F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

Our primary use case for this solution is as an alternative for ADT. We work with standard enterprise customers because this product is not affordable for the SME, it's not a cheap solution. We are partners with F5 and I'm a pre-sales and technical executive. 

The most valuable feature is the iRule.

The reporting could be improved and I'd also like to see the UI adjusted to make configuration easier. There are some things in the F5 configuration that are complicated. 

I've been using this solution for 16 years in total, continuously for the last seven years. 

I think this solution is very stable. 

This is a scalable solution. 

Compared to other solutions, the technical support is not very user friendly. 

I previously worked with Fortinet which is a much more reasonably priced solution. 

The initial setup is somewhat more complex than you would find in other solutions. Implementation can be completed in a couple of days but in terms of the configuration firewall of the product, for any application it will take a minimum of 15 days and up to a month.

If a company wants a good solution and has the money for it, I would recommend F5. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We use it as a load balancer.

We have always used it and never had any issues with it.

The most valuable feature is being able to manipulate the iRules, so you can send traffic to different avenues.

The auto logout feature after three minutes is terrible. I wish they would make that longer, since it is not a feature that we can change.

It contributes to our traffic by about fifty percent. That's why we love it. We have never had any issues.

We put a lot of stress on our F5 on-premise. We have support, which is great. It is a ten out of ten.

We have over 12 applications that we use it for with about 300 servers which are connected up using this load balancer. 

We're a big company. We do like the on-premise version. However, we are looking into AWS servers to help us scale for larger avenues as well.

We reached out to the technical support a few times, and they are great. They are a ten out of ten.

The integration and configuration are great. When I need to make changes, I have been fine.

We are currently using the Terraform Infrastructure as Code. Therefore, we are using the F5 provider to create new nodes, pools, and purchase servers, and the integration has been seamless for us.

We are going to the AWS Marketplace because purchasing there is simple to do. We are looking for the ease it provides. We have tried other providers, but it wasn't as good.

We did not evaluate anything else.

Take advantage of it and use it.

We use the on-premise version of this product. We are looking into moving over to the AWS version.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

Some of our clients use it as a load balancer. It can also be used as a web application firewall to protect your web-based applications from attacks.

The most valuable feature is the proxy. It is set up as a reverse proxy in front of the server. This feature allows me to do anything with the traffic, such as inspecting it. Most other solutions don't provide you with this capability.

This solution allows you to write scripts that can run on F5 devices. These scripts can be used to monitor traffic and look for keywords, and then perform a corresponding action such as blocking or allowing the request, or giving the user an error.

Big IP supports load balancing from network layer four up to layer seven.

More training should be available to customers. There is a guide that is available on the internet, but the training is not as good as others, such as Cisco. While F5 does have a big market share, it is not easy to find a well-training F5 engineer. If they made it easier for engineers to get F5 training then it would be better.

I have been working with F5 BIG-IP for five years.

This product is very stable. I have seen some instability with newly released versions, so I normally wait for a stable release before I upgrade an older one.

I have often been in touch with technical support and most of the time they are good. The response time is usually about one hour, although if it is a priority one issue then they will respond within 40 minutes at the maximum.

The initial setup is straightforward. If the analysis is already complete then it should only take five or ten minutes to deploy.

When you purchase the virtual edition or the hardware, it comes with the base license. There are additional costs depending on what modules or what functionality is required.

I consider F5 to be my network within my network because the traffic has to go through it. This includes things like the load balancer.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to learn and understand the architecture of the device. It will do very well for you if you understand it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

We mainly use this solution for application delivery and application security - the product is used on a daily basis. We are partners of F5 and I'm the head of IT infrastructure. 

The application firewall is a very good feature. 

The policies management could be improved, that's why I'm doing a comparison of other solutions. This is also a very expensive solution. 

I'd like to see external loading included as part of the solution. 

I've been using this solution for seven years. 

The solution is stable overall. 

This solution is scalable. 

The technical support is very good. 

Deployment time depends on the size of the organization. In some places it takes a week or two; in others it can take three months. There is very little maintenance required but if necessary we do it ourselves. We do upgrades ourselves and maybe rely on technical support once a year. 

Everything is included in the license fee but it's a very expensive solution. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. If it were less expensive I'd rate it higher. 

Our use case for this product is a web function firewall and network firewall that we can use on one platform. 

I like the combination of ADC and WAN.

The UI could be improved and we also find the pricing to be quite high. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

We have over 50 customers using this solution and it's very stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

The customer support is very good. 

The initial setup is quite complex and requires a pre-deployment assessment because of the range of parameters involved. I think the assessment process could be simplified. 

Licensing is paid on an annual basis and there are no additional costs. 

I recommend this solution and rate it eight out of 10. 

BIG-IP has multiple uses, including VPN, application firewall, and load balancing.

BIG-IP can do anything. It's like a Swiss Army knife. 

BIG-IP LTM is taking a long time to mature in cloud environments. They plan to improve cloud integration in the next version, but it isn't out yet. It's essential because more companies are moving to the cloud these days and using things like Kubernetes or microservices. F5 needs to improve in that direction, and they are. 

I have used BIG-IP for about 15 years

BIG-IP LTM's hardware is stable, and the operating system is great. 

BIG-IP can scale horizontally or vertically because it's a blade system.  If you need more hardware on the same appliance, you can put blades on it. They are a bit expensive but work fine. You can create a cluster if you want to scale horizontally and put any hardware you need on it. You can scale as much as you want.

I rate F5 support seven out of 10. The response time is okay, but sometimes you have to explain your issue to multiple support engineers before it gets resolved. It's a common issue with most tech support. 

Neutral

Setting up BIG-IP LTM was complicated in the beginning, but it has gotten easier over time. The deployment time varies depending on your environment. You have to connect and activate the license, but the operating system and modules are pre-installed. The basic setup takes only an hour, but you might need to do some additional configuration. 

BIG-IP LTM is somewhat pricey for a small company with a limited budget. 

We use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for the web application firewall and a load balancing system. We are using it in a government project.

There are not very many areas for improvement, but the price is high.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for approximately four months.

I have found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) to be stable.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a scalable solution.

We have approximately nine people using this solution in my organization.

We have only opened up two support tickets with the support and on both occasions, they provided a good service.

The initial setup of the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) was complex and could be made easier. The full process took approximately three weeks.

We used consultants for the implementation of the solution. 

We have 10 to 12 managers supporting this solution.

The price of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is too high.

I rate F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) a seven out of ten.

All of our web servers are load-balanced by F5.

The iRule feature is very useful for inspecting HTTP. Sometimes, we use it for modifying the headers of the HTTP.

F5 has another solution to load balance servers on the cloud, which they got after the purchase of NGINX. It is deployed as Kubernetes or something like that, but the problem now is that they have two solutions for two situations. They should make F5 deployable on the cloud.

Recently, we were investigating offloading SSL as version TLS 1.3. I am not sure if we were able to do that or not.

I have been using this solution for more than 15 years.

It is very stable.

They have a host where you can increase the CPUs dedicated for load balancing. You can mount a cluster to escalate, but in order to escalate, you need to virtualize the solution. Otherwise, you need to change the device and load something bigger.

I contacted them in the past. They provide good support.

I have used a Cisco solution in the past, but they discontinued the solution or the hardware. F5 is much better.

It is very easy. It depends a bit on what you want, but in one day or two days, you can have F5 load balancing on backend servers. It is very easy.

I would recommend others to choose a virtualized solution. I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.