hardest issue I had to deal with. A customer was load balancing SFB solution through F5. 

An intermittent voice call interruption was occurring after 5 seconds only when tethering connection using a smartphone with a specific ISP. Thanks to DevCentral that helped me to make advanced tcpdump captures from end to end. After analysis, the problem was found. The client connected to the specific ISP used same source port for two connections (F5 and SFB). The F5 was replying using the wrong socket. Finally, to work around this weird client behavior, we changed the “Source Port Translation” option on the VS from “Preserve” to “Change”.

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

JT: When I was a kid, my dream was to be a soccer player. Later with the use of trendy applications such as MSN and Skype I became curious to understand how Internet world works. So, I decided to make studies in this field. During this period, I realized risks of Internet (introduced by malicious users) so I came up to specialize and work in security.

Thanks Jad! Check out all of Jad's DevCentral contributions, connect with him on LinkedIn and visit e-Xpert Solutions SA, follow on Twitter or visit LinkedIn.

DevCentral’s Featured Member for September – Rob Carr

Rob Carr is a Senior Trainer/Professional Services Consultant with Red Education Pty in Australia, covering the Oceania and Asia markets. He has done training and engagements from New Zealand to Taiwan and points in between. About 60% of his time is running F5 courses, ranging from the from the introductory Admin course through the high-level courses like AFM, ASM or iRules. He enjoys the mix of work, where teaching allows him to be social and PS work lets him delve into the technical nitty-gritty. Rob is also DevCentral's Featured Member for September!

DevCentral: You were an F5er (ProServ Consultant) from 2013-15 and continue to be a very active contributor in the DevCentral community since then. What keeps you involved?

Rob: Long before I did PS Consulting for F5, I worked for F5 in Seattle, first as a Network Support Engineer and then as Software Test Engineer, and I always found DC to be extremely useful. While F5 puts considerable energy into its product documentation and knowledge base articles, there are times when you need an ‘outside’ perspective to really understand what a feature is and how to use it. I always exhort my students to use DC as a resource, and not just for iRules. 

I stay active because I use the site to answer my own questions and because I appreciate it when someone knowledgeable contributes a write-up or a really solid comment. I try and give back by commenting when the subject of a question is one in which I have experience.

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

RC: I’ve been working with BIG-IP since 2005, when there were only two products, BIG-IP and 3DNS (FirePass joined F5 a few months after I did), and those two (well, the current iterations of LTM and DNS) are my strongest products. I’ve also worked with BIG-IP ASM, APM and AFM over my career. Today, I’m most comfortable with BIG-IP ASM and general Application Delivery more generally at this point.

DC: You are a Consultant & Trainer at Red Education. Can you describe your typical workday?

RC: If I’m training then I try to be onsite about an hour before the students. I need the time to setup the room, settle my thoughts and flip through the material we need to cover that day. Generally, training is a nine-to-five experience, although that can be modified by where the training is being done – in some countries, courses start later, then run into the early evening. Regardless of the specific hours, my tasks for the day are pretty much the same: cover the material, answer student questions and redirect where needed, proctor the labs and troubleshoot course and student issues. It’s almost like being on stage for an eight-hour show. 

Consulting, on the other hand, is generally quite a bit more solitary. I do most of my work remotely, so once I’ve met with the client and we’ve had our kickoff activities, I’m back in Melbourne working from my home office. It’s not unusual to have a conference call once a day with the customer and technical staff and there is always email communication about the design and documentation tasks. 

In the background, there is always communication with the constellation of trainers and consultants that I work with, sharing ideas, running questions past one another or bantering.

