Forum Discussion
NimbostratusAmbiguity re. Big-IP products
I'm doing a market research on selecting an ADC product among F5, Citrix, KEMP, etc.
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I'm confused as to what the letter 'v' and 's' refer to in F5 Big-IP model names, e.g., 10250v vs 10050s. Is it 'virtual' vs 'software'. F5 datasheet is listing some hardware specs for 10050s (e.g. RAM and disk size etc) which is odd for a software-only product.
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I understand F5 virtual editions can be deployed on different hypervisors. Is a model like 10250v delivered as a complete appliance, or it is just a Virtual Machines and we need to separately purchase the server hardware?
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What is the approximate performance difference between a Big-IP hardware solution and the corresponding virtual edition? (i.e. how much do we lose by going for the virtual version)
4 Replies
- Kevin_Stewart
Employee
The v stands for vCMP - a hardware platform that runs an optimized hypervisor to provide for some number of BIG-IP "guests". The s stands for SSL - a hardware platform optimized for SSL throughput. Otherwise everything but the virtual edition is a hardware platform.
https://www.f5.com/pdf/products/big-ip-platforms-datasheet.pdf
The throughput of the virtual edition is dependent on 1) licensed throughput thresholds and 2) server hardware capacity.
https://www.f5.com/pdf/products/big-ip-virtual-editions-datasheet.pdf
kianoosh_230995Cool. Thank you for the clarification.
Scott_McRobertsI know this post if from a couple years ago but looking at some spec sheets at https://www.f5.com/pdf/products/big-ip-platforms-datasheet.pdf and notice the 4200v model although has a V (vCMP) says Virtualization (Maximum Number of vCMP Guests): N/A as does the 4000s. So are there some V models that can't do VcMP and you just have to check the spec sheets?
- boneyard
MVP
indeed, that is the wise thing to do, although the 4200v is the only odd one out i believe. with the iseries they stopped with the Vs again.
also keep in mind the 4200v and rest in that serie go end of sale soonish
https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K55590970
