Introduction: Accessing F5 S3 BIG-IP Lab Environment

Modern AI and data-intensive applications depend on fast, reliable access to S3-compatible storage. While object stores like MinIO scale horizontally, apps frequently couple themselves tightly to individual storage endpoints. This creates brittle deployments, uneven utilization, and high operational overhead. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) solves this challenge by providing a single, resilient abstracted endpoint for S3 data delivery. With BIG-IP, applications connect to one virtual IP, while traffic is intelligently distributed across one or more clusters, governed by policies, and protected by health monitoring.

Course/Lab Invitation

Course/Lab Attendees will receive an email similar to the graphic displayed in this section. The email will come from courses@notify.udf.f5.com. As attendees maybe registered for several lab/courses, ensure the corrcetly identified course is selected. Use either the first or second link position (indicated by arrows) based on the attendee's F5 UDF (Unified Demo Framework) Account Status. New UDF Users Returning UDF Users going directly to Course

Accessing UDF (F5 Unified Demo Framework)

The following will guide attendees through the initial Lab environment access within F5 UDF. Following the instructions from the Course/Lab invitation above, attendees will be prompted to login at https://udf.f5.com Note The steps for new UDF Users or the steps for resetting UDF User account passwords are not shown. Please contact a member of the lab team if further assistance is needed.

Attendees may be prompted to enter their UDF account, password and complete MFA as shown. MFA must be completed by either selecting Send Push or Enter Code. Note MFA process will very based on the MFA integration selected for the UDF Account. OKTA Verify is shown.

Attendees will then be presented their scheduled course sessions. Locate the course/lab with the appropriate Date, Time and Name and then click Launch.

Once redirected to the selected Course/Lab, click the Join button.

The Lab environment window will now be displayed. Click on the Deployment tab in the horizontal navigation links. Locate and observe the state of Client system. In approximately 5-7 minutes the associated yellow gear starting icon will change to a green arrow (running) icon and attendees will proceed to the next section of steps. Note Your specific lab environment may vary from the graphics shown below. The **Client** will, however, be consistent.

Beginning of Lab: You are now ready to begin the lab, Enjoy! Ask questions as needed.