F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

I primarily use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for server load balancing and SSL offloading. The tool helps offload the SSL processes instead of having the servers handle it. Additionally, we use the Web Application Firewall (WAF) application for protecting our servers.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) has improved our organization's performance by increasing the uptime of our applications. By including redundancies for applications, the traffic is balanced across multiple servers, which helps secure our processes.

The most valuable features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) are server load balancing and SSL offloading or termination. These features help protect our servers and improve application uptime.

While F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is not a do-it-all solution, it has a feature called iRules that allows customization of the device's non-default functionality.

One improvement could be updating the user interface (UI).

I have never faced any stability issues with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM).

I do not have any complaints about scalability or technical issues with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM).

Customer service and support depend on prioritization. However, support is good and on par with other solutions. They follow their SLAs precisely to reach out to us based on the priority of the issue.

Positive

There are many competitors in the load balancing market. However, F5 has been a leader in load balancing solutions for many years. They offer a 'Swiss Army knife' approach with multiple functionalities like synchronization.

There are multiple solutions available in the market. I chose to work with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) due to its comprehensive features and leadership in the industry.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

We use this product to hide true identity of our web servers from external users while balancing the loads of those external users. 

For load balancing, we have various load balancing method. We can define these methods at the node or pool level. 

We are retail users and have lot of websites for online businesses to prevent attacks. On those sites, there is a WAF module that we also use, which prevents attacks on it. 

It acts as a reverse proxy for our web servers, and we can use certificate to protect from attackers and send encrypted traffic to F5 which then decrypt and passes to the internal server after encrypting again using a server-side certificate or sending in plain form.

It has helped a lot to protect our organization from external attacks, especially XSS or XSRF types of attacks. 

It serves as a reverse proxy for our web servers which takes the request from the internet users on F5 public-facing IP using an encrypted connection and then it decrypts the packet using a client-side certificate. We use server-side certificates to encrypt the traffic and send it to the server. Internet users never know what the real server IP is. It does NATing to hide the identity and it has an ASM module to protect it from web attacks.

There are a lot of good things this solution has, including:

The LTM module helps to load balance the traffic among the internal web server in our case using round robin and least connection method.

The ASM module prevents web attacks and protects our web servers.

The irule feature is used to write these irules to redirect the traffic or sometimes prevent automated attacks such as through BOTs where the distinction between real and fake users becomes increasingly tricky.

Its virtual servers have the option to configure other things to increase the speed of serving requests like the use of a persistence profile.

The major drawback is it has lot of options nested inside, and each option has a lot of options. I'm not sure who might be using all those options or even some (limited) good options. They should pare everything down.

It requires a particular skill or training before being able to manage it. Creating virtual servers, managing pools, and nodes until it is working on WAF side of it becomes difficult while writing the irules.

Another drawback is we are using a physical appliance. It becomes very slow and unresponsive. Even logs cannot load on the box to troubleshoot. It overwrites the logs. They need to do something in log storage locally on this box in the next release.

In terms of our primary use cases - all our web services, our main web portals, and our TV service sit behind the F5, so any customer would have to traverse our F5 for the services at the back of it.

It serves our backend and front end services.

In terms of what could be improved, I would expect more integration with different platforms and more integration with the backend systems.

Additionally, in the next release, I would like a more secure version.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager for about five years now.

In terms of stability, it is stable, but we have a regular update program because of the security vulnerabilities, meaning bugs. So it is an ongoing thing maintaining them.

It's a bit of an overhead at the moment.

In terms of how many users we have using it, for the end user, all our customers go through the F5, so they are using it in terms of service. In terms of our engineers and how many people use it, that depends. If you're deploying it or you're in operations, like I am, there are hundreds of engineers and internal users.

We have weekly calls with F5 directly. We used to go through a third party, but now we go directly to F5 for our support.

When you buy it you have a license bundle which I think you have to renew every year or every couple of years.

On a scale of one to ten, I would probably give F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager a six.

I would give it a warm recommendation, I would not give it a glowing recommendation. I'd give it a warm, "Tread with caution."

iRules are very valuable. In addition to that, the way profiles are depicted by the LTM is also very good.

A lot of functions that are attributed to iRules can actually be simple profile changes. iRules do have a certain performance impact. Therefore, instead of writing simple iRules, they can create certain profiles for classes that will perform the same function.

Its scalability and pricing can also be improved.

I have been using this solution for more than 12 years. We are currently using version 15.1.2. The latest one is 16.0, but we are still evaluating it.

It is very stable.

It is not scalable. It is a licensed product. They are coming up with some scalable options, but for existing products, throughput is limited. Currently, if you have a 200 Mbps license, then it can go to a maximum of 200 Mbps. If you want it to go further than that, then you have to buy a new license.

Their technical support is good.

I've been working for 12 years, and F5 was the first LTM product. In addition to F5, I've also worked on Citrix NetScaler, Load Balancer, Kemp, and Cisco ACE (no longer in service). I prefer F5 over all of them.

Its initial setup is very easy. The biggest advantage that F5 has is that its initial setup is very simple.

It is quite expensive as a product. Because it is very stable, it is also expensive.

For mission-critical applications, you can trust F5 with any of your load balancing functions. However, if you have a UAT environment or a test setup, it won't be suitable because it is a pricey product. You can then go for an open-source product or any software with load balancers. VMware has recently come up with AVI load balancers.

I would rate F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) an eight out of 10.

