Updated Date: 07/07/2026
BIG-IQ Sizing Recommendations
Each service on the devices managed by your BIG-IQ has scale limits that depend on your system setup, BIG-IQ version, and the scope of each BIG-IP service. These scaling limits were tested using a BIG-IQ system managing just two services: the tested service and LTM. If your BIG-IQ solution manages multiple services, the scale limits you can expect will likely be lower than the maximum numbers reported in this table.
The following are the maximum recommended objects for a BIG-IQ system. These values were tested with the following BIG-IQ hardware configuration:
- 16 cores/CPU
- 64 GB of memory
- SSD local disk
- 100Gb disk space on
/varpartition
| Managed Service | Max number of devices discovered | Max number of overall objects per type per BIG-IQ | Max number of overall objects per type per single BIG-IP discovered | Type of objects |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DNS/GTM | 200 | 190,000 | 1,000 | GSLB objects |
| ASM/WAF* | 30 | 1,000 | 200 | Policies |
| Access | 100 | 50,000 | 600 | Policy items |
| ADC/LTM | 1500 | 430,000 | 50,000 | Combination of virtual servers, pools, nodes, pool members, certificates, monitors and any AFM or DNS specific objects |
| AFM | 1500 | 305,000 | 50,000 | Combination of firewalls, firewall policies, rules, rule lists, address lists, ports, NAT objects |
*Sizing varies depending on your software/hardware configuration. See BIG-IQ Web Application Security scaling notes for additional WAF/ASM sizing recommendations and details.
Web Application Security (ASM/WAF) services in BIG-IQ have scale limits depending on your system’s setup, BIG-IQ version, and the scope of your BIG-IP services. The following outlines additional configuration recommendations and corresponding hardware recommendations for managing Web Application Security objects on BIG-IQ. Please note, these recommendations were based upon a BIG-IQ setup running Web Application Security and Local Traffic Manager services.
Web Application Security object recommendations were tested with the following BIG-IQ hardware (CM) configuration:
- 16 vCPUs
- 8 CPU cores
- 64 GB of memory
- SSD local disk
- 210 Gb disk space on
/varpartition*
*During an upgrade to with a max scale configuration, the /var may require more than the default 100Gb. Before the upgrade, calculate the disk space required using the BIG-IQ preUpgradeCheck tool. /var sizing is not in the default settings on BIG-IQ CM, and adding disk space might require additional configuration. For more information see Resizing Disk Space on BIG-IQ Virtual Edition in the BIG-IQ: Sizing Guidelines found on support.f5.com, or K14952.
The following lists the object limits for a system running the recommended hardware configuration. If you are running a smaller Web Application Security deployment, you will be able to import a higher volume devices to BIG-IQ. For large setups, see the scale limits and Additional Sizing Notes below.
| Managed Service | Max number of devices discovered | Max number of overall objects per type per BIG-IQ | Max number of overall objects per type per single BIG-IP discovered | Type of objects |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ASM/WAF | 30 | 1,000 | 200 | Policies |
- For full simultaneous deployments
- Maximum number of devices for a full simultaneous deployment: 3
-
Maximum number of devices for partial simultaneous deployment: No limit
- For large deployments (high volume devices and/or policies)
- A configuration that includes more than 60 medium policies may require additional disk space. To allow for a larger import to BIG-IQ, apply the following PATCH to the preferences worker (prior to import):
restcurl -X PATCH -d '{value:256}' /cm/asm/preferences/diff-parts-limit-mb -
For BIG-IP objects that exceed the numbers listed in the table and/or have less than the recommended memory on BIG-IQ CM, you can improve performance results setting to the parallelism of differences, during a deployment evaluation, to 1. You can do so by using the following REST command:
restcurl -X PATCH -d '{value:1}' /cm/asm/preferences/device-batch-size -
To bulk discover/import the maximum number of devices (4 devices) use the following REST command:
restcurl -X PATCH -d '{value:4}' /cm/asm/preferences/discovery-batch-size