- F5-CA is F5's BIG-IP Administrator credential, earned by passing five separate exams: F5CAB1 through F5CAB5.
- Each exam has 30 multiple-choice questions and a 30-minute limit; some questions require selecting two answers.
- The passing score is 245 on a 100-350 scaled range, not a published percentage-correct threshold.
- Exams cost US$50 each online or US$65 at Pearson VUE, so one attempt at all five totals US$250 or US$325.
What the F5-CA Credential Actually Is
The F5 Certified BIG-IP Administrator credential, shown in F5's current naming as F5 Certified Administrator, BIG-IP (F5-CA, BIG-IP), is the entry point to F5's professional certification path. It validates that you can install, configure, operate, and troubleshoot a BIG-IP system in a real environment. F5 itself governs and issues it, and the production blueprint identifier is F5-CAB.0425.
Two things set it apart from many other entry-level IT credentials. First, there is no single "F5-CA exam." The credential is awarded after you pass five separately assessed exams. Second, F5 expects practical BIG-IP competence. If you have never built a virtual server, attached a pool, or read a connection table, reading alone will not carry you through. If you are new to the acronym, the explainer at What Is F5-CA Certification? covers the naming in more detail.
The Five-Exam Structure
The five exams map one-to-one to the five exam objectives in the blueprint. All five must be passed, and F5 allows you to take them in any order. They are official exam objectives, not five percentage-weighted sections of one sitting, so there is no published "heaviest domain" to prioritize. Be cautious of third-party sites that claim one-F5 has not published weights, and equal question counts or objective counts do not establish them.
| Exam | Title | Questions | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| F5CAB1 | BIG-IP Administration Install, Initial Configuration, and Upgrade | 30 | 30 minutes |
| F5CAB2 | BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Concepts | 30 | 30 minutes |
| F5CAB3 | BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Configuration | 30 | 30 minutes |
| F5CAB4 | BIG-IP Administration Control Plane Administration | 30 | 30 minutes |
| F5CAB5 | BIG-IP Administration Support and Troubleshooting | 30 | 30 minutes |
A source caveat worth knowing: F5's June 2025 overview page still cites a range of 25-30 questions, but the individual exam pages updated in December 2025 state 30 items each. This article uses the newer, exam-specific figure. The scored versus unscored split was not verified, so do not assume all 30 items count.
Domain-by-Domain Breakdown
The blueprint's examples are illustrative rather than exhaustive, and it does not target version-specific BIG-IP features. Treat the topics below as the practical themes to master. For a deeper treatment, see F5-CA Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 5 Content Areas.
F5CAB1 - BIG-IP Administration Install, Initial Configuration, and Upgrade
This is the foundation exam: getting a BIG-IP system running and keeping it current.
- Licensing and activating a system, and understanding what a license enables
- Initial network setup: management access, self IPs, VLANs, and trunks
- Planning and performing software upgrades, including boot locations and rollback thinking
- Basic provisioning decisions and what they mean for resource use
F5CAB2 - BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Concepts
Concepts are tested separately from configuration. You must understand why traffic behaves as it does before you click anything.
- Traffic flow through a full-proxy architecture, including client-side and server-side connections
- Virtual servers, pools, members, nodes, and how each relates to the others
- Load balancing methods and when each is appropriate
- Persistence concepts, health monitoring logic, and address translation behavior
F5CAB3 - BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Configuration
This exam rewards hands-on repetition: you need to know what a correct configuration looks like.
- Building virtual servers, pools, and monitors that match a stated requirement
- Configuring persistence profiles and choosing sensible profile settings
- Applying client-side and server-side TLS profiles for common scenarios
- Selecting and attaching profiles, and reasoning about SNAT behavior
F5CAB4 - BIG-IP Administration Control Plane Administration
The control plane is how you manage the box itself rather than the traffic passing through it.
- User accounts, roles, and authentication methods for administrative access
- Configuration backup and restore using UCS archives
- Logging, remote syslog concepts, and system settings
- High availability fundamentals such as device groups and failover concepts
F5CAB5 - BIG-IP Administration Support and Troubleshooting
Expect scenario-driven questions where something is broken and you must identify the most likely cause or next step.
- Reading statistics and logs to find where a transaction is failing
- Diagnosing pool member health and monitor misconfiguration
- Using packet capture and connection tables at a conceptual level
- Collecting diagnostic data for support and interpreting common symptoms
Question Format and Exam Rules
Every F5CAB exam is multiple choice, delivered in English and closed book. F5's launch announcement and April 28, 2025 clarification confirm that some questions require two choices rather than one. Whether partial credit is awarded on those items was not verified, so practice as if you must get both selections right.
Under the F5 Certified Candidate Agreement (July 9, 2025), books, notes, and personal electronic devices are prohibited. In a test-center sitting, notes may be made only on the writing materials supplied. Adaptive delivery and calculator provision were not verified.
Thirty minutes for thirty questions leaves roughly a minute per item, which is tight for scenario questions with long stems. Practice reading a stem, isolating the actual ask, and eliminating wrong answers quickly. The F5-CA practice tests are built around this pacing so you can rehearse it under realistic conditions, and the guide at How Hard Is the F5-CA Exam? discusses where candidates tend to lose time.
Fees, Scaled Scoring, and Retakes
What you will pay
Exams are offered through two delivery routes: online proctored via Certiverse at US$50 per exam, or at Pearson VUE test centers at US$65 per exam. No member or nonmember split is published.
| Delivery | Per exam | All five, one attempt |
|---|---|---|
| Online proctored (Certiverse) | US$50 | US$250 |
| Pearson VUE test center | US$65 | US$325 |
These totals exclude retakes and preparation costs. A fuller breakdown lives in F5-CA Certification Cost 2026.
