Modernize today to better secure and deliver your apps
BIG-IP’s newer software versions are inherently more secure and comprise innovative new app delivery and security capabilities. Prioritize upgrading your BIG-IP to keep pace with the evolving tech landscape and mitigate harmful cyberthreats.
As a critical component of F5’s Application Delivery and Security Platform, it’s essential to keep your BIG-IP software up to date. Doing so unlocks cutting-edge functionality, minimizes risk exposure, and avoids end-of-lifecycle complications. F5 recommends running BIG-IP v17.1 at a minimum across your BIG-IP fleet, while upgrading to BIG-IP v21.1 unlocks a variety of benefits including:
To stay up-to-date with the latest BIG-IP releases and software lifecycle milestones, please review the BIG-IP software support policy.
Reasons to upgrade:
Reasons to upgrade:
Great job, keep it up! Once released, consider upgrading to BIG-IP v22.x to access exciting new capabilities and software enhancements.
Mitigate quantum-threats with support for new NIST- and FIPS-compliant PQC-cipher groups
Enable autonomous AI agents to securely self-register for resource access with BIG-IP Zero Trust Access Dynamic Client Registration (DCR)
Keep sensitive data out of the wrong hands with end-to-end, quantum resistant TLS/SSL VPN tunneling
Block sophisticated threats targeting HTTP/3 traffic and APIs defined by the OpenAPI 3.1 specification
Optimize and protect Model Context Protocol (MCP) traffic between AI models and apps, tools, or data sources
Streamline automation with the new BIG-IP Declarative API and improve system efficiency and resiliency with various control plane upgrades
Review the release notes to learn about incremental new capabilities added within each of the last software versions across the BIG-IP product family.
v21.1 | v21.0 |v17.5 | v17.1 | v16.1 | v15.1 | v14.1
Deploy across an increasingly diverse array of supported cloud environments, granting the freedom to use whichever environment is best suited to individual apps.
Maintain access to BIG-IP software patches and F5 technical support, ensuring security for your apps and support for your organization.
Unlock the latest BIG-IP app delivery and security capabilities, including enhanced API security, Post-Quantum Cryptography, and enhanced DNS security.
Encrypt and protect critical customer data with a FIPS 140-3 Level 1 validated cryptographic module.
Boost data plane performance and deliver a blazing-fast end-user experience with support for the latest technologies – including the newest software drivers and network interface cards (NICs).
Align consumption to your organizations purchasing preferences with a variety of licensing options, including perpetual, utility, subscription and Flex Consumption Program (FCP).
F5’s next-generation appliance, rSeries, bridges the gap between traditional and modern infrastructures with a rearchitected, API-first platform designed to meet the needs of your entire application portfolio now, and into future.
The growth and complexity of app services and application attacks are challenging IT’s ability to manage application traffic, secure infrastructure, and meet the needs of customers. With F5 rSeries, a next-gen platform architecture with up to 100% performance growth, you can future-proof your application delivery infrastructure and increase service velocity.
F5 rSeries delivers the unprecedented level of performance and protection your critical applications and network deployments require. Designed on a new microservices-based platform layer and an API-first architecture, rSeries enables consolidation for lower costs and reduced TCO across your infrastructure.
A new revolution in the rSeries platform design balances performance, scalability, and security, enabling IT to offload SSL processing up to 3x overall and deploy comprehensive application delivery and security services anywhere.
The F5 Automation Toolchain on the rSeries platform makes it easy for customers to deploy and configure F5 application services via simple, yet powerful declarative interfaces. With a fully automatable architecture, customers see lower staffing costs by increasing process efficiency and reducing time spent on manual tasks.
Achieve accelerated app performance and lower latency with more FPGAs and ECC ciphers.
Simplify and consolidate your existing infrastructure with significantly lower operating costs.
Reduce deployment time from weeks to minutes with a fully automatable API-first architecture.
Reduce risk with NEBS compliancy and redundant configurations and components.
Frictionless migration and flexible licensing for the Kubernetes-based hardware of the future.
Modernizing your BIG-IP infrastructure has never been easier. With the Journeys Migration Utility you can effortlessly modify existing BIG-IP configurations to be compatible with new physical or virtual BIG-IP instances, helping simplify and accelerate your migration experience.
It’s vital to keep track of the key lifecycle dates for your BIG-IP assets—especially End of Software Development (EoSD) and End of Technical Support (EoTS) dates. Beyond software’s EoSD date, you won’t be able to receive security patches or software fixes, and after the EoTS milestone, you won’t have access to the technical support you might need.
Key lifecycle dates for BIG-IP software versions ›
Key lifecycle dates for BIG-IP appliances ›
Note: Lifecycle information for BIG-IP Virtual Editions is aligned with the version of BIG-IP in use. For BIG-IP version 15.x, EoSD and EoTS is 31 December, 2024.
Upgrade the software on your BIG-IP appliances and VEs manually with these easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions, or learn how to automate your upgrades with BIG-IQ or Ansible in this DevCentral video.
If you need additional help planning and executing your upgrade, or performing post-upgrade verification, F5 Professional Services can provide expert assistance.
A core component of the F5 ADSP is holistic visibility of apps, services, and operating environment resources. F5 Insight enables ops teams to focus their efforts where they’re most needed, pinpoint root causes proactively, and remediate issues before they impact the end user.
See an example migration with the Journeys Migration Utility.
