F5 Big IP R5600 Appliance

F5 BIG-IP r5600: High-End Application Delivery for Medium to Large Enterprises

The F5 BIG-IP r5600 is a top-tier application delivery platform designed for medium to large enterprises that need high-speed core network access and exceptional performance with long-term scalability.

As the high-performance entry point of the r5000 series, the r5600 is a significant upgrade from the r4000 and r2000 series, marking a major step forward in connecting to enterprise core networks. Its key upgrades include:

• Native High-Speed Core Ports: It introduces two 100G/40G (QSFP+) ports for the first time, enabling seamless integration with data center backbone networks.
• Performance Improvements: Across the board, it outperforms the R4000 series in throughput (60G), SSL processing (60K TPS), and hardware compression.
• Doubled Hardware Resources: It comes with 128GB of memory, twice that of the r4800.

These enhancements make the r5600 capable of handling larger-scale, more critical network roles, making it a strategic investment for enterprises looking to upgrade their IT infrastructure to higher speeds.

Key Features & Highlights

• Robust 60G Balanced Throughput: Delivers up to 60 Gbps of L4 and L7 throughput, providing consistent, powerful performance for various application traffic. It’s an ideal platform for supporting critical enterprise operations.
• Designed for Large-Scale Encryption and Compression: Processes up to 60,000 SSL handshakes per second and features a 35 Gbps hardware compression engine. Whether as a security gateway for massive encrypted traffic or accelerating dynamic content, the r5600 handles it with ease.
• 100G Interfaces for Core Networks: Standard with 2 100G/40G QSFP+ ports, enabling direct connection to data center core or aggregation layer switches.
• High Availability for Mission-Critical Applications: Based on F5’s proven enterprise-grade hardware, it supports optional redundant power supplies and high availability (HA) clustering, providing robust protection for industries with strict business continuity requirements, such as finance and telecommunications.
• 128GB Memory and Multi-Core Architecture: With 128GB of memory and 12 vCPU cores for tenants, the r5600 excels in supporting high-density multi-tenancy (up to 8 tenants) and complex iRules policies. It provides a strong resource backbone for IT consolidation and cloud transformation.

Applications

F5 r5600 is ideal for medium to large enterprises that need to connect their application delivery platforms directly to 100G/40G data center core networks and serve as a unified platform for multi-service hosting and virtualization. When your business scale and network speed exceed the capacity of 25G interfaces, the r5600 is your strategic first step toward higher performance and bandwidth.

How does the r5600 protect my investment beyond performance?

The r5600 safeguards your long-term investment in two key ways:

• Future-Proof Network Interfaces: It natively supports 100G/40G ports, ensuring that your device remains a core part of your network for the next 3-5 years, even as your data center upgrades. It won’t become a bottleneck.
• Scalable Architecture: Built on the ScaleN architecture with ample memory, it leaves plenty of room for future traffic growth and feature expansions (like adding more modules), so you won’t need to swap out hardware often.

Is the r5600 a good fit for a security device, like running the AWF module?

Absolutely. The r5600’s powerful multi-core processor and ability to handle 60,000 SSL transactions per second make it an ideal platform for running F5’s Advanced Web Application Firewall (AWAF) module. It can efficiently decrypt HTTPS traffic for deep content inspection and enforce complex security policies to fend off application-layer attacks, all without impacting normal business traffic.

How should I choose between the r5600 and F5 r5800 in the same series?

The r5600 and r5800 share the same physical platform (chassis, memory, ports) but offer two different performance levels:

• Choose r5600: If 60G throughput and 60K SSL TPS meet your current and foreseeable future needs. It gives you a cost-effective entry into 100G high-speed networking.
• Choose r5800: If your business needs to max out the hardware’s performance from day one, with higher throughput (95G), SSL processing (80K TPS), and more virtualization cores (18 vCPUs).