DC: You have a number of F5 Certifications including most of the Technology Specialist (LTM, GTM, APM, ASM) certifications. Why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

RC: I have all the F5 Certifications at this point, including the 401 Security Solution Expert exam and I suppose I’m a bit proud of that fact. I think F5’s certification exams are pretty good at covering what you need to know to be successful working on F5 systems in the enterprise, certainly more so than some of the other vendor exams.
In Australia, engagements often come with a requirement that you have certification for the product or products, so in that sense having the certifications has been good for my career. More generally, having the certifications has given me more confidence in representing my skills to prospective clients.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

RC: Recently, I was on an engagement where the customer was migrating internal architectures for some highly fragmented legacy applications, as part of a PCI compliance project. We needed to replace many mod_proxy implementations and to mitigate application issues that came up during this transition, all on a short timeline. We ended up using multiple iRules with each service, providing routing and forwarding and fixing issues like improperly set cookie attributes. iRules is such a powerful and flexible solution that in the near term, given our timeline, it was the best and fastest way to manage the application issues.

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

RC: I’ve always enjoyed gardening and I’m fond of zoos and animal parks, so if I wasn’t working in IT, I think I would like to be a gardener at the zoo.

Thanks Rob! Check out all of Rob's DevCentral contributions, connect with him on LinkedIn and visit Red Education.

I’ve Successfully Failed the F5 Certification 201-TMOS Administration Exam

Yup, you read that right. I did not pass the F5 Certified BIG-IP Administrator test I took while at F5 Agility 2017. And I’m not ashamed since it was a challenging test and I will be trying again.

Sure, I went through Eric Mitchell’s (F5er) comprehensive 201 Certification Study Guide along with the TMOS Administration Exam Blueprint. However, I probably should have taken more time ON a BIG-IP messing around…especially for tmsh commands…which is where, I believe, I got tripped up. This is key. Reading and memorizing commands along with some practicing can only get you so far. Doing it regularly is what’s needed. This is a key feature of the exams, particularly as you move up the exam expertise. The exams are designed to test real knowledge and experience, not if you can cram the night before. Pretty sure my errors came with tmsh and the UCS upgrade questions since I had limited experience in those areas.

Going in, I was a bit less confident (than from the 101) but also, less anxious. And about three-quarters through the exam I was feeling pretty good. I might pass this thing. However, the 201 Certification exam is not something to take lightly and is much more challenging than the 101. While the 101 has a 70% pass rate overall, the 201 hovers around 67% pass rate overall. 69% correct is a pass – I got 63%. I probably would have received my diploma from an educational institution but for Dr. Ken, a 63 is not a ‘pass’ with the F5 Certification Program. But that’s OK and why I like the program. At whatever level, a pass is a true achievement. You know your stuff.

At Agility 2017, the F5 Professional Certification team administered 227 exams. They had 245 scheduled so only 18 no-shows for whatever reason. When I took the exam on Monday, there was a constant flow of folks taking the exams and over the course of the event, I spoke to many who were either about to take one or had already completed theirs. No matter pass or fail, all were impressed with the caliber of the exams.

For the week, the disposition is as follows:

So you don’t have to work out the percentages:

Slight edge to the Pass group, congratulations…but still, you got a 50:50 shot.

Even though I failed, I’m glad to have taken it and know what I need to brush up on for my next attempt. For others that also failed, don’t be discouraged. While in Chicago, I was reminded of this Michael Jordan quote:

‘I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.’

ps

DevCentral’s Featured Member for July – Vosko Networking’s Niels van Sluis

For almost two years Niels van Sluis has worked as a Security Engineer for Vosko Networking. Vosko's security team focuses on supporting security solutions from various vendors like F5, Check Point, Cisco and RSA. Niels focuses is on F5 BIG-IP and Check Point. He started his professional career about 20 years ago in the ISP industry as an Unix Administrator, and switched to the public healthcare sector around 2001. In more recent years, he’s moved more towards working on network security and design. Apparently, having a Unix background helps a lot when working with modern security devices, since most of them are running on some flavor of Unix. When not working or spending time on DevCentral, he likes to travel, visit historic places and enjoy nature. And Niels is DevCentral’s Featured Member for July!

