F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

We’re a systems integration company. We propose this solution mostly to our banking customers and large enterprise clients, so that they can load-balance their core banking applications and their main applications.

It also provides proxying, the client cannot directly access the server. BIG-IP is a proxy between the user and the server, so the client cannot make connections directly to servers. They land on F5 BIG-IP and then F5 creates connections on servers on behalf of clients.

We use the solution for smarter, safer, and reliable connectivity.

It has multi-tenancy features, like hardware clustering. It has software partitioning so that you can partition F5. For example, in my recent deployments, I deployed F5 in a bank where they had two load balancers. One was Cisco Ace and the other was Citrix Netscaler.

We created two instances, two vCMP Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing, two hardware partitions in F5, one for Ace and one for Citrix. We migrated all applications which were on Ace to the Ace partition, and we migrated all applications which were on Citrix to the Citrix partition. Further, we created the outgoing internet and software partitions, and it has application visibility, reporting functions.

It has so many features. First of all, it has a full proxy architecture, it has multiple modules. The best feature is the WAF, the web application firewall module. It also has cashing type capabilities. It has all kinds of load-balancing algorithms based on your IT requirements.

So the WAF and load balancing. Both are core features of BIG-IP.

In every environment, you have a Web application firewall, you have internet firewalls. Then, traffic comes into your datacenter so that you have datacenter firewalls. F5 has everything.

It provides first-tier firewalling, for you application. And it provides server load-balancing, it provides optimization, and it provides a proxy feature, where your users cannot directly access your server. It acts as a fully proxy architecture. It has client-side and server-side connections, both, and they're separate.

It also has an AVR feature: application, visibility, and recording. It's good for customers looking for what is actually happening in their network and where the latency is. If I'm using iDirect, the bank branch is connecting to my core banking application, but if the clients are finding that the application is slow, it has TCP  LAN and WAN optimization features. It has has caching.

The room for improvement is that the product is a little costly. I live in the Third World, Pakistan. We have budget constraints, even in big enterprise servers. My team said that this product is too costly, and why don't we go with another product, we should do a comparative analysis with Citrix and F5.

I told them that is costly, but it has rich features, the support is good, the features are reliable, and the technical assistance center, the tech support, is almost perfect.

Still, I would say they need to cut their prices for countries or regions that we live in.

The one gap I saw was that pure LBN integration is a little tricky. The insertion of F5 in LBN is a little tricky. They need to work on something, on products by which they can insert F5 in any sort of cloud environment. These are not really big things. 

They are continuously improving. They are improving day by day, and they are the number-one load balancer.

It is a stable product. It runs on TMOS, traffic management operating system. This is very stable. 

If they see that an upgrade required, they provide you the release and they provide you the release notes, so you can upgrade your TMOS version and at any time. You can also open a case and they can guide you on how to upgrade your TMOS version.

They also keep an eye on vulnerability. If there is a bug or any sort of vulnerability in their operating system, they will immediately release an update. So the product is so much more stable compared to any load balancers on the planet at the moment.

It has that scalability for adding more F5, N + 1. 

It's scalable, and it has more functions than a service. At the same time, this device can run access policy manager, it has Web application firewall, datacenter switching to DR sites. It has a modular approach actually. It gives you what you want.

They are very professional. They are highly skilled people.

It is neither simple nor complex. It all depends on what kind of situations you are in. My last deployment was a little bit complex but previous deployments were very simple.

We did hardware partitioning and software partitioning for a multi-tenancy concept, where every application owner has its own load balancing instance within F5. So it all depends on how you deploy a device and it depends on your planning.

If you want a simple deployment you can do so. You can create multiple virtual servers on F5 BIG-IP technology, and within multiple virtual servers you can have multiple nodes, where a node equals two application servers.

It can be deployed in a complex manner and it can be deployed in a very simple manner, it all depends on your choice. 

It has a rapid deployment feature to deploy Microsoft Exchange load balancing. It has automation. You can simply click on Microsoft Exchange 2016 Email Server. Tclick on it and tell F5 about server IPs, and it goes automatically. 

 24 x 7 always on applications without any down time. 

Brocade ADX.

F5 is the number-one application delivery controller, plus they are the number-one Web application firewall, together in the market right now. So what else do you want from them? Whenever we go and pitch this solution to our customers, we tell them that we are not selling you just a load balancer. We are selling you application delivery controllers, and Web application firewalls.

