F5 BIG-IQ provides a central point of control for F5 physical and virtual devices and for the solutions that run on them. It simplifies management, helps ensure compliance, and gives you the tools you need to deliver your applications securely and effectively.

BIG-IQ manages policies, licenses, SSL certificates, images, and configurations for F5 devices. It includes extensive analytics, fine grained Roles-Based Access Control and the ability to scale up or scale down F5 devices as business needs change (AWS and VMware only). It supports the following F5 modules:

• BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
• BIG-IP DNS
• BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM)
• BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
• BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM
• F5 Secure Web Gateway Services
• F5 WebSafe and F5 MobileSafe (monitoring and updates)

BIG-IQ manages F5 devices running on AWS and other cloud environments, as well as on-prem BIG-IP, VE, VIPRION, and the BIG-IP iSeries hardware platforms. BIG-IQ is ideal for organizations that require central management and automation of F5 devices and modules, license management of BIG-IP VEs, or central reporting and alerting on application availability, performance, and security.

The Azure virtual machine guest environment for the BIG-IQ Virtual Edition (VE), at minimum, must include:

•   2 Virtual network adapter cards (NICs)

•   A 64-bit instance with at least 4 virtual cores (up to 16 are supported in this release)

•   At least 16 GB RAM (64 GB has been tested, F5 recommends at least 2 GB per virtual core)

The BIG-IQ instance must be deployed using PowerShell to create a 2nd NIC.

More information at:

BIG-IQ Centralized Management and Microsoft Azure: Setup

BIG-IQ Onboarding

Annual support contracts may be purchased separately for BYOL offerings from F5 Technical Support Services.

Obtain your 30 day free trial for BIG-IP Cloud Edition here.