DevCentral: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

Niles: My first encounter with BIG-IP was during my previous job. A colleague had been working with BIG-IP before and introduced it as a replacement for the KEMP load balancer that was currently in use. So, I had to attend the ‘Administering and Configure BIG-IP’ course. It was then – when I learned about iRules – I saw the full potential of this nifty device. But during my days there I didn’t do much with the BIG-IP as in terms to administration. I would only touch the box, if my colleague was on leave. This however changed when I started working for Vosko Networking. Within about a year’s time I’ve gone through the BIG-IP certification program, spend a lot of time on DevCentral and got my hands dirty in the field. The BIG-IP areas I’m most experienced in are LTM and APM. The most fun part for me are iRules (LX).

DC: You are a Security System Engineer at Vosko Networking BV. Can you describe your typical workday?

NS: My typical workday depends whether I’m working on a project or not. When working on projects I often visit customers throughout the country to help them deploy new equipment or configure new services. Recently I’ve migrated quite a few Cisco ACE and Microsoft Forefront TMG deployments to the F5 BIG-IP platform. Other times I help customers upgrading their BIG-IPs or setting up more advanced APM configurations including SAML and SSO. When I’m not working on projects I work on support cases or trying out new stuff in our lab.

DC: You have a number of F5 Certifications including most of the Technology Specialist (LTM, GTM, APM, ASM) certifications. Why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?

NS: First of all, they are required for Vosko Networking to participate in the F5 Support Partner program. But more important to myself is that the F5 certification program helps to get deeper knowledge in to how the various BIG-IP modules work, how they relate (interact) to each other and what part the BIG-IP plays in modern network infrastructures. The certification program is also very practical; you can directly apply what you have been learning. It helped me to get more comfortable and confident in my day to day job.

DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how did DevCentral helped in that situation.

NS: In my experience, there are BIG-IP challenges every day. I think this is the result of the BIG-IP being some kind of network-magic-box, that can do about everything. With most other security devices, one is limited to the functionality and settings the box is shipped with. But with BIG-IP, you can really be creative and think outside the box. If the required functionality is missing, you can build it yourself with iRules. And customers know this. I often go out to customers with a specific need, but when starting out it isn’t always clear if this is something the BIG-IP can do by default. In these situations, access to the DevCentral community is crucial. Even though BIG-IP isn’t an open source project, it’s amazing to see how members share their time, code and knowledge to help each other. For example, some code that really helped me out are Yann Desmarest’s APM Full Step Up Authentication and Stanislas Piron’s APM SharePoint authentication. Besides code, I think the Lightboard Lessons are awesome; very helpful!

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?

I think I wanted to be an electrician when I was young, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t my dream job. As long as I’m able to learn new things and have new challenges, I’m happy how things are. I think I’m useless for any other job that doesn’t require a keyboard. Thanks for the privilege for being a featured member and thanks for the Lightboard Lessons as well. I really enjoy them.

Thanks Niels! Check out all of Niels' DevCentral contributions, connect with him on LinkedIn and follow Vosko: @vosko.

Q/A with Rackspace Network Architect Vijay Emarose - DevCentral's Featured Member for November

Koman Vijay Emarose works as a Network Architect with the Strategic Accounts team at Rackspace. He has been a “Racker” (Rackspace Employee) for 7+ years and currently he is adapting to a networking world that is pivoting towards a world of automation.

In Odaah's free time, he likes to identify DevCentral site bugs, incessantly torment Chase Abbott to fix them – particularly the badges and he is DevCentral’s Featured Member for November!

Vijay's other hobbies include traveling and has been to more than eleven countries and looking to increase that number in the future. Personal finance blogs and binge watching documentaries are his guilty pleasures.

DevCentral got an opportunity to talk with Vijay about his work, life and blog.

DevCentral: You’ve been an active contributor to the DevCentral community and wondered what keeps you involved?

Vijay Emarose: I have been a passive DevCentral user for quite a while and relied heavily on DevCentral to improve my iRule skills. The continued support for DevCentral community among F5 employees and other BIG-IP administrators provided me with the motivation to start sharing the knowledge that I have gained over the years. Answering questions raised by other members helps me to reinforce my knowledge and opens me up to alternate solutions that I had not considered. Rest assured, I will strive to keep the momentum going.

DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have.

