Licensing & Provisioning of F5

Login on the netminion lab portal to access the LAB setup given to you – here in example we are showing for LTM whereas it can be for the intelligent DNS, Advance WAF or APM.

1. Licensing

Licensing involves activating and validating the BIG-IP system to ensure you can use its features.

• Purpose:
  To verify that the system is legally authorized to run specific F5 modules (e.g., LTM, ASM, GTM).
• Key Steps:
  • Obtain a Registration Key: Provided by F5, this is tied to your purchase or trial.
  • Activate License: Use the registration key and system details to retrieve a license file from the F5 licensing server.
  • Apply License: Upload the license file to the BIG-IP system.
• License Types:
  • Perpetual: One-time purchase with optional support renewals.
  • Subscription: Time-limited usage, often for cloud deployments.
  • Utility Billing: Pay-as-you-go in cloud environments.

Licenses are also associated with the modules you purchase to run on the system. These model licenses are add-ons to the main license for your system. Add-on licenses are automatically linked to the main BIG-IP system license and eligible for support as long as that system is entitled.

2. Provisioning

Provisioning is the process of enabling specific modules on the BIG-IP system based on the licensed features.

• Purpose:
  To allocate system resources (CPU, memory) to the selected F5 modules.
• Key Steps:
  • Access Provisioning Menu: Navigate to System > Resource Provisioning in the BIG-IP GUI.
  • Select Modules: Choose the modules to activate (e.g., LTM, ASM, APM).
  • Set Resource Levels: Configure the resource allocation (e.g., Nominal, Minimum, Dedicated).
  • Apply Changes: The system may reboot to apply the new settings.
• Modules Available:
  • LTM (Local Traffic Manager): Load balancing and traffic management.
  • ASM (Application Security Manager): Web application firewall (WAF).
  • GTM/DNS (Global Traffic Manager): DNS-based traffic distribution.
  • APM (Access Policy Manager): Secure access and SSO solutions.

Key Points:

• Licensing ensures compliance, while provisioning customizes resource usage.
• Proper planning is necessary to avoid overloading system resources.
• Both steps are typically performed during the initial setup or when adding new features.

Obtaining a registration key

To obtain trial keys for F5 products, follow these steps:

• Evaluation licenses and subscription service licenses granted by F5 have their own subscription service and expiration dates. When an evaluation license ends, the module becomes inactive and all configuration items are expected to cease functioning.
• Login and register yourself on F5 for demanding free keys from F5, using the below link, you will get the page as shown below: – https://my.f5.com/manage/s/trials
• click on the trail, and start your free trial after accepting the compliance.
• This would be the format of keys which you will get from F5 and now you need to copy one of the BIG-IP keys from it to licensing and provisioning your device.

Notes:

• F5 trial keys typically have a time limit (e.g., 30 days).
• Some products require a virtual environment like VMware, Hyper-V, or a cloud service (AWS, Azure, etc.) for deployment.
• Ensure your environment meets the system requirements for the F5 product you’re testing.

There are in total five steps for licensing, which are as follows.

Licensing the BIG-IP system

Before you can configure and use the BIG-IP system, you must activate a valid license on the system.

To license the BIG-IP system, you must complete the following procedures:   Obtain a registration key.

Obtain a dossier.

Activate the license.

First step is already achieved, now let’s proceed for the next.

Obtaining a dossier

The dossier is an encrypted list of key characteristics used to identify the platform, which you can obtain from the BIG-IP software. It is generated by your F5 product after you choose a license activation method and appears similar to the following truncated.

Here are the screenshot follows which would help you more on this. Login to the devices using default admin user, username – admin; password – admin.

Post login you may easily see that device is currently not licensed and showing the error as follows –

Click on the next button of setup utility and press activate –

Now here you need to enter the received key and do check for manual option to proceed further.

Now dossier need to copy and pasted over the link of F5 licensing server.

Enter copied dossier and press next, accept EULA and a license will get generated. copy and paste this into your device and your device will get activated.

Device will get booted to make the effects for new license-

Click on continue and you would be navigated to provisioning screen, just press next there as we don’t want to make any changes

Press Next Again

Add the device name, time-zone and change both default passwords for admin and root

You need to re-login post this step with new credentials and click on finished. You can also see from above arrow that your lab device is now licensed successfully.

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