BIG-IP’s newer software versions are inherently more secure and comprise innovative new security capabilities. Prioritize regularly upgrading your BIG-IP to mitigate harmful vulnerabilities and cyberthreats.
As a critical component of F5’s Application Delivery and Security Platform, its 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 v17.5 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 v21.x to access exciting new capabilities and software enhancements.
Defend against quantum-based threats with integrated Post Quantum Cryptography.
Provide high performance decryption of inbound and outbound SSL/TLS traffic, enabling security inspections to expose threats and prevent attacks.
Protect against sophisticated threats including malicious botnets, L7 Denial-of-Service, API attacks and much more.
Automatically provision and configure BIG-IP with declarative APIs using the CI/CD and automation tools you’re familiar with.
Enforce unified global access controls for users, devices, applications, and APIs to ensure secure, authorized access for both remote and internal employees.
Optimize and secure your containers and microservices by extending BIG-IP application services.
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).
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 and support, F5 Professional Services can provide expert assistance.
Providing comprehensive, centralized observability across your entire BIG-IP fleet, the F5 Application Study Tool helps identify and troubleshoot issues, visualize application usage and traffic patterns, and streamline upgrades and capacity planning.
Learn more about the F5 Application Study Tool
See an example migration with the Journeys Migration Utility.
