F5-CA Cheat Sheet 2026: One-Page Review of Must-Know Facts

Which F5-CA This Cheat Sheet Covers

"F5-CA" is a short acronym, and this page is only about one credential: the F5 Certified Administrator, BIG-IP, issued by F5 and marketed as the F5 Certified BIG-IP Administrator. It validates hands-on administration of F5's BIG-IP application delivery platform: installing it, configuring virtual servers and pools, managing the control plane, and troubleshooting live traffic problems. Everything below is drawn from F5's production exam blueprint (identifier F5-CAB.0425) and F5's current support pages, which were rechecked in October 2026.

If you are new to the acronym itself, the short explainers on what F5-CA is and what F5-CA stands for cover the naming. This article is the compressed review sheet: facts you should be able to recite before you sit any of the five exams.

The Five-Exam Structure at a Glance

The single most important fact on this cheat sheet is that there is no single combined exam. The credential is awarded after you pass five separately scheduled, separately timed and separately scored assessments. They can be taken in any order. Each of the five blueprint headings is its own exam, not a weighted slice of one sitting.

Format, Scoring, and Closed-Book Rules

Question format

Every current F5CAB exam is multiple choice with 30 questions and a 30-minute limit. That works out to roughly one minute per question, which is tight for scenario-style items. F5 staff confirmed in the production launch announcement, and again in an April 28, 2025 clarification, that some questions require two choices. Read the stem for phrases like "choose two" before you lock in an answer. F5's published material does not verify the scored/unscored split or the partial-credit rules for these items, so do not assume you earn credit for half-right selections.

One source caveat is worth knowing: F5's overview page from June 2025 still says 25-30 questions, while the individual F5CAB1-F5CAB5 support pages updated in December 2025 state 30 items each. The newer exam-specific figure of 30 is the one to plan around.

Scaled scoring

The passing score is 245 on a scaled range of 100 to 350, per exam. That is a scaled score, not a published "70% correct" threshold. F5 converts raw performance to the scale, so you cannot translate 245 into a fixed number of correct answers. The practical consequence is simple: do not rely on a rule-of-thumb percentage. Our dedicated page on the F5-CA passing score explains how scaled scoring works in more detail.

Closed-book conditions

• Exams are delivered in English.
• They are closed book: books, notes and personal electronic devices are prohibited under the F5 Certified Candidate Agreement.
• At a test center, notes may be made only on the writing materials supplied for that purpose.
• Adaptive delivery and calculator provision were not verified, so do not plan around either.

Fees, Delivery, and Registration

Pricing is per exam, and F5 publishes two delivery routes. There is no published member versus nonmember split.

Those totals exclude retakes and preparation costs. If you want to budget lab time, practice material and a possible retake, the F5-CA certification cost breakdown goes through the full picture.

Eligibility and registration

To start, you register in F5's certification program and accept the candidate agreement. The production blueprint specifies no formal degree, no fixed years or hours of experience, no mandatory training hours and no references. That said, F5 expects practical BIG-IP competence, and the exams are written accordingly. For the full eligibility discussion, see F5-CA requirements and how to qualify.

Domain-by-Domain Fact Sheet

The blueprint examples are illustrative rather than exhaustive, and the blueprint does not target version-specific BIG-IP features. The summaries below describe what each exam is named for and the kinds of administrator competence it implies; confirm exact objective wording against F5's blueprint before you test.

Hands-On Checklist for Real BIG-IP Competence

Because F5 expects practical competence and offers no official study guide, hands-on repetition carries real weight. Whether you use a lab instance, a virtual edition or a work environment, you should be able to do each of these without hunting for the menu:

• Build a virtual server with a pool of two members and a working health monitor, then deliberately fail one member and observe the state change.
• Apply a persistence method and explain what client behavior you expect before you test it.
• Attach a TLS-related profile and explain how it changes what the client and the server each see.
• Read the statistics for a virtual server and pool to confirm where traffic is actually going.
• Trace a single request through the system: client, virtual server, profiles, pool selection, member, and back.
• Take a configuration backup, make a change, and describe how you would revert.
• Walk through an upgrade plan on paper, including what you would verify before and after.
• Given a symptom such as "users get errors on one application," list the first three places you would look.

