Course Outline
Day 1 — BIG-IP Architecture and Platform Management
• Networking fundamentals — OSI model (L2–L7), the role of load balancers at L4/L7; mapping IP addressing and subnetting to BIG-IP self IPs and VLANs.
• Theory 1 — TMM traffic processing architecture; traffic flow from client to virtual server to pool member; device modes, administrative partitions, and role-based access control (supporting segregation of duties in banking); licensing and module provisioning (LTM, AVR).
• Theory 2 — Navigating the TMUI and optimising GUI workflows; tmsh essentials; configuration backup and restore using UCS archives; comparing hardware versus virtual editions and their suitability for bank data centres.
• Laboratory (3 hours) — “Get Traffic Flowing” — Initial setup (VLANs, self IPs, routes), creation of nodes, pools, and health monitors, building the first virtual server, verifying traffic to backend application servers, and taking a UCS backup.
Day 2 — Core Load Balancing and SSL/TLS
• Networking fundamentals — TCP/UDP handshake and port concepts; HTTP methods, headers, status codes, and keep-alive mechanisms.
• Theory 1 — Virtual server types; design of pools, nodes, and monitors; load balancing algorithms; TCP/HTTP profiles and connection reuse; application to internet banking and API traffic patterns.
• Theory 2 — SSL/TLS offloading and certificate management (key/certificate import, chains, cipher policies 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).
• Laboratory (3 hours) — Building an HTTPS virtual server with SSL offloading for a simulated banking portal, configuring cookie persistence, validating the certificate chain in a browser, applying a simple redirect iRule, and observing monitor-driven pool member failover.
Day 3 — High Availability and Operations
• Networking fundamentals — VLANs, routing, and ARP basics; DNS resolution flow and record types; recap of the TLS handshake.
• Theory 1 — Device Service Clustering: device trust, sync-failover groups, configuration sync, traffic groups, and floating IPs; failover behaviour and client experience; high availability design considerations for banking (dual data centre patterns, maintenance without downtime).
• 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 strategies, and disaster recovery basics; brief overview of automation (iControl REST) and WAF (ASM/Advanced WAF) as future topics.
• Laboratory (3 hours) — Establishing an active/standby high availability pair using the two per-participant BIG-IP VEs, setting up device trust and configuration sync, executing forced failover during live traffic, configuring remote syslog, reviewing audit logs, and performing a final backup; course wrap-up and Q&A.
Laboratory Environment
Each participant receives a dedicated, isolated laboratory environment: two BIG-IP Virtual Edition instances (enabling the Day 3 high availability exercise) along with shared backend web servers simulating application tiers. Access is entirely browser-based via a secure Guacamole gateway, requiring only a web browser with no VPN client or local software installation. This setup simplifies participation from restricted banking workstations. The environment is pre-built and validated before Day 1, ensuring every participant completes Day 1 with working traffic through their own BIG-IP instance.
Requirements
No prior experience with F5 is required.
While basic TCP/IP knowledge is beneficial, it is not a prerequisite. Each day begins with concise networking primers (covering the OSI model, TCP/HTTP, DNS/TLS) tailored to the day’s F5 topics, ensuring that teams with mixed experience levels reach a common baseline.
Audience: Network engineers, security engineers, and application support or operations staff within banking and financial institutions.
Testimonials (1)
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