F5 BIG-IP is the application delivery controller family from F5. Its licensing combines three choices: which software modules are enabled (traffic management, firewall, DNS, web application firewall, access management), what form factor runs them (appliance, chassis, Virtual Edition or a hybrid of the two), and which commercial model governs the licence (perpetual, subscription, utility, enterprise agreement or the Flex Consumption Program).[1] The sources used here are F5’s own bundle and subscription pages, the Virtual Edition data sheet, the F5 Cloud Docs licensing page, the Platform Terms and the Subscription Program Terms. F5 publishes no BIG-IP price list and its per-platform hardware data sheets are outside this article.
Modules and bundles
F5’s bundle page compares three tiers.[1]
| Tier | Contents named on the page |
|---|---|
| Good | BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM): traffic management, iRules programmability, visibility and monitoring, SSL services |
| Better | Good plus advanced routing (BGP, RIP, OSPF, ISIS, BFD), BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager and BIG-IP DNS |
| Best | Better plus F5 WAF for BIG-IP and BIG-IP Zero Trust Access (500 concurrent user sessions, scalable up to 200,000) |
F5 states that the bundles let customers choose from available modules with standardised images, and that buying bundles can save up to 65% over buying the modules as individual components.[1] Standalone modules are also sold for virtual editions, so that a customer can license specific services only.[2] The catalog rows are BIG-IP Good bundle (LTM), BIG-IP Better bundle and BIG-IP Best bundle; the access capacity in the Best bundle is the metric Concurrent user session (BIG-IP Zero Trust Access).
Each bundle is available for BIG-IP Virtual Editions, BIG-IP hardware, or hybrid environments that combine both.[1] Add-on modules for BIG-IP may need an add-on licence; the F5 Cloud Docs defer the procedure to the Activating add-on modules article on the support site.[3]
Virtual Edition by throughput tier
BIG-IP VE is available for all BIG-IP modules and can be purchased by throughput tier “from the 10M non-production lab license to the 25 Mbps, 200 Mbps, 1 Gbps, 3 Gbps, 5 Gbps, and 10 Gbps production licenses”, with pay-as-you-grow upgrade licences as performance needs rise.[4] The data sheet gives minimum resource requirements of 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM and 10 GB disk, and states that maximum performance depends on the licensed performance range and the CPU cores and memory allocated.[4] The data sheet is undated; it also predates BIG-IP Next as a shipping product, which it describes as arriving in 2022, so figures in it should be checked against current F5 documentation. The metric row is Throughput tier (BIG-IP VE).
The data sheet’s platform matrix shows which tiers are supported on each hypervisor and cloud. For example, the lab and all production tiers are marked for VMware vSphere and for KVM and community Xen, while some cloud entries are marked bring-your-own-licence only or utility (pay-as-you-go) billing only.[4]
High-Performance VE
High-Performance VE instances “aren’t limited by a throughput cap, but are instead licensed by the number of vCPU cores that can be allocated”, up to a maximum of 24 vCPUs.[4] A footnote requires BIG-IP TMOS version 15.x or later for the cited performance results.[4] The metric row is High-Performance VE vCPU licence.
Per-App licences
A Per-App licence applies “when you want to use BIG-IP VE with one back-end application”. It is available as bring-your-own-licence at 25 or 200 Mbps from BIG-IP VE 13.1.0.2, for LTM alone or with Application Security Manager as a web application firewall, and is also used in BIG-IP Cloud Edition to license instances auto-scaled from BIG-IQ.[3] A Per-App licence allows one virtual IP address and three virtual servers with the same destination address and different ports, or a wildcard destination.[3] See Per-App licence.