VE: I started working on F5 during the transition period from 9.x to 10.x code version in 2010. BIG-IP LTM & GTM are my strong points. I have some experience with AFM, APM and ASM but not as much as I would like. Working with clients of various sizes from small scale to large enterprises at Rackspace, exposed me to a wide variety of F5 platforms from the 1600s to the VIPRION.

I am sporadically active in the LinkedIn Community for F5 Certified Professionals. I had taken the beta versions of the F5 Certification exams and I am currently an F5 Certified Technology Specialist in LTM & GTM. I am eagerly looking forward to the upcoming F5 402 Exam.

I have been fortunate enough to work with the F5 Certification Team (Ken Salchow, Heidi Schreifels, et al) in the Item Development Workshop (IDW) for F5’s 201 TMOS Administration Certification Exam and it was an eye-opener to understand the amount of thought and effort that goes into creating a certification exam. 

The 2016 F5 Agility in Chicago was my very first F5 Agility conference and I enjoyed meeting with and learning from Jason Rahm, Chase Abbott and other DevCentral members. I look forward to participating in future F5 Agility Conferences.

DC: You are a Network Architect with Rackspace, the largest managed cloud provider. Where does BIG-IP fit in the services you offer or within your own infrastructure?

VE: Rackspace is a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Enabled Managed Hosting and participates in the F5 UNITY Managed Service Provider Partner Program at the Global Gold Level. 

Various F5 platforms from the 1600s to the VIPRIONS are offered to customers requiring a dedicated ADC depending on their requirements. LTM & GTM are widely supported. 

In the past, I have been a member of the RackConnect Product team within Rackspace. “RackConnect” is a product that allows automated hybrid connections between a customer’s dedicated environment and Rackspace’s public cloud. F5 platforms were utilized as the gateway devices in this product. There is a DevCentral article on RackConnect by Lori MacVittie. 

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the F5 employees who support Rackspace that I have had the pleasure of working with - Richard Tocci, Scott Huddy and Kurt Lanthier. They have been of massive help to me whenever I required clarification or assistance with F5.

DC: Your blog, Network-Maven.com, documents your experiences in the field of Network Engineering, Application Delivery, Security and Cloud Computing. What are some of the highlights that the community might find interesting?

VE: This is a recent blog that I started to share my knowledge and experience working in the Networking field. Application Delivery Controllers are a niche area within Networking and I was fortunate enough to learn from some of the best at Rackspace. My idea is to share some of my experiences that could potentially help someone new to the field. 

Working with thousands of customer environments running different code versions on various F5 platforms has provided me with a rich variety of experience that could be of help to fellow F5 aficionados who are executing an F5 maintenance or implementing a new feature/function in their F5 environments.

DC: Describe one of your biggest challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation.

VE: DevCentral has been a great resource for me on multiple occasions and it is tough to pinpoint a single challenge. I rely on it to learn from other’s experiences and to develop my iRule and iControl REST skills. 

I have benefited from the iRule: 20 Lines or Less series and I am an avid follower of the articles published by community members. For someone starting new with F5, I would certainly recommend following the articles and catching up on the iRules: 20 Lines or less series.

DC: Lastly, if you weren’t working in IT – what would be your dream job?

VE: I haven’t figured it out yet. Tech, finance & travel interest me. May be some combination of these interests would be the answer.

DC: Thanks Vijay and congratulations! You can find Vijay on LinkedIn, check out his DevCentral contributions and follow @Rackspace.

Related:

• Q/A with Yann Desmarest - DevCentral's Featured Member for July
• Q/A with SpringCM's Joel Newton - DevCentral's Featured Member for August
• Q/A with Secure-24's Josh Becigneul - DevCentral's Featured Member for September
• Q/A with ExITeam’s Security Engineer Stanislas Piron - DevCentral's Featured Member for October

I Am an Application Delivery Fundamentalist!

Fun and a little mental.

If you’ve been following along the DevCentral team’s journey toward F5 Certification, then you may be aware that we were in Chicago last week for F5’s Agility 2016 conference and took our 101 Application Delivery Fundamentals exam. I am happy to report that all of us, Jason, John, Chase and I, passed our exams. I gotta tell you, it’s a relief since I didn’t want to title this article, 'Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.' Good song but wanted to avoid that.