If you can narrate the last two items aloud, you are thinking the way CAB5 expects. Candidates who only memorize definitions tend to struggle when a 30-minute clock forces them to interpret a scenario quickly. Our F5-CA study guide expands on turning these exercises into a plan, and the F5-CA training overview covers course options.

Legacy 101/201 Eligibility and Renewal

The transition, in plain terms

F5 retired the older two-exam route. Exam 101 retired on April 30, 2025, and the formal route change took effect May 1, 2025, although the five new exams were already described as live and schedulable from the April 23 launch announcement. The older 101/201 route is not a fresh path for new candidates.

There is one nuance worth getting right: qualifying holders of a 101 pass retain their 24-month eligibility window to complete exam 201. So 201 should not be described as universally unavailable, and it should not be described as an option for someone starting today. Third-party pages contradict one another on this point, so verify against F5's transition notice rather than a competitor's summary.

Validity and renewal

• Validity: two years from the final required passing exam that awards the credential.
• Renewal exam: F5CABR, a separate recertification exam with 50 total questions, 60 minutes and a passing score of 245.
• Renewal 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.
• Alternative route: achieving or renewing a higher certification that lists F5-CA as a prerequisite. Passing an intermediate exam such as 301a alone does not establish renewal.
• No CEU/CPE route is published.

One caution: an older transition page also mentioned renewal by retaking all five CAB exams, whereas the latest renewal page lists F5CABR and higher-credential routes. Follow the current renewal page.

Retake Waits: What Is Settled and What Is Not

This is the one area where F5's own documents disagree, so be careful about repeating a single confident rule.

A Domain-Ordered Study Sequence

F5 lets you take the five exams in any order. That is the permitted order. The sequence below is an editorial recommendation, built on the logic that later exams lean on earlier knowledge. It is not an F5 requirement.

Scheduling troubleshooting last is deliberate: diagnosing faults is far easier once you have built and broken the underlying objects yourself. Spreading bookings across several weeks also means each 30-minute exam gets your full attention. You can test your readiness for each domain with the practice material on the main practice test site, and the F5-CA exam dates and scheduling guide helps with planning bookings.

Reading Pass-Rate and Salary Claims Carefully

When you research this credential, you will find confident numbers. Treat them skeptically.

• Pass rates: no official candidate pass rate is published for the F5-CA. Advertised figures from preparation sites, such as a 95% claim on one provider's page or an estimated 60-70% on another, were not substantiated by F5. A vendor's marketed success rate is not a cohort statistic. See our analysis in what the F5-CA pass rate data actually shows.
• Legacy-spec leakage: some resources still describe an older exam with roughly 80 questions, 90 minutes and a different fee. Those specifications belong to the retired route, not the current five-exam credential.
• Salary: no credential-specific salary survey was retrieved. General F5 company salaries and broad networking pay estimates do not measure earnings attributable to this certification. Our F5-CA salary guide and the F5-CA ROI analysis take a role-requirements view rather than assuming a pay premium.
• Comparisons: readers often weigh this credential against Cisco's CCNA. They address different layers of the stack, and many candidates consider both rather than choosing one.

The practical takeaway for career planning is that employers hiring for BIG-IP-heavy roles, such as network, application delivery and infrastructure positions, look for demonstrable platform skill. The certification is evidence of that skill, not a guaranteed salary lever. Current openings are summarized on the F5-CA jobs page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Keep this sheet beside your lab notes, verify any detail that affects a booking against F5's current support pages, and use the F5-CA practice tests to check your readiness one domain at a time.