F5 is proud to announce the general availability of the VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 blade, two powerful additions to our modular systems portfolio, purpose-built to deliver unmatched performance, agility, and scale for today’s most demanding workloads. From AI factories to 5G networks to high-throughput enterprise environments, VELOS is engineered to help customers meet tomorrow’s challenges with confidence.
Powering the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform
The F5 VELOS CX1610 and BX520 are foundational to the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), F5’s next-generation approach to application delivery and security. F5 ADSP converges app and API security with high-performance load balancing and traffic management.
F5 ADSP reimagines the role of the application delivery controller as a modular, programmable platform that spans hybrid and multicloud environments. It brings together high-performance hardware, purpose-built software, and deep security into a unified platform, enabling organizations to deliver applications faster, more securely, and with greater agility than ever before. F5 ADSP streamlines operations across hybrid and multicloud environments, enabling consistent policy enforcement, real-time visibility, and cloud-native agility from the data center to the edge.
VELOS delivers the promise of F5 ADSP, supporting unified security across all environments, with F5 BIG-IP and F5 BIG-IP Next modules providing the application delivery, advanced security, and automation services modern IT teams depend on to scale. With VELOS, organizations can modernize their on-prem infrastructure while aligning with the same architectural principles driving their cloud strategies.
Inside the VELOS CX1610 chassis
A fully populated VELOS CX1610 chassis delivers multi-terabit throughput with modular scalability, engineered for the most demanding AI, 5G, and enterprise workloads.
The CX1610 is a high-density, 16-RU chassis supporting up to 32 quarter-width blades or 16 half-width blades. Its non-blocking fabric ensures lightning-fast connectivity in the VELOS chassis, while offering separation of control plane traffic from the data plane via redundant system controllers running F5OS platform software that provides resilient, centralized control. Built for scale, the chassis supports up to 6 Tbps of aggregate throughput to power AI model training, scale 5G, or modernize the enterprise core.
Designed for consolidation, the CX1610 reduces the rack footprint, lowers power consumption, and streamlines infrastructure, helping organizations meet sustainability goals while modernizing their data centers, all without compromising performance or scalability.
Meet the BX520 blade
The BX520 is a half-width blade delivering up to 375/300 Gbps of L4/L7 throughput, with hardware acceleration for SSL/TLS, IPsec, DDoS, CGNAT, and cryptographic workloads. Equipped with 96 vCPUs, 512 GB of RAM, and a 4TB SSD, it’s designed for high tenant density and peak performance, but it’s equally capable of supporting a single, ultra-performant SuperVIP tenant when maximum throughput and resource isolation are required.
Compatible with both the CX1610 and CX410 chassis, the BX520 enables multi-terabit throughput in a fully populated system, ideal for environments with demanding traffic, such as AI data delivery pipelines or 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) subscriber services.
The BX520 blade combines high-performance compute, cryptographic acceleration, and tenant isolation to power secure application delivery at scale
AI workloads
AI pipelines require fast, secure movement of massive data sets. The BX520’s hardware crypto offload and high-speed fabric optimize SSL/TLS performance and reduce latency, accelerating training cycles and improving GPU utilization.
5G deployments
For service providers, VELOS offers a consolidated N6 / S/Gi-LAN solution which brings together multiple subscriber services including DNS, firewall, DDoS and CGNAT, along with video and TCP optimization. With NEBS compliance and integration-ready APIs, VELOS supports large-scale, real-time data environments and automates deployment through CI/CD pipelines.
Enterprise consolidation
Organizations can eliminate infrastructure sprawl by consolidating onto VELOS CX1610. With chassis partitioning, multi-tenant isolation, and hardware-level separation, teams can run development, staging, and production environments securely and independently on a single platform. VELOS enables organizations to logically partition hardware resources, allocating compute, memory, and bandwidth to isolate tenants or services, creating the operational effect of a virtual chassis.
A seamless path to converged application delivery and security
VELOS is built to support F5 ADSP through BIG-IP 17.5+ tenants, which include support for post-quantum cryptography (PQC), JSON Web Tokens (JWT) protection, and modern app services automation and declarative management via the BIG-IP Automation Toolchain Application Services 3 Extension (AS3) and Declarative Onboarding.
Availability and next steps
The VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 blade provide the performance, scalability, and flexibility needed to power the future of application delivery and security. Whether you’re advancing AI initiatives, deploying next gen 5G infrastructure, or modernizing enterprise apps, VELOS gives you the foundation to drive change, not just react to it.
The VELOS CX1610 and BX520 blades are now available for order through F5 and our network of authorized partners. To explore detailed specifications and capabilities, you can download the F5 VELOS Data Sheet. The Planning for VELOS Guide provides detailed guidance on system architecture, chassis configuration, networking design, and operational best practices. Contact your F5 representative to learn how VELOS can accelerate your journey or visit F5.com/velos to learn more.
About the Author
Related Blog Posts
F5 NGINX Gateway Fabric is a certified solution for Red Hat OpenShift
F5 collaborates with Red Hat to deliver a solution that combines the high-performance app delivery of F5 NGINX with Red Hat OpenShift’s enterprise Kubernetes capabilities.
F5 accelerates and secures AI inference at scale with NVIDIA Cloud Partner reference architecture
F5’s inclusion within the NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) reference architecture enables secure, high-performance AI infrastructure that scales efficiently to support advanced AI workloads.
F5 Silverline Mitigates Record-Breaking DDoS Attacks
Malicious attacks are increasing in scale and complexity, threatening to overwhelm and breach the internal resources of businesses globally. Often, these attacks combine high-volume traffic with stealthy, low-and-slow, application-targeted attack techniques, powered by either automated botnets or human-driven tools.
F5 Silverline: Our Data Centers are your Data Centers
Customers count on F5 Silverline Managed Security Services to secure their digital assets, and in order for us to deliver a highly dependable service at global scale we host our infrastructure in the most reliable and well-connected locations in the world. And when F5 needs reliable and well-connected locations, we turn to Equinix, a leading provider of digital infrastructure.
Volterra and the Power of the Distributed Cloud (Video)
How can organizations fully harness the power of multi-cloud and edge computing? VPs Mark Weiner and James Feger join the DevCentral team for a video discussion on how F5 and Volterra can help.
Phishing Attacks Soar 220% During COVID-19 Peak as Cybercriminal Opportunism Intensifies
David Warburton, author of the F5 Labs 2020 Phishing and Fraud Report, describes how fraudsters are adapting to the pandemic and maps out the trends ahead in this video, with summary comments.