Mar 27, 2026 - For details about updated CVE-2025-53521 (BIG-IP APM vulnerability), refer to K000156741.

Lightboard Lessons: F5 software lifecycle

In this episode of Lightboard Lessons, Jason discusses the F5 software lifecycle for BIG-IP as detailed in knowledge base article K8986. Additional Resources K5903: BIG-IP software suppo...
Published Jun 13, 2018
Version 1.0
application delivery
big-ip
lbl
JRahm's avatar
Icon for Admin rankAdmin
Christ Follower, Husband, Father, Technologist. I love community and I especially love THIS community. My background is networking, but I've dabbled in all the F5 iStuff, I'm a recovering Perl guy, and am very much a python enthusiast. Learning alongside all of you in this accelerating industry toward modern apps and architectures.
View Profile
Leonardo_Souza's avatar
Leonardo_Souza
Icon for Cirrocumulus rankCirrocumulus
Jun 15, 2018

Good video and good choice of topic, as this is very misunderstood topic. I lost count to the number of times I explain this to someone, including people that have been doing F5 for a long time. Last changes with LTS and point release, just made this more complicated initially during the change phase, but after old versions are out of support and use, things will be simpler.

 

There was something new for me, that I want to double check. What used to be called engineering hotfix is now called just hotfix?

 

F5 PD needs to update the build number scheme as well, because as we don't have the old hotfixes, we don't need that field in the build number, otherwise will be always zero. This solution shows that:

 

https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K14954

 

Lastly, the information about VE SKU does not match the public solutions. Recently, F5 removed old VE SKUs from strongbox website (that is the site partners uses to generate temporary licenses for hardware and VE), so at the time I did some research about that.

 

This is what I concluded:

 

F5 Product : F5-BIG-VE-LAB-LIC

 

F5-BIG-LTM-VE-200M - BIG-IP Virtual Edition Local Traffic Manager (200 Mbps)

 

I can’t find information about the versions, but I think this was the first version so I can easily assume the version. From 10.2.0 until 11.4.0 (maybe higher).

 

F5 Product : F5-BIG-VE-LAB-V13

 

F5-BIG-LTM-VE200MV13 - BIG-IP Virtual Edition Local Traffic Manager 200 Mbps (v11.4.1 – v15.x)

 

Product name now has the version, amazing.

 

F5 Product : F5-BIG-VE-LAB-V16

 

F5-BIG-LTM-VE200MV16 - BIG-IP Virtual Edition Local Traffic Manager 200 Mbps (v11.6.x - v16.x)

 

Product name now has the version, amazing.

 

As you can see, unfortunately, you can't make any rule for how this work. V13 license does not mean it starts to V13 neither finishes with V13. V16 ends with 16.x.

 

Also, they keep changing this. Because last time I checked these solutions V13 supported only up to 13.x, and now is 15.x.

 

https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K15667

 

https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K05392858