F5 Certified Administrator BIG-IP Syllabus 2026: Five Exams
One credential, five separate 30-minute exams, taken in any order. F5 publishes no section weightings but does publish the cut score - which almost no vendor does.
- 30 per examQuestions
- 30 min eachTime
- 5Sections
- NoWeights published
- 245 scaledPass mark
- $50 eachFee
Table of Contents
The whole paper in one bar
Exam blueprint F5-CAB.0425 is the exam guide F5 publishes for F5 Certified Administrator, BIG-IP, restated so you can see the shape of the paper before you read a word of the detail. The bar below is the entire syllabus: 5 sections, in the order the certifying body lists them.
- §1 F5CAB1 - Install, Initial Configuration and Upgrade
- §2 F5CAB2 - Data Plane Concepts
- §3 F5CAB3 - Data Plane Configuration
- §4 F5CAB4 - Control Plane Administration
- §5 F5CAB5 - Support and Troubleshooting
F5 lists these sections in a fixed order but does not attach a percentage to any of them. Every site that shows you a tidy pie chart for this exam made those numbers up. Plan on all 5 sections carrying real weight, and do not skip one because a blog told you it is “only 10%”.
The syllabus, section by section
Each block below is one section of the official outline. The bullets are the sub-objectives F5 publishes underneath it — the actual scope statement, not a summary of it.
F5CAB1 - Install, Initial Configuration and Upgrade
- Securing BIG-IP - management IP, port lockdown, self-IP firewall rules, DDoS vectors
- Identifying management connectivity configurations
- Licensing, reactivation and modification; the service check date
- Managing software images and boot volumes
- Identifying which modules are licensed and provisioned
F5CAB2 - Data Plane Concepts
- Interfaces, trunks, VLANs, self-IPs and routes and how they relate
- Defining ADC application objects and load balancing
- Predicting traffic behaviour from configuration
- The virtual server types - standard, forwarding, stateless, reject, performance
- High availability concepts
F5CAB3 - Data Plane Configuration
- Modifying and managing virtual servers - persistence, SSL and protocol profiles
- Identifying iApp-configured objects and iRule use
- Modifying and managing pools - health monitors, load balancing method
- Priority group activation and pool member service ports
F5CAB4 - Control Plane Administration
- Managing the state of a high availability pair - force to standby and offline
- Reporting current device status via LCD, dashboard, network map and TMSH
- Log files - /var/log/ltm, secure and audit - and severity levels
- Creating, managing and restoring a UCS archive
- Authentication methods, remote auth providers and groups
- System services - DNS, NTP, SNMP, syslog - and config sync
F5CAB5 - Support and Troubleshooting
- Determining control-plane versus data-plane resource utilisation
- Identifying network-level performance issues, drops, speed and duplex
- Diagnosing why load balancing is not behaving as expected
- Diagnosing a virtual server or pool that is not working
- Reviewing statistics to confirm functionality and interpret traffic flow
Do not infer weight from the size of these lists. F5CAB3 has two blueprint objectives and F5CAB4 has ten, yet both are 30-item, 30-minute exams. Each objective carries a cognitive-complexity rating instead - Remember, Understand/Apply, or Analyze/Evaluate - and that rating, not a percentage, is what tells you the depth you are being tested at.
What the weightings really mean
With no published percentages, the honest planning model is to weight your time by the size of each section’s sub-objective list and by how much of it is unfamiliar to you, not by a number someone invented. The sub-objectives in the outline above are the best proxy the vendor gives you: a section with eight bullets covering distinct services is going to eat more of the paper than one with three.
It also changes what a practice score means. Without weightings you cannot compute a predicted mark, but you can still see which sections you fail on repeatedly — and that signal is the one worth acting on either way.