Commercial models
The data sheet lists the models available for VE.[4]
- Perpetual (bring your own licence): a one-time purchase “supporting 3 major software releases”. See Perpetual licence (BIG-IP). Platform Terms add that a “version plus” licence may be limited to a certain number of major updates.[5]
- Subscription: 1- to 3-year terms with unlimited version upgrades and Premium support included; F5’s subscription page adds automatic renewal and self-service licence management that lets the customer increase or decrease the number of instances through the term.[2]
- Utility (pay as you go): hourly or monthly billing with no long-term commitment. See Utility (pay-as-you-go) licensing. When a utility offering is used the licences or subscriptions are bought from the cloud provider’s marketplace.[5]
- Enterprise Licensing Agreement and Flex Consumption Program: Better and Best bundles can be bought as a VE subscription or through a VE Enterprise License Agreement that lets the customer self-license any number of virtual instances in any capacity at any time.[1] F5 now describes the Flex Consumption Program as the successor to ELA, with BIG-IP VE covered by Schedule A.[6] Reporting for BIG-IP VE under FCP is product-dependent and may use automated telemetry, BIG-IQ or customer-provided reports.[6] See Enterprise Licensing Agreement (ELA) and Flex Consumption Program (FCP).
Licence keys, activation and moving licences
BIG-IP software needs F5-issued licensing. Software provided stand-alone, for example a virtual machine image, “requires a valid license key or other identifying token” issued by F5 or an authorised distribution partner, and may be used only for the duration the key permits.[5] If a key enables use before an order exists, the customer agrees to pay for that use, except for non-production software and evaluations.[5] The F5 Cloud Docs direct customers to F5’s knowledge-base article K7752 for the licensing procedure; that article is on the myF5 support site and was not retrievable without a login session for this article.[3]
For reuse, “in BIG-IP VE version 12.1.3.3+, and 13.1.0.2+ ONLY, you can revoke the license from a virtual machine and re-use it on another virtual machine”, through the Configuration utility under System, License, Revoke, or with tmsh.[3] Appliance software is different: unless the documentation or a separate agreement says otherwise, software licensed for hardware may not be transferred to other hardware, including third-party hardware, or to a virtualised environment.[5] BIG-IQ Centralized Management can provision and return individual VE licences from a pool for subscription and ELA licences.[4]
Hardware under subscription programmes
When a quote lets a customer subscribe to software modules for use on hardware, the hardware may be used only with software modules licensed under the subscription and not beyond its expiry.[7] Under the Flex Consumption Program the software modules appear as a Software SKU in the Subscription Activity Report on hardware shipment, hardware cannot be acquired or used without an active Software SKU, and the customer must notify F5 when it retires each module; retiring all modules on an appliance retires the hardware and support ends.[7] Hardware acquisitions in subscription programmes include Advanced RMA service, and pricing includes Premium Support unless indicated otherwise.[7]
Cloud deployment
The Platform Terms allow BIG-IP in public cloud only inside an F5-authorised cloud provider environment, require a separate licence key for each instance under bring-your-own-licence, and disclaim warranties for software supplied by a cloud provider and not obtained from F5.[5] F5 lists AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as public clouds for VE and VMware, KVM and Hyper-V as private cloud hypervisors.[8]
Evaluation and lab use
F5 offers a free 30-day trial.[9] The Platform Terms set an evaluation term of 30 days unless agreed otherwise, with no support or updates, and software designated lab, non-commercial or development may be used for testing and development only and “may not manage or protect data traffic or applications in the ordinary course of your business”.[5] The VE lab licence is catalogued as BIG-IP VE lab licence.
Support and lifecycle
Support, maintenance, RMA and warranty terms are in the Maintenance Terms and the Product Warranty and are covered in the F5 support article. Two points matter for BIG-IP: coverage starts 90 days after shipment or at activation, whichever is earlier, and F5 may limit development support for a version one year after release of a later version.[10]
Out of scope
This article does not cover BIG-IP Next, the per-model hardware throughput and capacity figures in appliance data sheets, VELOS and rSeries chassis part numbers, or myF5 knowledge-base articles that need a login. It does not give prices.