Hardware diffrence

Probably best to send you to the official documentation:

 

Link to BIG-IP Product Suite

 

Link to BIG-IP Hardware

 

Link to VIPRION Hardware

 

In summary:

 

BIG-IP is a modular software architecture. While specifically designed as a reverse proxy and load balancer, BIG-IP can perform many network and application functions. The individual modules (LTM, GTM, APM, ASM, AFM, WA/WOM/AAM) work at different layers of the stack to provide optimization, acceleration, and security of network communications. BIG-IP software and modules are essentially the same for all of the hardware versions, which basically dictate "speeds and feeds" and the number of modules that will run on the platform concurrently. Speeds and feeds include physical interface speeds and quantity, caching and compression, SSL offload, and overall L4-L7 throughput.

 

what I want to know is, BIG-IP product suite is part of BIG-IP hardware or they are different product ranges

 

So to answer your question specifically, BIG-IP software and hardware are different things. All of the software (modules) will run on all of the hardware platforms with varying degrees of combinations and performance.

 

The term "BIG-IP" is a family name. It encompassed both software and hardware components. There are BIG-IP software modules:

LTM (Local Traffic Manager)
GTM (Global Traffic Manager)
APM (Access Policy Manager)
ASM (Application Security Manager)
AFM (Advanced Firewall Manager)
etc.

And there are BIG-IP Hardware platforms:

2000, 4000, 5000, 7000, 10000, VIPRION, and the older 3900, 6900, 8900 and 11000 platforms

All of the above listed software modules will run on all of the listed hardware platforms and will function, mostly, identically. The difference is in performance and overall functionality (how many modules can be installed on a given hardware platform).

When you purchase a hardware platform, it will come with ALL of the above listed software modules installed. They will need to be licensed and provisioned to be used though.

The one wrinkle in this description is the Virtual Edition (VE). It is, essentially, the BIG-IP software suite running in a virtual environment on YOUR hardware. All of the modules are still there and must be licensed and provisioned to be used. A VE will not perform to the extent of a hardware-based platform, so it should be used in environments where high throughput is not a requirement (ie. labs, cloud environments where many VEs can be scaled out and auto-provisioned, environments where you want to control application layer functionality, etc.).