How scoring works
The passing score is 245 on F5's 100-350 scaled range for each exam. That is not a published "70% correct" rule, and you cannot convert it to a percentage with confidence. Scaled scoring exists so that results are comparable across exam forms of varying difficulty. This is also why advertised provider pass rates deserve skepticism: F5 has not published a candidate pass rate, and marketing figures from prep vendors do not measure the real cohort. See F5-CA Passing Score 2026 and F5-CA Pass Rate 2026 for more context.
Retake waits: an unresolved conflict
F5's current catalog pages list waits of 15, 30, and 45 days after the first three failures. The July 2025 candidate agreement agrees on those three waits but describes the fourth-failure wait differently from the catalog, and requires prerequisite exams to be retaken and passed. Because the fourth-failure rule conflicts between official documents, confirm the current policy directly with F5 before relying on it. The practical lesson is the same either way: arrive prepared, because repeated failures carry meaningful waiting costs.
Eligibility and the Legacy 101/201 Transition
F5 specifies no formal degree, fixed years or hours of experience, mandatory training hours, or references. You register in F5's certification program and accept the candidate agreement. Practical BIG-IP competence is nonetheless expected, and the details are collected in F5-CA Requirements 2026.
The transition from the old route deserves care because many online resources are out of date:
- The April 16, 2025 issuer notice set the formal route change for May 1, 2025, while the April 23 launch announcement already described the five exams as live.
- Exam 101 retired April 30, 2025.
- Qualifying holders of a 101 pass retain their 24-month eligibility window to complete 201.
- The 101/201 route is not a fresh route for new candidates, and 201 should not be described as universally unavailable.
Validity and Renewal
The credential is valid for two years from the final required passing exam that awards it. Under F5's renewal policy (updated August 26, 2026), you can renew in one of two ways: pass F5CABR, or achieve or renew a higher certification that lists F5-CA as a prerequisite. Passing an intermediate exam such as 301a on its own does not establish renewal. No CEU or CPE route is published, and an older transition page that mentioned renewing through all five CAB exams has been superseded by the current renewal page.
| Renewal item | F5CABR details |
|---|---|
| Questions | 50 |
| Time limit | 60 minutes |
| Passing score | 245 |
| Cost | US$100 online or US$130 at a test center |
| Who can take it | Previous holders, including inactive or expired holders regardless of when the credential expired |
The renewal exam has its own blueprint (F5-CABR.042025) and should not be confused with the initial five-exam scope. Plan the renewal date when you earn the credential rather than discovering the deadline later.
Choosing a Study Order
F5 permits any exam order, but permitted is not the same as optimal. One sensible editorial sequence follows how the knowledge builds:
F5CAB1 and F5CAB2
- Stand up a lab: licensing, VLANs, self IPs, and an upgrade walk-through
- Sketch the full-proxy traffic flow until you can narrate it from memory
F5CAB3
- Build virtual servers, pools, monitors, persistence, and TLS profiles repeatedly
- Break each configuration on purpose and observe the result
F5CAB4
- Practice UCS backup and restore, user roles, and logging setup
F5CAB5
- Troubleshoot the faults you introduced earlier using statistics, logs, and captures
Putting troubleshooting last lets it draw on everything you configured earlier. Adjust the pace to your experience; someone who administers BIG-IP daily may compress the early weeks. The broader approach is laid out in F5-CA Study Guide 2026, and the F5-CA Cheat Sheet works well for last-day review.
Key Takeaway
F5 states that it does not create or maintain official certification study guides, and a course alone is not described as sufficient. Build your plan around the official blueprint, hands-on lab time, and practice questions mapped to each of the five exams rather than a single book or video series.
Who Hires for This Skill Set
BIG-IP administration shows up wherever organizations run application delivery at scale: enterprise network and infrastructure teams, managed service providers, data center operations groups, and application delivery or security engineering roles. Typical job titles include network engineer, load balancer administrator, application delivery engineer, and infrastructure or operations engineer. Postings often list BIG-IP experience alongside routing, switching, DNS, and TLS fundamentals, so the certification works best as proof of a skill set you can also demonstrate in an interview. Browse F5-CA Jobs for more on role types.
On pay, be careful with the numbers you see online. No credential-specific salary survey was retrieved, and broad networking salary estimates or F5 company salaries do not measure earnings attributable to this certification. Treat any claimed pay premium as unsupported. The sober analysis is in F5-CA Salary Guide 2026 and Is the F5-CA Certification Worth It?, and if you are weighing this against a networking credential, note that CBT Nuggets has published a comparison of CCNA and F5-CA that is a useful starting point for that decision.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. F5CAB1 through F5CAB5 must all be passed, and you may take them in any order. The credential is awarded after the final required passing exam, and its two-year validity period starts from that date.
A scaled score of 245 on F5's 100-350 range for each exam. This is not a published percentage-correct requirement, so it should not be converted into a simple 70% target.
One attempt at all five exams costs US$250 online through Certiverse or US$325 at Pearson VUE test centers, based on US$50 and US$65 per exam. Retakes and preparation materials are extra.
Only if you hold a qualifying 101 pass and remain inside the 24-month eligibility window. Exam 101 retired April 30, 2025, and the 101/201 route is not available as a fresh path for new candidates.
It is valid for two years. Renew by passing the F5CABR exam (50 questions, 60 minutes, US$100 online or US$130 at a test center) or by achieving or renewing a higher certification that lists F5-CA as a prerequisite. Test your readiness with the F5-CA practice exams and review the exam dates and scheduling guide to plan your sittings.