F5CAB1 Install, Initial Configuration, and Upgrade Practice Question
An administrator is upgrading a BIG-IP pair. After upgrading the standby unit, which step should be performed before upgrading the active unit?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often forget to failover the traffic. Upgrading the standby is useless if you do not test the new version by making it the active unit to ensure stability before upgrading the second.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Force the standby unit to become active.
The standard high-availability upgrade path involves upgrading the standby unit first to verify the new software version's stability. By failing over traffic to the newly upgraded unit, the administrator validates that the application services function as expected. If issues arise, the administrator can fail back to the original active unit, minimizing downtime and ensuring a controlled transition during the maintenance window for the entire cluster.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Force the standby unit to become active.
Why this is correct
Forcing the standby to active allows the administrator to test the upgraded unit under real traffic conditions. This validation step is crucial to ensure that the new software version handles the configuration and traffic load correctly before proceeding with the upgrade of the remaining unit in the cluster.
- ✗
Delete the sync-failover device group.
Why it's wrong here
Deleting the device group would break high-availability synchronization and is highly disruptive. It is unnecessary for the upgrade process and would lead to significant operational overhead to re-establish the cluster. The upgrade process is designed to handle existing device groups without requiring their deletion during the software transition.
- ✗
Reboot the active unit immediately.
Why it's wrong here
Rebooting the active unit before the standby is tested would result in an outage. The purpose of having an HA pair is to maintain uptime; the active unit must remain stable until the standby unit has been confirmed as functional on the new software version to prevent a total cluster outage.
- ✗
Change the management IP address of the active unit.
Why it's wrong here
Changing the management IP address is irrelevant to the software upgrade process and would disrupt connectivity to the device. Management IPs should remain static throughout the upgrade to ensure that the administrative connection remains consistent and that monitoring tools can continue to track the status of the cluster nodes.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every F5CAB1 question from scratch — 80 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official F5 exam blueprint
This F5CAB1 practice question is part of Courseiva's free F5 certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the F5CAB1 exam.