I give it 9.5 out of 10. It's a really costly product and smaller organizations cannot afford this solution, so it's hard to sell a plan. But once the customer has it, this product is a 10.

There are many use cases. It is mainly used for local traffic management. It can also be used as an advanced firewall for an application or as a VPN policy manager.

We have cloud, on-premise, and hybrid deployments.

Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful.

The user experience for dashboards and reports can be improved. They should make dashboards and the reporting system easier for users. They need to add more reports to the dashboard. Currently, for complicated reports, I have to do the customization.

It should have more integration with network firewalls to be able to gather all the information required for traffic management.

We were their partners for five years, and since last year, we are officially their distributor.

It is really awesome. You can scale from one or two servers to hundreds of servers. They have all the modules that a customer needs. You can go for on-premise or cloud deployment. You can have whatever you need.

Our clients are medium and large businesses.

They have 24/7 support. You can open a ticket directly in F5, and there is no need to use another system.

They reply very fast. They usually get back within four hours, and sometimes, you get a response immediately. They have four-tier system support.

Its initial setup is straightforward. It is just like a wizard and not complex. It takes only a few seconds.

You can buy it on a yearly basis, or you can go for a subscription. For on-premise boxes, it is just the RMA.

I would rate F5 Traffic Management Operating System a nine out of ten.

We use the solution as a proxy to our websites, load balancing all our servers as clients come onto our website and use our services. Our website provides around 15 different services. We are customers of F5 and I'm a solutions architect for telecom and network infrastructure.

The load balancing aspect is valuable to us. 

We use a limited amount of features so the biggest issue for us is the price. For what we're using, it's an expensive solution. 

We've been using this solution for 12 years. 

The solution is very stable and scales easily. Our networking team deals with the maintenance.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. We had external help for implementation and I believe deployment took about two days. 

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We use it as an LTM and as a reverse proxy to publish web services.

It helps us recognize sessions from certain IPs that are authorized to manage the application. This is a function we haven't found anywhere else.

The most helpful thing is that it's open-source. It's very easy to program and customize.

Logging is a bit of a problem. Logging and monitoring are only in plain text. You have to search and you have to know what you are searching for to find anything. So of course, monitoring and getting alerts for abnormal situations is hard. There are no tools for monitoring and alerts. If you have problems and you need to diagnose them, you really have to know what you're looking for in order to find it.

Logging and monitoring could be something out-of-the-box that are more accessible.

Stability is one of the advantages. It's very stable.

We haven't bumped into scalability issues. The limitation is actually through licensing. Throughput is limited by licensing. We had an error with the license and we reached the limit but we fixed that. But there has never been trouble with the capacity or scalability.

I have never used technical support directly. I use F5 through integration services and there were a few times they didn't know how to resolve an issue and they had to turn to support. But there were answers every time.

We used Microsoft Gateway called CMG. This product was end-of-life, they decided to kill the product. We switched because there is no other solution that does the same thing.

It was complex compared to the Microsoft system. But after we learned the product and understood how it works, it worked seamlessly.

We only use a fraction of the capabilities of F5. There are different modules that we have heard others speak highly of, but we don't want to use them locally. It's an on-premise server. For example, there is a WAF (web application firewall) model and others that we don't use. 

It's not a cheap product, but there are no other replacements for what we do with it.

We checked other options, but nothing could deliver the solution we need.

I would advise excessive testing before moving to production. It's a new product, it's a "language." You have to learn the product thoroughly before you really can implement it.

GTM and LTM are the primary uses of the solution. Our company has two active data centers and a data center that is being activated. F5 BIG-IP helps us a lot. 

Global DNS, Link Controller, and Server Load Balancer provide our company service with high availability.

Valuable features include Link Controller and Server Load Balancer with cloud support and application enhancement security.

Internet and cloud support could be improved. Security enhancement should be more user friendly.

Previously we had an IdP on a Linux server. However, this was a pain to configure. With the F5 this has become easy. Therefore, more and more of our applications are now transferred to SAML.

I really like the ease of use of it in general. If I were to choose one in particular, perhaps it would be the iRule feature. It’s a really versatile tool.

The SharePoint SSO part has some room for improvement. Opening documents and spreadsheets on local applications in on our specific situation is not possible.

None at all.

No issues with scalability.

F5 is a big company. They have a great community and TAC. The advantage with this product is that it isn't new. They have many engineers who have been working with it for a long time and have a lot of experience.

