- What the 402 Blueprint Actually Publishes
- Eligibility Before Domains
- Format, Fee and Scoring
- Domain 1: Foundational Cloud Concepts
- Domain 2: Cloud Infrastructure Design
- Domain 3: Cloud Migration
- Domain 4: Cloud Deployment
- Domain 5: Cloud Orchestration and Automation
- How Scenario Questions Reward Domain Thinking
- Sequencing the Domains in Your Study Plan
- Cloud Track Versus Security Track
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The 402 Cloud Solutions blueprint publishes five sections and no percentage weights, so never assume one domain counts more.
- The exam is 70 questions (65 scored, five pilot) in 105 minutes, with a passing score of 245 on a 100-350 scale.
- Eligibility requires valid F5-CA BIG-IP, F5-CTS BIG-IP LTM and F5-CTS BIG-IP DNS certifications before you can sit 402.
- The fee is US$180 per attempt at Pearson VUE test centers, delivered in English.
What the 402 Blueprint Actually Publishes
The F5 Certified Solution Expert, Cloud credential (F5-CSE, Cloud, shown as F5-CSE, CLD in the learning portal) is earned by passing the Cloud Solutions exam, code 402. Its scope is defined by a five-page document titled "EXAM BLUEPRINT: 402 - Cloud Solutions" (identifier 402.42019), linked from F5's Cloud Solutions support page. The five headings you see in this article reproduce the official examination-section names, not a vendor-invented course outline.
Two honesty points matter before you plan anything. First, the blueprint does not publish percentage weights for its sections, and it does not name a "heaviest" domain. Any website claiming that Domain 3 is worth a particular percentage of the exam is inventing a number. Counting the objectives under each heading does not turn them into weights either. Second, the PDF carries a 2021 copyright footer, but that footer does not tell you whether the content was revised more recently; treat the currently linked blueprint as your authority and recheck it before you book.
The exam is also not built around version-specific TMOS features. That is a relief for candidates who have been working on a newer BIG-IP release than the one a study resource was written against. The test is about architecture and integration judgment in cloud environments, not memorizing a particular software build. If you want the broader picture of the credential first, start with What Is F5-CSE Cloud Certification? and then return here.
Eligibility Before Domains
The domain content assumes you already hold the administrator and technology-specialist foundations. The current 402 support page requires valid F5-CA BIG-IP, F5-CTS BIG-IP LTM and F5-CTS BIG-IP DNS certifications. One technology-specialist credential alone is not enough, and several third-party sites that say otherwise conflict with F5's own page.
F5's Cloud learning path shows how candidates usually reach this point: the five F5CAB administrator exams (or an eligible legacy administrator route), LTM exams 301a and 301b, DNS exam 302, and then Cloud Solutions 402. Retained legacy entries do not reopen exam 101 to new candidates. Beyond these credentials, F5 describes the expected candidate as someone with direct cloud-infrastructure experience and architecture and integration competence, but publishes no mandatory degree, fixed training hours or references. For the full checklist, see F5-CSE Cloud Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify.
Format, Fee and Scoring
| Item | Published detail |
|---|---|
| Questions | 70 computer-based multiple-choice, including 65 scored and five pilot/beta items |
| Question style | Some questions use exhibits or scenarios |
| Time | 105 minutes, excluding approved accommodations |
| Passing score | 245 on a 100-350 scaled range |
| Fee | US$180 per attempt, plus any local taxes or fees |
| Delivery | Pearson VUE test centers, English |
| Identification | Two signed IDs, one government-issued with photograph, matching your candidate account |
The scaled score is the detail candidates most often get wrong. A 245 out of a 100-350 range is not 70 percent correct, and you cannot convert it to a raw percentage. Because five of the 70 items are unscored pilot questions that look identical to scored ones, treat every question seriously and do not waste time trying to spot the pilots. For a deeper explanation, read F5-CSE Cloud Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass, and for budgeting see F5-CSE Cloud Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown.
Domain 1: Foundational Cloud Concepts
The first section establishes the vocabulary and mental models you will lean on in every later scenario. Expect questions that test whether you can map a business requirement to the right cloud service and deployment model, and whether you understand how application delivery functions fit into cloud environments.
Foundational Cloud Concepts
Know the building blocks well enough to reason about trade-offs rather than recite definitions.
- Cloud service models and deployment models, and what each implies for who controls the network, the operating system and the application.
- Why elasticity, on-demand provisioning and shared responsibility change how you design application delivery.
- How virtualized and software-defined environments differ from the fixed hardware you may be used to in a data center.
- The role of an application delivery controller in a cloud context: load balancing, availability, traffic management and visibility.
Candidates who come from pure hardware backgrounds should invest here, because later questions quietly assume this fluency. A scenario about bursting or migration is much easier when you already think in terms of virtual instances, software licensing and API-driven provisioning rather than racks and cables.
Domain 2: Cloud Infrastructure Design
This is where the architect hat goes on. Design questions give you constraints and ask which configuration best satisfies them. Think instance sizing and placement, licensing and support implications, network and software-defined networking limits, and how your design connects to the surrounding environment.
Cloud Infrastructure Design
Design questions are about fit: matching a solution to requirements without violating a constraint.
- Instance sizing and placement: choosing capacity and location based on throughput, availability and latency needs.
- Licensing and support models, and how they interact with cloud deployment choices and scaling behavior.
- SDN constraints and integration: what a cloud network does and does not allow compared with a traditional network, and how a delivery device fits in.
- Availability design across failure domains, including how traffic reaches healthy resources.
Examples throughout this guide are illustrative, not exhaustive. The blueprint is the authority on what is in scope, so when you build practice scenarios, tie each one back to a published objective rather than to whatever product happens to be trending.
