BIG-IP v15.1 reached End of Software Development (EoSD) and End of Technical Support (EoTS) on December 31, 2024. Make sure your BIG-IP Fleet is running v16.1 at a minimum to ensure access to technical support and software patches beyond this date. Learn more ›

Upgrade BIG-IP

Modernize today to secure your apps

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.

Why Should I Upgrade?

Keep your software up to date to gain access to cutting-edge capabilities and minimize risk exposure. At a minimum, we recommend implementing BIG-IP v16.1 across your BIG-IP fleet, while the latest v17.1 release will reward you with protection against evolving threats and vulnerabilities.

What Version Should I Be Running?

BIG-IP v11, v12, v13, v14 & v15

Upgrade highly recommended—support is expiring imminently or has already expired

Reasons to upgrade:

Access to patches for software bugs or vulnerabilities has expired
Access to technical support has expired
Inability to implement cutting-edge application and network protections from recent versions
Newer software versions are inherently more secure and higher quality
Inability to use newer capabilities such as Automation Tool, Container Ingress Services and Telemetry Streaming (v11 and v12)

BIG-IP v16

Upgrade recommended—support is expiring within 12 months

Reasons to upgrade:

Access to software patches for bugs or vulnerabilities expiring within 12 months
Access to technical support expiring within 12 months
Inability to implement cutting-edge application and network protections from recent versions
Newer software versions are inherently more secure and higher quality

BIG-IP v17

Upgrade not yet necessary

Reasons to upgrade:

Upgrade to v17.1 for the latest and greatest BIG-IP capabilities

Recent BIG-IP Innovation

Review the release notes to learn about incremental new capabilities added within
each of the last software versions across the BIG-IP product family.

v17.1 | v16.1 | v15.1 | v14.1

Comprehensive App Security

Protect against sophisticated app-layer threats including malicious bots, L7 DoS, API attacks, and OWASP Top 10 attacks.

Secure App Access

Enforce unified global access controls for users, devices, applications, and APIs to ensure secure, authorized access for both remote and internal employees.

Encrypted Traffic Visibility

Provide high performance decryption of inbound and outbound SSL/TLS traffic, enabling security inspections to expose threats and prevent attacks.

Automation

Automatically provision and configure BIG-IP with declarative APIs using the CI/CD and automation tools you’re familiar with.

Container Ingress

Optimize and secure your containers and microservices by extending BIG-IP application services.

Scalability and Performance

Optimize user experience and performance through full HTTP/2 proxy support, including native monitoring and session persistence.

Upgrade Scenarios and Benefits

BIG-IP VE

F5 rSeries

F5 VELOS

Why upgrade BIG-IP VE to run v16.1 and up?

Multi-cloud freedom

Deploy across a diverse array of supported cloud environments with consistent services and policies.

Cloud optimization and reduced TCO

Decrease operational costs in the cloud with significantly reduced image size, while leveraging accelerated boot procedures to reduce spin-up time and better accommodate dynamic, auto-scaling architectures.

Unrivaled performance

Take advantage of acceleration technology, including SR-IOV, advanced NIC adapters, and hardware offloading to deliver greater scalability and blazing-fast user experiences.

Cloud-native integration

Augment your cloud apps and environment using native security, automation, and telemetry solutions.

Federal-grade encryption

Achieve FIPS 140-2 Level 1, 2, and 3 compliance with an embedded software cryptographic module and integrations with physical HSMs.

Flexible consumption models

Choose from multiple licensing options that align to your preferred purchasing model, including perpetual, utility, subscription, and enterprise licensing agreements.

Why refresh your appliances to F5 rSeries?

API-first platform scales for the future

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.

Lower costs with a modern ADC design

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.

Automation leads to rapid deployment

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..

Increase application delivery and service velocity

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.

Protect critical data with industry-leading SSL performance

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.

Why refresh your VIPRION chassis to F5 VELOS?

Get unmatched performance with improved ROI

Achieve accelerated app performance and lower latency with more FPGAs and ECC ciphers.

Accomplish more with automation

Reduce deployment time from weeks to minutes with a fully automatable API-first architecture.

Future proof your infrastructure

Frictionless migration and flexible licensing for the Kubernetes-based hardware of the future.

Lower your TCO

Simplify and consolidate your existing infrastructure with significantly lower operating costs.

Carrier class reliability

Reduce risk with NEBS compliancy and redundant configurations and components.

F5 Journeys Migration Utility

Streamline BIG-IP instance migrations with the F5 Journeys Migration Utility

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.

Learn more about F5’s Journeys Migration Utility ›

Read the Journeys Migration Utility Solution Overview ›

person typing on computer

Stay on Top of Your BIG-IP Asset Lifecycle

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.

person talking on headset

Need Help Upgrading?

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.

Learn more about F5 Professional Services ›

Related Products

Start Your Transition to BIG-IP Next

BIG-IP Next is the next-generation of BIG-IP software that has been purpose-built to meet the app delivery and security requirements of vast and complex app portfolios spanning core, cloud, and edge locations. It’s the same BIG-IP you know and trust, simply modernized and optimized to simplify operations, enhance performance, and strengthen security.

Learn more about BIG-IP Next