Course Outline
Day 1 — BIG-IP Architecture & Platform Management
• Networking foundations — Overview of the OSI model (L2–L7), the role of load balancers at L4/L7, and mapping IP addressing and subnetting to BIG-IP self IPs and VLANs.
• Theory 1 — TMM traffic processing architecture; understanding traffic flow from client to virtual server to pool member; device modes, administrative partitions, and role-based access control (addressing banking segregation-of-duties); licensing and module provisioning for LTM and AVR.
• Theory 2 — Navigating TMUI for efficient GUI workflows; tmsh essentials; performing configuration backup and restore with UCS archives; comparing hardware versus virtual editions and their fit within bank data centers.
• Lab (3 hours) — “Get Traffic Flowing”: Initial setup (VLANs, self IPs, routes), creating nodes, pools, and health monitors, building the first virtual server, verifying traffic to backend application servers, and capturing a UCS backup.
Day 2 — Core Load Balancing & SSL/TLS
• Networking foundations — TCP/UDP handshakes and port concepts; HTTP methods, headers, status codes, and keep-alive mechanisms.
• Theory 1 — Virtual server types; designing pools, nodes, and monitors; load-balancing algorithms; TCP/HTTP profiles and connection reuse; applying these concepts to internet-banking and API traffic patterns.
• Theory 2 — SSL/TLS offload and certificate management, including key/cert import, chains, and cipher policy aligned with banking security baselines; persistence methods (cookie, source-address) and their appropriate use cases; introduction to iRules with simple read-only examples (redirects, header insertion).
• Lab (3 hours) — Configure an HTTPS virtual server with SSL offload for a simulated banking portal, set up cookie persistence, validate the certificate chain in a browser, apply a basic redirect iRule, and observe monitor-driven pool member failover.
Day 3 — High Availability & Operations
• Networking foundations — Essentials of VLANs, routing, and ARP; DNS resolution flow and record types; recap of the TLS handshake.
• Theory 1 — Device Service Clustering: establishing device trust, sync-failover groups, configuration sync, traffic groups, and floating IPs; analyzing failover behavior and client impact; HA design considerations for banking, such as dual-data-center patterns and zero-downtime maintenance.
• Theory 2 — Operations for regulated environments: local and remote logging (syslog, SNMP), AVR traffic analytics, audit logging of administrative changes, upgrade and maintenance procedures, backup strategy, and disaster recovery basics; a brief overview of automation (iControl REST) and WAF (ASM/Advanced WAF) as advanced topics.
• Lab (3 hours) — Create an active/standby HA pair using the two per-trainee BIG-IP VEs, establish device trust and configuration sync, execute forced failover during live traffic, configure remote syslog, review audit logs, and perform a final backup; course summary and Q&A.
Lab Environment
Each trainee receives a dedicated, isolated lab environment: two BIG-IP Virtual Edition instances (to enable the Day 3 HA exercise) and shared backend web servers simulating application tiers. Access is entirely browser-based via a secure Guacamole gateway, requiring only a web browser and no VPN client or local software installation, which simplifies participation from restricted banking workstations. The environment is pre-configured and verified prior to Day 1; by the end of Day 1, every trainee will have successful traffic routing through their own BIG-IP instance.
Requirements
No prior F5 experience is necessary.
While basic TCP/IP knowledge is beneficial, it is not strictly required. Each day begins with concise networking primers covering the OSI model, TCP/HTTP, DNS, and TLS, contextualized for the day’s F5 topics to align teams with varying experience levels to a common standard.
Audience: Network engineers, security engineers, and application support and operations staff within banking and financial institutions.
Testimonials (1)
communication, knowledge from experience, solve problems,
