F5 Certified Administrator Study Resources (F5CAB1-5)
The famous F5 study guides were written for exams that retired in 2025. Here is what actually maps to the F5CAB1-5 series, and the free BIG-IP lab route.
- $250Total fees
- 5 x 30 minExams
- 50-70 hTotal prep
- 245 scaledPass score
- BIG-IP VE trialLab
Table of Contents
What actually exists
The F5 Certified Administrator, BIG-IP is now earned by passing five separate 30-minute exams, F5CAB1 through F5CAB5, each 30 questions, each $50 online or $65 at a test centre, taken in any order. The passing score is 245 scaled — F5 publishes it, which Cisco and Google do not. The restructure matters for resources: the widely recommended community study guides were written for the 101 and 201 exams, and the legacy 101 retired on 30 April 2025. Much of that content is still technically accurate and none of it is mapped to the current blueprints.
- Official blueprintsWell servedF5 publishes a blueprint per F5CAB exam. Since the certification is now five small exams, these are your only reliable map of what belongs to which sitting.
- Official free trainingWell servedF5's learning portal carries free getting-started and administration courses. Underused, because candidates still search for the old study guides first.
- Product documentationWell servedF5's technical documentation covers LTM, DNS and platform administration in depth. Free and authoritative, if dense.
- Legacy study guidesThinThe well-known community guides target the retired 101 and 201 exams. Useful background, mapped to the wrong exam structure — treat with care.
- Hands-on labWell servedBIG-IP Virtual Edition trials let you run a real appliance in a hypervisor or cloud instance. This is the layer that makes the difference on an administration exam.
- Video coursesThinF5-specific course material is sparse compared with Cisco's, and most of it predates the F5CAB restructure.
- CommunityWell servedF5's DevCentral is an unusually strong vendor community — iRules, configuration patterns and troubleshooting threads going back years.
The trap on this certification is search results: the most-recommended resources are for exams that no longer exist. Start from the current blueprints and work outward, not from a study guide someone recommended in 2023.
The stack, in build order
Five small exams change the plan shape. Instead of one long build, you run a short cycle per exam — but the lab and the fundamentals are shared across all five.
- 1Blueprints for all five examsRead all five before booking any. They tell you which topics belong where, which is how you decide the order to sit them in.
- 2Free official fundamentalsF5's own introductory and administration training: the TMOS model, virtual servers, pools, profiles, monitors and the traffic flow through the system.
- 3BIG-IP VE labDeploy a virtual edition and build it: self IPs and VLANs, a virtual server with a pool, health monitors, SSL profiles, persistence, and a look at the logs.
- 4Documentation on weak areasRead the manuals for whatever the lab exposed — profile inheritance, iRule basics, HA pairs and device service clustering.
- 5Per-exam revision cyclesBefore each F5CAB sitting, revise only that blueprint. Thirty questions in thirty minutes is a narrow, focused test.
- 6Question drillingVolume across administration topics, with explanations. Scarce for F5, and the layer that most reliably converts lab familiarity into exam marks.
Total: roughly 50-70 hours across all five exams for a network engineer new to F5, considerably less per exam if you already administer BIG-IP at work.
Every resource, ranked
Ranked for a self-funded candidate. Everything at the top is free, which is fortunate, because the paid layer for F5 is genuinely thin.
| Resource | Type | Cost | Hours | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Official F5CAB blueprints | official | $0 | 2 | Essential and often skipped. Five exams means five scopes, and guessing which topic sits where wastes sittings. |
| F5 free training portal | official | $0 | 10-15 | The best structured free resource for this certification. Start here rather than with a legacy PDF. |
| BIG-IP Virtual Edition trial | free | $0 trial | 15-20 | The lab. Administration exams reward console familiarity more than reading, every time. |
| F5 product documentation | official | $0 | 8-12 | Authoritative and deep. Search by feature when the lab raises a question. |
| DevCentral | community | $0 | As needed | One of the better vendor communities anywhere. Excellent for configuration patterns and troubleshooting. |
| Legacy 101/201 study guides | community | $0-$30 | 10-15 | Background only. Written for retired exams and not mapped to the F5CAB blueprints — do not plan from them. |
| ExamCert F5 question bank | paid | Free tier, then $5.99 | 6-10 | Volume drilling against administration topics, which barely exists elsewhere. Free sets first. |
Three budgets, three plans
Three plans. The unusual variable here is not money but sequencing — five exams at $50 each can be spread out or bunched, and that choice changes your study shape.