We started this excursion back in April (me in March) with the team deciding to create a study group. Each week we’d tackle a topic with the guidance of Eric Mitchell’s excellent Study Guide. We worked through the sections and decided to test our luck with the Certification Team’s mobile testing center...with the pressure of passing during an F5 event. Imagine the slight pre-test anxiety going through our minds if we didn’t pass. ‘How long have you been at F5?’ the questions would have started. My mouth covering, embarrassing, face-palming, muffled response of, ’12 years,’ would not have been sufficient.

As Ken told us on the way into the exam room, ‘I tell people it is either pass or fail…so don’t worry about your overall score.’ But he also added specifically to me, ‘You know if you fail, I will give you grief.’ No Pressure.

Well, we were prepared and we all passed!

Jason, John and I took the exam Tuesday morning. After registering and scheduling with Pearson Vue, we arrived at the mobile test center. You need to sign in and present two forms of ID, one with your picture. Even though the Certification team knew all of us, we still needed to follow the procedure, no exceptions. We liked that we had no special treatment – other than the ‘hello’ hugs – and had to process and pass fair and square.

We were seated in different areas since the exam room was fairly full when we entered. The moderator helped each of us get to the proper test associated with our registration and the timer started. For the 101, you have 90 minutes to answer 80 questions. At 23 minutes in, Jason got up and was finished. ‘Wa?!?’ as I look up seeing him walk by, ‘I’m only on question 28!’ I lamented. At least John was still there and I kept an eye on my time and question count the rest of the way. But I also told myself, ‘I’m in no hurry and if I need the full 90 minutes, I’ll take it to the last tick.’

John finished about a 40 minutes later and I was left for the last 30 to myself. With 10 minutes left, I was done but took that remaining time to review my answers. One tip: you can flag questions for review during the test or make comments for yourself as you move along. Close out the ones you know and go back for the more challenging questions. In the end I think I changed 3 answers. No idea if it swayed the results either way.

When you are done, you walk back to the registration room and your preliminary results are already waiting. I felt a quiver when Heidi glanced at my results and gave that ‘I’m sorry,’ look. But that was soon turned to glee as I read, ‘you have Passed.’ We were 3 for 3. Chase took the test on Wednesday and also passed.

I feel it was a very fair test to determine one’s basic application delivery knowledge. Some networking, some security, some infrastructure. And although we did prepare, it was still a challenging test. These exams are not supposed to be cake-walks but a good way to measure your knowledge around a certain topic.

While we passed and may be certifiable in our own right, we are not ‘officially’ F5 Certified. That comes with the 201 exam. The 201-TMOS Administration exam is the second exam required to achieve Certified F5 BIG-IP Administrator status. Candidates must have passed the 101-Application Delivery Fundamentals exam in order to be eligible for the 201 exam.

And wouldn’t you know it, we’re all now shooting for the 201. We plan on doing the team study again but we’ll also need to dig into some on box time for this one. I plan on keeping you posted for the 201 but for now, I’ll just bask in my 101 glory.
Phew!

ps

Related:

• Jumping on the Rails of the Technical Train
• Let the Training Begin!
• The Road to F5 Certification
• DevCentral at F5 Agility 2016

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.


ps

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Jumping 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.


ps

Get F5 Certified at F5 Agility 2015

 

Ken Salchow, Sr. Mgr., Professional Certification, talks about F5’s Professional Certification Program from #F5Agility15. He gives us a little history behind the program, the types of exams and certifications available, the process of taking an exam along with the benefits of having the skills and knowledge necessary to be successful when working with today’s application delivery challenges. Plus, you can earn some cool giveaways when you pass an exam.

ps

Related:

• F5Agility15 - The Preview Video
• Welcome to F5 Agility 2015
• Innovate, Expand, Deliver with F5 CEO Manny Rivelo
• F5 Agility 2015
• F5 YouTube Channel

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