BIG-IP R10800

BIG-IP R10800 is the middle performance tier of the F5 r10000 Series, designed for large application delivery and security environments that need more tenant compute than R10600 without immediately purchasing the fully enabled R10900 tier. The platform combines 28 vCPUs available to BIG-IP workloads, 256 GB of system memory, high-density 25G/100G connectivity, and redundant internal storage in a 1RU appliance.

R10800 shares the same physical r10000 hardware with R10600 and R10900. The difference is how much CPU capacity is unlocked through licensing. An organization can start at R10800 and later move to R10900 through F5 Pay-as-you-Grow licensing without replacing the underlying appliance.

Series Highlights

• Middle performance tier of the F5 r10000 Series
• 1RU physical application delivery platform
• 28 vCPUs available for BIG-IP tenants
• 256 GB system memory
• High tenant-density architecture
• Sixteen 10G/25G SFP+/SFP28 interfaces
• Four 40G/100G QSFP+/QSFP28 interfaces
• Dual 1 TB U.2 SSDs

BIG-IP R10800 At a glance

What it is: Mid-tier F5 r10000 Series application delivery and security appliance

Product family: BIG-IP rSeries License

Platform layer: F5OS

Tenant compute: 28 vCPUs

System memory: 256 GB

Tenant memory: Large shared memory pool for BIG-IP workloads

Maximum tenant count: Up to 28 under minimum-size configurations

Storage: Two 1 TB U.2 SSDs

Interfaces: Sixteen 10G/25G plus four 40G/100G ports

Series Overview

The underlying r10000 hardware contains a 24-core Intel Xeon processor presented as 48 hyperthreaded logical cores. Twelve vCPUs are reserved for the F5OS platform layer. On R10800, another eight are disabled by the performance license, leaving 28 vCPUs available to BIG-IP tenants.

Those resources can be assigned to one large tenant or split across several workloads. F5 documents up to 28 single-vCPU tenants on R10800, although F5 also cautions that minimum-size single-vCPU tenants are suitable only for very lightweight LTM or DNS workloads. Production designs normally use fewer, larger tenants sized around the actual application and security load.

The hardware also provides a substantial network edge: sixteen 10G/25G interfaces and four 40G/100G interfaces. This gives R10800 considerably more physical connectivity than r5000 platforms while retaining a 1RU form factor.

Licensing and Part Number Guidance

The R10800 designation controls how much r10000 compute capacity is unlocked. It does not determine the BIG-IP services themselves. A deployment may use BIG-IP License services such as LTM for application delivery, Advanced WAF for web and API protection, DNS for global traffic services, APM for access, AFM for network-security functions, or a combination appropriate to the environment. The final order therefore needs to account for hardware, BIG-IP entitlement, optics, power, support, and redundancy.

R10800 sits between R10600 and R10900 in the three-tier r10000 PAYG model. R10600 can move to R10800 or directly to R10900, while R10800 has one remaining upgrade step to R10900. The change is implemented through licensing because all three models use the same underlying hardware.

For a new environment already expected to consume most of 28 vCPUs, requesting an R10900 comparison at quote stage is usually more useful than designing around an early upgrade.

Common Use Cases

F5 also supports crypto/compression hardware acceleration for rSeries tenants. When enabled during tenant deployment, hardware resources are assigned in proportion to the tenant’s vCPU allocation.

Models, Licenses, and Ordering Scope

What to Check Before Requesting a Quote

Start with tenant allocation rather than the model name. List the BIG-IP services that each tenant will run, expected peak traffic, SSL/TLS demand, concurrent connections, application-security inspection, and interface requirements.

If several tenants are planned, estimate resources for them separately. A lightweight DNS tenant and a large Advanced WAF deployment should not be treated as equal just because both consume a tenant slot.

Also look at future growth. R10800 provides four more tenant vCPUs than R10600, but R10900 increases the ceiling to 36. If most of the 28 available vCPUs will be committed on day one, the fully enabled tier may be the cleaner commercial decision.

Activation and Delivery Notes

R10800 deployment begins at the F5OS platform layer. The administrator configures platform networking, imports the required BIG-IP or supported BIG-IP Next image, defines VLAN access, assigns tenant CPU and memory, and then deploys the tenant. Each deployed tenant receives dedicated vCPU resources.

Crypto/compression acceleration can also be enabled when the tenant is created, allowing SSL/TLS and compression processing to use hardware resources rather than relying entirely on software.

Before delivery, confirm the exact performance tier, BIG-IP entitlement, tenant plan, optics, power configuration, support coverage, and HA quantity. If future R10900 capacity is anticipated, include the PAYG path in the commercial comparison rather than treating it as an unrelated purchase.