Updated Date: 04/22/2026
Software Installation and Upgrade Overview
F5 rSeries platforms are a modular (chassis and blade) form factor, designed to meet the needs of large enterprise networking environments that require the ability to scale and process a large volume of increasing application workloads.
F5 rSeries platforms are powerful systems that are designed specifically for application delivery performance and scalability.
rSeries introduces a new platform layer called F5OS, which is made up of a system controller component and a chassis partition component. Your rSeries system comes with a default version of F5OS software pre-installed. To use new features and software fixes, you will want to periodically upgrade the software on your system.
There are twothree layers of F5OS software images for rSeries systems.
This software runs on the system controllers only. It is subdivided into operating system (OS) and platform services components.
This software does not run exclusively on the blades; it runs on the controllers as well. It is subdivided into operating system (os) and platform services components.
This is the base software (Base OS) for the system. It is subdivided into operating system (OS) and platform services components.
Tenants are guest systems running software on the system (for example, a BIG-IP system). F5 provides different tenant images for different uses.
There are four types of F5OS software installation/upgrades for rSeries systems.
Contains everything needed for the platform layer (that is, the system controllers and the chassis partitions) for a system.
Contains the full installation for a specific platform layer(controller.iso and partition.iso), including both host and service components.
Contains sub-components of a specific platform layer (host.os or services.img). Partial component releases contain all containers for that release.
Contains a subset of services/container packages specific for a component (specific os patches or service containers).
The rSeries system can be run in appliance mode. Appliance mode adds a layer of security by allowing users access only to the system command line interface (CLI) and removing user access to root and the Bash shell. When enabled, the root user cannot log in to the device by any means, including from the serial console.
Note: For greater security, it is highly recommended that you configure the system controllers and chassis partitionsto run in appliance mode.
For more information on configuring appliance mode, see F5 rSeries Systems: Administration and Configuration in the F5OS Knowledge Center at techdocs.f5.com.