Domain 3: Cloud Migration
Migration questions test whether you can move an existing workload without breaking the business. They reward careful sequencing: understand the current state, identify dependencies, plan the move, then validate that the migrated application behaves as required.
Cloud Migration
The best answer usually respects dependencies and includes a validation step.
- Business drivers and constraints that shape which workloads move, and when.
- Dependency discovery: what an application relies on, such as other services, addressing assumptions and persistence behavior.
- Migration approaches and the risk each one introduces to availability and performance.
- Validation after migration: confirming functionality, performance and traffic handling before cutting over fully.
Domain 4: Cloud Deployment
Deployment is the hands-on execution of a design: standing up and integrating delivery services in a cloud environment. Questions here lean on how you actually bring a configuration to life and how it interacts with the platform around it.
Cloud Deployment
Think about how a delivery device is launched, connected and made reachable in a cloud network.
- Deploying virtual delivery instances and connecting them to the right networks and addressing.
- Integrating with the cloud platform's native networking and security constructs.
- Scaling out, including cloud bursting, where capacity extends into a cloud when demand exceeds on-premises resources.
- Verifying a deployment is healthy: reachability, health monitoring and traffic flow.
Cloud bursting deserves particular attention because it combines design, deployment and traffic-steering ideas in a single scenario. Be ready to reason about when bursting is appropriate, what has to be in place beforehand, and how traffic is directed to the added capacity.
Domain 5: Cloud Orchestration and Automation
The final section covers programmatic control. Modern cloud environments are rarely configured by hand, so you need to understand how automation tools, templates and APIs build and manage infrastructure in a repeatable way.
Cloud Orchestration and Automation
Know what automation does, in what order, and through which interfaces.
- RESTful APIs: resources, methods and how automation tools talk to a delivery device or a cloud platform.
- The northbound, eastbound, southbound and westbound API model, and which direction each represents in an architecture.
- Deployment templates and orchestration: how a template describes a desired environment and how ordering of steps affects the outcome.
- Why sequencing matters, such as a network or dependency having to exist before the resource that uses it.
You do not need to be a full-time developer, but you should read an API interaction or a template fragment and explain what it will do. Questions with exhibits often present a snippet and ask what happens next or what is wrong.
How Scenario Questions Reward Domain Thinking
Because some 402 items use exhibits or scenarios, the skill being tested is applied judgment. A useful way to practice is to take a short business story and walk it across the domains: what concept applies, what design satisfies the constraints, how would you migrate or deploy it, and how would you automate it.
For example, picture a company that wants to extend a critical web application into a public cloud during seasonal peaks while keeping its data center as the primary site. That single story touches foundational concepts (service and deployment models), infrastructure design (instance placement and licensing), deployment (standing up the burst capacity), and orchestration (using templates and APIs so the extra capacity appears predictably). Practicing this kind of cross-domain walk-through builds exactly the reasoning the exam expects. The free questions on the main practice test site are a good place to test that reasoning against plausible distractors.
Key Takeaway
Do not study the five domains as isolated silos. Write your own mini-scenarios and trace each one through all five headings; the exam's scenario items reward that habit.
Sequencing the Domains in Your Study Plan
Since no weights are published, spread effort by your own gaps rather than by guessing at percentages. A sensible order follows the dependency between domains, with automation last because it builds on everything else.
Concepts and Design
- Close vocabulary gaps in Foundational Cloud Concepts.
- Practice sizing, placement, licensing and SDN-constraint reasoning in Cloud Infrastructure Design.
Migration and Deployment
- Rehearse dependency mapping and validation steps for Cloud Migration.
- Work through bursting and virtual instance deployment in Cloud Deployment.
Automation and Mixed Review
- Read REST calls and template fragments for Cloud Orchestration and Automation.
- Finish with timed, mixed-domain scenario sets and review every miss against the blueprint.
F5 states it does not create or maintain official study guides, and the F5-hosted community page for 402 is explicitly an unofficial placeholder rather than a complete guide. For a structured approach, see F5-CSE Cloud Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt, and for a quick final review use the F5-CSE Cloud Cheat Sheet 2026. If you are weighing effort, How Hard Is the F5-CSE Cloud Exam? gives a candid view.
Cloud Track Versus Security Track
Candidates sometimes ask whether to pursue Cloud or Security first. They are separate issuer tracks, and neither substitutes for the other.
| Aspect | Cloud Solutions 402 | Security Solutions 401 |
|---|---|---|
| Credential focus | Cloud architecture, migration, deployment and automation | Security-focused solution design |
| Typical role | Architects integrating delivery services into cloud environments | Engineers focused on protecting applications and infrastructure |
| Gateway | Valid CA, LTM CTS and DNS CTS certifications | Its own prerequisite set; verify on F5's current page |
Choose based on the work you do or want to do. If your projects involve moving and automating application delivery in cloud infrastructure, Cloud is the natural fit. Always confirm the current prerequisites for the Security track directly with F5 rather than assuming they mirror Cloud.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The blueprint lists five sections without percentage weights and does not identify a highest-weighted one. Treat claims of exact section percentages from third-party sites as unsupported.
The exam has 70 multiple-choice questions, of which 65 are scored and five are pilot items, with 105 minutes allowed. Some questions use exhibits or scenarios. Approved accommodations are handled separately.
You need a scaled score of 245 on a 100-350 range. This is not a 70 percent raw score, so do not try to convert it to a percentage of questions answered correctly.
The fee is US$180 per attempt, delivered in English at Pearson VUE test centers. Local taxes and fees, plus the cost of preparing and holding the prerequisite certifications, are additional.
No official pass rate or credential-specific salary survey was found. For discussion of what is and is not known, see the pass rate analysis and the salary guide, and weigh the investment using the ROI analysis.