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Exam Information
Official specifications published by F5
Exam Format
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Skills this practice test covers
- Research a prospect through investor relations pages, press releases and job postings.
- Present F5 product features to engineers and F5's business value to non-technical staff.
- Recommend F5 application services that fit a customer's technical and business requirements.
- Size a solution for quantity, high availability and a virtual or hardware platform.
- Choose a license model and list the line items of a bill of materials.
- Decide when to bring in F5 subject matter experts or F5 support.
Explore related topics
202 exam content
5 domains · 16 topics · 150 questions
DISCOVERY29 questions
Discovery is the research before the first meeting. Candidates gather facts about the company from public sources, find its business and technical challenges, and link them to F5 products that could help.
Skills tested
- Study investor relations pages, press releases, acquisitions and blogs for a prospect's priorities.
- Read job postings for clues about internal initiatives and investments.
- Work out the customer's technical organizational structure before proposing anything.
- Associate each customer requirement with an F5 solution.
Questions by topic
- Research the company and customer9
- Given a scenario, prospect customer opportunities8
- Given a scenario, correlate which F5 products could solve issues or meet customer needs12
EDUCATION37 questions
Education is about presenting F5 to the right audience. Candidates pitch features and reference architectures to engineers, give the business case to non-technical staff, and spot architectural limits such as a cloud strategy or security constraints.
Skills tested
- Present product feature sets, new version features and reference architectures to a technical audience.
- Explain F5's value and training options to a non-technical audience.
- Gather resources such as DevCentral and GitHub to replicate a technical demonstration.
- Check cloud strategy, security constraints, and management and orchestration before recommending a design.
Questions by topic
- Educate and present on technical capabilities of F5 solutions8
- Gather resources to replicate F5 technical demonstrations10
- Given a scenario, articulate key values of F5 solutions8
- Given a scenario, distinguish architectural considerations that may affect the F5 solution11
PROPOSAL29 questions
In the proposal, the candidate turns needs into a recommendation and defends it. This means choosing application services, justifying sizing and the business case, and setting F5 apart from competitors.
Skills tested
- Decide which application services and technical solutions a customer needs.
- Show the financial case with ROI, depreciation, CapEx and OpEx.
- Justify the product choice and its sizing when the customer asks hard questions.
- Distinguish F5 products from the competition.
Questions by topic
- Given a scenario, recommend F5 solutions to meet technical requirements10
- Given a scenario, recommend F5 solutions to meet business requirements10
- Given a scenario, answer technical queries regarding a proposed F5 solution9
SUPPORTING THE CLOSE27 questions
This section covers the details that turn a proposal into an order. Candidates gather sizing inputs, pick the licensing model and build the bill of materials with the right SKUs, support options and services.
Skills tested
- Gather quantity, high availability, virtual environment and hardware details for sizing.
- Choose between Perpetual, Utility, ELA, Subscription and BYOL licensing.
- List product SKUs, interfaces, power supplies, support options and Professional Services in a BOM.
Questions by topic
- Gather appropriate information to size F5 solutions9
- Given a scenario, determine the appropriate F5 licensing requirements10
- Given a scenario, identify line items to build an F5 bill of materials (BOM)8
ONGOING SUPPORT/MAINTENANCE28 questions
After the sale, the relationship continues. Candidates work with buying powers and influencers, know when to involve F5 experts or F5 support, and use F5's enablement and sales operations tools.
Skills tested
- Separate the needs of buying powers from those of influencers in the purchasing cycle.
- Recommend training and enablement that match the customer's operational needs.
- Bring in SMEs for technical activities and advise customers when to engage F5 support.
- Find the right resource for an account or customer escalation.
Questions by topic
- Given a scenario, understand organizational personas to best position F5 solutions12
- Given a scenario, determine when to engage appropriate F5 employees8
- Identify F5 enablement resources and tools8
Requirements
- No formal prerequisites: anyone can book the exam.
- Recommended: a record of selling F5 solutions, with around two years in a sales engineer role.
- Recommended: enough knowledge of F5 products to explain their value to a technical buyer.