Free path, spread out
$250 in exam fees12-16 weeks
- Blueprints plus free official training
- BIG-IP VE trial for hands-on
- One exam every two or three weeks
- Lowest risk: each $50 sitting is small enough to absorb
Free path plus drilling
$250 + about $610-12 weeks
- Same free material, plus a question bank
- Two exams per month once the lab work is done
- Recommended for most self-funded candidates
Employer-funded sprint
$250-$400 plus training6-8 weeks
- Instructor-led F5 administration training
- All five exams inside two months
- Only when an employer funds both the training and the sittings
Which resource covers which exam area
Because the certification is split into five exams, coverage is best read as which resource carries which exam rather than which domain.
- Fundamentals and TMOSF5CAB1Free official training plus documentation. Traffic flow and the object model underpin the other four.
- Local traffic managementF5CAB2-3Lab work. Virtual servers, pools, monitors, profiles and persistence — the core administration surface.
- Platform and system administrationF5CAB3-4Lab plus docs. Licensing, provisioning, upgrades, backups and HA behaviour.
- Security and SSLF5CAB4Documentation plus lab. SSL profiles, certificate handling and basic policy work.
- Troubleshooting and maintenanceF5CAB5Deliberately breaking your lab. Logs, tcpdump, and the escalation path — nothing published drills this.
Consult the current blueprints for the exact topic-to-exam mapping, since F5 has revised it before. The two gap rows are both hands-on: platform administration and troubleshooting are learned by running an appliance, not by reading about one.
What to skip
One category of mistake dominates F5 preparation, and it is caused by search engines rather than by candidates.
Do not spend money on these
- Planning from the 101/201 study guides. Those exams are retired — the legacy 101 went on 30 April 2025. The guides are decent background and a bad map.
- Buying a course recorded before the F5CAB restructure. Check that any paid material references the five-exam structure, not the old two-exam path.
- Studying without a virtual edition. Administration exams ask what a screen does. Reading about BIG-IP is much less efficient than clicking through one.
- Booking all five exams at once. They can be taken in any order and there is no discount for bulk. Book the next one when the last one passes.
- Dumps. At $50 a sitting, an honest retake is cheaper than the risk to your credential.
The layer nobody budgets for is question volume
Five short exams reward familiarity with F5's phrasing more than deep theory. Question drilling with explanations is the cheapest way to build that familiarity between sittings. Free question sets first, then $5.99 unlocks the full bank.
F5 BIG-IP Admin exam pageFAQ
Are the old F5 101 and 201 study guides still useful?
As background reading, yes — much of the underlying technology has not changed. As a study plan, no. The legacy 101 retired on 30 April 2025 and the certification is now five F5CAB exams with their own blueprints. Plan from the current blueprints and use the old guides only to fill in technology explanations.
How much does the F5 Certified Administrator cost in total?
Five exams at $50 each online through the remote proctoring option, or $65 each at a test centre — so $250 to $325 for the full certification, assuming first-time passes. There is no bundle discount, which means an individual failed exam costs $50 rather than a full retake fee.
Can I lab BIG-IP for free?
Yes. BIG-IP Virtual Edition trials run in a hypervisor or a cloud instance and give you a real appliance to configure. It is the single most valuable resource for these exams, because they test administration tasks rather than networking theory.
In what order should I take the F5CAB exams?
Any order is allowed, but reading all five blueprints first and starting with the fundamentals exam is the usual advice, because the object model and traffic flow it covers underpin the other four. After that, sit them in the order your lab work naturally covers the topics.
Sources
Fees, objectives and course catalogues on this page come from F5 and the publishers themselves:
Checked September 9, 2026. Training catalogues, book editions and exam fees change without notice — confirm with F5 before you spend anything.