New: F5 Local Traffic Manager

Ready to try something different? Scott Morris just completed his "F5 Local Traffic Manger" training course. Over the course of 33 videos, he covers basic F5 operations, including topics such as traffic processing configuration, deploying application services, and much more. This training also is the starting point for F5 Networks' certification tracks.We recently asked Scott for some additional thoughts on his latest course. Here's what he had to say:Q:  What was your favorite Nugget to create? Wow. That's actually a difficult question. I suppose "I liked them all" is not a good answer? 🙂  I would probably have to go with the High Availability Nuggets then. As a network architect, having things with redundancy are very important. Even though we just set the beginning stages with these Nuggets, it's still a great start and step in the right direction. Also, it sets the stage for future coursework and expanded learning areas!Q: What roadblocks did you come across when creating this training and how did you overcome them? Oh dear. It seemed like a LOT in the beginning. 🙂 I had a number of "issues" in my VM environment that were making things difficult and had some interesting anomalies with an early trial license I was using on my BIG-IP VM as well. It was a frustrating couple of weeks and made me feel like I wasn't accomplishing anything. I overcame them with persistence, perseverance, and likely the several threats I made to my Mac Mini (hosting my ESXi server) such as that I would take a hammer to it if it didn't start playing well with others. I'm not really sure the latter had any actual value in my progress, but it certainly did make me feel better.Q: From a student-perspective, what did you keep in mind when creating this course? Like any course, it's important to keep a perspective of "from the ground up." Sometimes that is difficult when students come in with some experience already (I don't feel bad if they skip ahead, but too much skipping, and they may miss some good parts!). It's also hard in the world of needing things "now, now, now" where we don't want to wait to go through the steps. But in the end, the goal is learning. I don't mind that people may watch parts of videos while deploying a BIG-IP of their own, in order to help them… but the goal of the course (my opinion, of course!) is that if you do go through it all, you can then go deploy the BIG-IP systems and may not NEED to come back to watch the videos again. THAT was my goal when I created this course!Q: Any outside-of-the-box tips for students to get the most out of your course? Practice, practice, practice!!! At the bare minimum, get the free 30-day trial license and use it to work through things while you view the course. Even better is the Lab License ($95 from CDW) that is non-expiring, thereby allowing you to continue your practices! Play with things… Make things… Break things… (Threaten physical violence to a non-feeling bucket of chips) and fix those things… and learn in the process!

Q: What's one real-world application someone can expect to use, thanks to this course? Hopefully, they can look to deploying an Application Delivery Controller into their network, particularly for basic applications like web services. Enhancing the User Experience was really the name of the game throughout this course, and we should have the groundwork now to do exactly that. I was going through notes that I had from several consulting gigs that I have done (not specific to F5, but ADCs nonetheless) and tried to incorporate all of the theoretical points and needs and difficulties into configuration scenarios through the course. Obviously, remaining generic to protect the… Uhhh… innocent. Yeah, that's it. 🙂

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Read Scott's "F5 Foray" blog series for more insight about F5 Networks technology.