About the 202 exam
The 202 Pre-Sales Fundamentals exam checks whether a sales engineer can recommend the right F5 solution for a customer and justify it. Its blueprint follows a sale from start to finish: discovery, education, proposal, supporting the close and ongoing support. Many objectives start with "Given a scenario", so questions often describe a customer and ask for the best next step. Passing leads to the F5 Certified Technical Professional, Sales certification (F5-CTP, Sales). No other F5 exam is needed first.
The PlanetCert practice test spreads its questions across all five sections, with the most in EDUCATION. The explanations show why one F5 product fits a requirement better than another, for example BIG-IP APM for access control or BIG-IP ASM/Advanced WAF for attacks on web applications. Flashcard Mode suits the licensing models and the line items of a bill of materials. Brainy AI Assistant can explain CapEx against OpEx in a proposal, or how to tell a buying power from an influencer.
How to earn the certification
- Earns
- F5 Certified Technical Professional, Sales (F5-CTP, Sales)Technical Professional (Sales)
How to prepare for 202
- 1
Research one real company
Pick a company and read its investor relations page, press releases and job postings. List its challenges, then match each one to an F5 product, as the DISCOVERY section asks.
- 2
Write a pitch for each product
Write one technical sentence on what BIG-IP LTM, BIG-IP DNS, BIG-IP APM, BIG-IP AFM and BIG-IP ASM/Advanced WAF do. Then write a business version of each for a non-technical buyer.
- 3
Size and quote a sample deal
Size a sample deployment for quantity, high availability and a virtual or hardware platform. Then choose a licensing model and list every BOM line, from SKUs to support options.
- 4
Rehearse the financial argument
Explain the same proposal twice, once as CapEx and once as OpEx with a subscription. Add a short ROI statement that a finance manager would accept.
- 5
Work the scenarios under time
Many objectives begin with "Given a scenario", so finish with the 202 practice test in Timed Mode. Review each miss in Study Mode and ask Brainy AI Assistant why the other options fit less well.
Start a timed 202run
Who 202 is for
- Sales engineers who present and propose F5 solutions to customers.
- Technical staff at resellers and solution providers that sell F5.
- Solutions architects who support a sales team during a deal.
Typical job titles: Sales engineer · Pre-sales engineer · Solutions architect · Channel partner engineer · Technical account manager
202 glossary
20 terms from the exam objectives and the vendor's official material, each defined in a sentence.
- BIG-IP AFM
- F5's Advanced Firewall Manager, a network firewall that also protects against denial-of-service attacks.
- BIG-IP APM
- F5's Access Policy Manager, which controls who can reach an application and supports secure remote access and single sign-on.
- BIG-IP ASM/Advanced WAF
- F5's web application firewall, which protects web applications and APIs from attacks.
- BIG-IP DNS
- The F5 module that answers DNS queries and sends users to the best available data center for an application.
- BIG-IP LTM
- F5's Local Traffic Manager, which load balances and manages traffic to application servers.
- Bill of materials (BOM)
- The full list of items in a quote, from product SKUs and interfaces to support options and services.
- Buying powers
- The people in a customer organization who approve the purchase and control the budget.
- BYOL
- A license model in which the customer buys an F5 license separately and applies it to an F5 instance in a public cloud.
- CapEx
- Capital expenditure: money spent up front on assets, such as hardware, that the buyer then depreciates.
- DevCentral
- F5's online community, with technical articles, code samples and forums that help in building demonstrations.
- ELA (Enterprise License Agreement)
- An agreement that licenses a broad set of F5 products to a customer for a fixed term.
- Influencers
- People who shape a buying decision, such as engineers or architects, without signing it off.
- OpEx
- Operating expenditure: ongoing costs, such as subscriptions, paid from the operating budget.
- Perpetual
- A license bought once that does not expire, with support and maintenance renewed separately.
- Product SKUs
- Stock keeping units: the codes that identify each product, license or service that can be ordered.
- Reference architectures
- Published designs that show how F5 products fit together for a common use case.
- ROI
- Return on investment: the value a purchase brings compared with what it costs.
- SMEs
- Subject matter experts: specialists that a sales engineer brings in for deep technical activities.
- Subscription
- A license paid for over a set term and renewed to keep using the product.
- Utility
- A usage-based license model in which the customer pays for what it uses, for example by the hour through a cloud marketplace.