We used to have a Barracuda WAF. It was unreliable and it didn’t have all the features of the F5. It was out of maintenance and we decided never to use Barracuda again.

Easy switch from our Barracuda to F5. The setup was done with an engineer. However, if you pay good attention you can manage it afterwards. I also have a F5 test environment on a VM. These cost around $100 but are worth that money for testing purposes.

We tried FortiADC briefly. However the big contender was Citrix NetScaler.

Be sure of what you will use. F5 isn’t cheap but is worth the price. Also, take a good look at all the different options and make sure you take the correct hardware platform. You can always add more licenses, but if the physical device isn’t up to the task you’re stuck.

Mostly I support my clients in relation to the product.

I am very satisfied with the product overall. 

There is never a big number of false positives or false negatives. That's the most valuable aspect of the product. 

The solution is very easy to use and easy to understand. It's quite an intuitive system.

The user interface and GUI are very good.

I find the product to be very stable. I've supported customers for two years and haven't really had an issue with the solution.

I can't say that there are any features missing. I've overall been quite happy with it.

We once had an issue related to trying to publish some exchange application to a file and we experienced some problems there, however, the incident was not really related to BIG-IP. It was likely some kind of infrastructure problem the company was experiencing.

We haven't had any big problems of note.

Technical support could be faster. It's something I'd like to see them work on in the future.

The pricing could be more reasonable.

I've been using the solution for about two years at this point. 

The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had an issue in years. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is good. It's reliable.

Most of our clients are medium-sized entities.

For the one customer I typically deal with, there has been no need to scale or expand services. The product can be scaled by adding more licenses if necessary. That said, our clients have everything they need and have not actually done this. 

There are also add-ons that come from the ASM if a company is interested in that.

Technical support is slow and it could be faster. I had one issue once that was not very serious as it was on the Disaster Recovery Site. We were able to pull a previous version from a snapshot. However, the issue was that I was able to solve the problem myself before I even heard back from technical support. If they knew their technology, how is it that I could solve the problem faster as a person that's not as familiar with it? They need to be much faster. It could have been a much bigger problem. 

I'd say, overall, we aren't satisfied with the technical support for that reason.

I did not previously use a different product. This is my first Application Delivery Consult Solution.

The initial setup is very complex. The basic setup may be fine, however, right now I'm trying to do something in my lab environment. We've tried a few things over the years and it hasn't gotten any easier.

The costs could be lower. In a report, we found that Citrix Solutions are somehow cheaper - including in relation to encryption licensing. I cannot compare as I haven't spoken to Citrix. I don't know if it's easier or has the same (or more features). That said, I wouldn't describe this product as cheap. 

We're currently comparing F5 to Citrix. I'm not currently working with Citrix; I'm curious to see how they compare to each other. I had a presentation to a client and they just wanted some sort of comparison, which is why I began to look at Citrix.

We are resellers.

I'm a System Integrator. I have experience in virtual environments and with clients. I have some moderate experience with implementation and some bigger experience in supporting this product. I'm not an expert in the field, however, I'm trying to be.

I don't have any issues with the solution. It's pretty problem-free in general. Overall, I would rate it at a nine out of ten.

The load balancing is very good.

The tech support is helpful and knowledgeable.

Everything is okay within the solution. It works well.

The product offers pretty good security.

The solution is easy to install. It's a straightforward process.

The interface is excellent.

We've found the product overall to be simple and easy to use.

Currently, the product offers everything we need. I can't recall any features that may be lacking.

I've only used the solution for one year. In comparison, I've used Radware for three years.

We've had the solution installed for a year now and it is working as it should. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. We find it stable and reliable. It's been a good experience so far.

The product can scale quite well. We haven't had any issues. If a company needs to expand it out, they should be able to do so without trouble.

Right now, I'm the only one at the office who uses the product.

I've been in contact with technical support in the past. So far, I've been happy with their level of service. They have been very helpful and responsive overall. I don't have any complaints.

We also use Radware, which we've used a bit longer.

The initial setup isn't too complex. We can handle the process pretty well. It's straightforward. I consider it to be pretty easy. There's no difficulties during the instllation.

I'm not sure of which version of the solution we're using right now. I have a few customers who are using it, and they may be using different solutions.

I'd recommend the solution. Our customers seem to be very happy with it.

Overall, I would rate the solution nine out of ten.