Reading the verbs in the objectives
The verb at the front of each sub-objective is the part candidates skim and examiners take literally. It sets the depth you are tested at, and it is the difference between recognising a service name and being asked to choose between two that both look right.
| Verb | What a question at that depth looks like |
|---|---|
| Identify / List (Remember) | Straight recall. Which log file, which virtual server type, which module is provisioned. Cheap marks and heavily represented in F5CAB2 and F5CAB4. |
| Explain / Apply (Understand/Apply) | The bulk of the blueprint. You are shown a configuration or an output and asked what it does or how to change it - the level where console familiarity starts to matter. |
| Given a scenario, determine (Analyze/Evaluate) | F5CAB4 and F5CAB5. Upgrade eligibility, service status from netstat output, why a pool member is down. This is where the troubleshooting exam does its real work. |
F5 states that most of the generic ADC content has been removed from these exams. The old 101-era material - OSI model, HTTP status codes, cloud fundamentals - is largely out of scope now, so a study guide written for the retired 101 will waste a lot of your time.
Study it in this order, not the syllabus order
Exam guides are written to describe a job role, not to teach one. The published order is almost never the order that builds knowledge fastest. This is the sequence that front-loads the material everything else depends on.
| Order | Why here |
|---|---|
| 1. F5CAB2 - Data Plane Concepts | Concepts before configuration. Virtual servers, pools, profiles and traffic behaviour are the vocabulary the other four exams are written in. |
| 2. F5CAB3 - Data Plane Configuration | The direct application of exam two. Only two blueprint objectives, so it is the fastest of the five to prepare once concepts are solid. |
| 3. F5CAB1 - Install, Initial Config and Upgrade | Licensing, provisioning, software images and securing the management plane. Self-contained and easy to bank. |
| 4. F5CAB4 - Control Plane Administration | The largest blueprint by objective count. HA state, UCS archives, config sync, authentication, system services. |
| 5. F5CAB5 - Support and Troubleshooting | Last, because every diagnostic question assumes you already know what correct looks like. Attempting it first is the most common sequencing mistake. |
F5 states explicitly that the five exams can be taken in any order - there is no gating first exam any more. That freedom is worth using: at $50 a sitting you can book the one you are ready for rather than waiting until you are ready for all of them.
What changed, and how to spot the next change
This is a rebuilt certification, not a tweaked one. Effective 1 May 2025, F5 replaced the two long exams with five 30-minute ones. The 101 Application Delivery Fundamentals exam retired on 30 April 2025, and 201 TMOS Administration survives only for candidates who already hold an eligibility from passing 101 between May 2023 and April 2025 - so new candidates cannot enter through the old path at all, and passing 201 no longer renews the credential. Renewal is now the single F5CABR exam: 60 minutes, 50 items, the same 245 cut score, $100 online. Anyone who has ever held F5-CA can sit it no matter how long ago the certification lapsed. The current blueprint is F5-CAB.0425, dated April 2025.
Two habits keep you from studying a retired outline. First, open the official exam guide and look for its revision date before you buy anything — courses and question banks lag a syllabus change by months, and the cheapest ones never catch up. Second, re-check it the week you book. A revision announced after you started studying is still a revision you sit.
Turn the syllabus into questions
Reading an outline tells you the shape of the paper. Answering questions tells you which sections you would actually lose marks on. Start free, then $5.99 unlocks the full F5-CA, BIG-IP bank.
F5-CA, BIG-IP exam pageFAQ
How many exams do I need to pass for F5 Certified Administrator, BIG-IP?
Five: F5CAB1 through F5CAB5. Each is 30 items in 30 minutes and they can be taken in any order, with no gating first exam. All five must be passed to earn the credential.
What is the passing score for the F5CAB exams?
245 on a scaled score, and F5 publishes it - which is unusual. Cisco and Google both withhold cut scores for their exams, so F5 candidates get to see the target they are aiming at.
How much does the full F5-CA, BIG-IP certification cost?
US$50 per exam online-proctored through Certiverse, so $250 for all five, or $65 per exam at a Pearson VUE test centre, which is $325. The credential is identical either way.
Does F5 publish weightings for these exams?
No. The blueprint lists objectives with a cognitive-complexity rating - Remember, Understand/Apply or Analyze/Evaluate - and no percentages at all. Any pie chart you find for this exam was invented by whoever drew it.
Sources
Every section title, sub-objective and number on this page comes from the certifying body:
- https://support.education.f5.com/hc/en-us/articles/37607208476059
- https://support.education.f5.com/hc/en-us/articles/35127397947291
- https://support.education.f5.com/hc/en-us/articles/37276542073371
Checked September 2, 2026. Exam guides are revised without notice — confirm against F5 before you build a study plan around this page.