The product can be used for many applications including load balancing and GLB's overload balancing. It depends on the module. If there's a public APM you can use it for WAF and many other use-cases. 

The performance of the product is great. 

We enjoy its overall ease of use.

It's relatively easy to configure. There's a certain level of fine-grain configurations that you can perform.

The solution is very stable.

We've found the product to be quite scalable.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

The pricing could always be better. It's a bit expensive.

It would be ideal if they offered integration with NGINX. They purchased NGINX as well. Therefore, if it's got integration with NGINX, then you kind of have one single pane of a console for all the F5/NGINX portions of your work. 

I've been using the solution for six years. It's been a while.

The stability is very good. The performance is reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. We don't find there are a lot of bugs or glitches. 

The scalability is great. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so easily.

We have about 2,500 users on it currently.

We do plan to increase usage in the near future.

We've used technical support in the past and have been satisfied with the level of attention we receive. They are helpful and responsive. 

The installation process is not overly complex or difficult. It's very straightforward and pretty simple. 

The deployment is fast as well. It takes maybe an hour to an hour and a half to set everything up. 

We have two people on staff that can handle deployment and maintenance. They are admins.

I handled the installation myself. I did not need the assistance of any integrator or consultant. It was all handled in-house. 

The solution could work at lowering its prices a bit.

The licensing needs to be a bit more flexible.

We pay our licensing fees on a yearly basis. 

We did evaluate other solutions before choosing this product. However, it was a long time ago. I can't recall the products we looked at. One might have been Barracuda.

We're a customer and a partner of F5.

The product is an on-premise virtual edition solution.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been mostly quite happy with it so far.

I'd recommend the solution to other users and organizations. Our experience has been a positive one. 

The F5 is something we purchased for another project that has not been turned on just yet.

The solution is very powerful.

The product is quite flexible. 

The horizontal scalability that is on offer is very good as well.

I would like to see some better documentation focused on our website and better search criteria. That's probably the best way to say that there needs to help with research.

The cost of the solution is pretty high. It would be ideal if it was more reasonable.

We were originally supposed to launch this project for a client, however, that hasn't materialized yet.

While we never really got around to scaling the solution just yet, there is horizontal scalability that is on offer that seems very good.

This is being deployed in a service provider environment. Therefore, it'll be impactful to all of our customers. However, I would say as far as internal support users, we have a team of probably ten that'll be supporting this product once it's launched in production.

In terms of technical support, so far it has been pretty good. That said, it's more to set up the solution versus actual production support. They're not helping us deal with bugs or glitches, they've just been helping us with a rather complex implementation. We've been satisfied with their assistance in that sense. They seem knowledgeable and responsive.

The initial setup is largely complex. However, we had a lot of help from their internal sales team or support team has been important in terms of working around the difficulties.

We have a staff of ten that are handling deployment and maintenance. They're not dedicated just to this product, however. They support our overall service provider architecture.

The cost is quite high. The long-term support in particular is quite high.

Customers need to be aware that each feature is licensable, which allows costs to accrue.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with F5.

The F5 is something we purchased for another project that has not yet been turned up. That said, the experience I've had with F5 has been very positive, specifically working directly with their corporate sales engineering team. 

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If it wasn't for the high cost of the product, I might rate it a bit higher.

I would advise those considering the solution to explore all options. Specifically, the total cost of ownership. It can be lower with some other vendors. A10 is oftentimes a lower cost of ownership. One challenge with F5 is everything is a licensable feature. Whereas something like an A10 is not. You see the same challenges with a Cisco type of device as well, however, it's in a different arena, with different products.

We are using F5 BIG-IP LTM for our application which is a reverse proxy. We use it for availability, and to process the application because it is used in the financial industry.

The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP LTM is it helps our delivery team to make policies and rules for application.

The user interface of F5 BIG-IP LTM is old and could improve.

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

I rate the stability of F5 BIG-IP LTM a nine out of ten.

The scalability of F5 BIG-IP LTM is good.

This solution is best suited for medium to large-sized businesses in the finance and telecommunications industries.

I rate the scalability of F5 BIG-IP LTM a nine out of ten.

The support from F5 BIG-IP LTM is not good.

I rate the support from F5 BIG-IP LTM a five out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup of F5 BIG-IP LTM is simple because our project is not complicated. The implementation took approximately three days.

I rate the initial setup of F5 BIG-IP LTM a seven out of ten.

The price of F5 BIG-IP LTM could improve.

I rate the scalability of F5 BIG-IP LTM a ten out of ten.

This is a good solution, but it is expensive. I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate F5 BIG-IP LTM an eight out of ten.

F5 has performed marvelously. It certainly holds in value and holds its name.

We're able to do load balancing and global load balancing. When you marry those two products together, you can do a lot more. We're able to deliver our applications more securely and faster. It has improved our deliverability where we have more service across the shared data centers. We can intelligently reach all of those client connections across all of the servers and do it fairly quickly. It has helped improve our application delivery and performance.

I would like to see improvement in the manageability and easier setup. 

They need to have features that you can turn on and spin up and not have to buy a license for. I'd want to be able to quickly spin up a feature and start using it and then come back and pay for it later. Citrix has them beat on that. 

F5s are rock solid. I've seen them deploy in major data centers and they're rock solid.

Scalability is similar to Citrix NetScaler where you can pay as you grow. It doesn't have the feature which you can just turn on. You have to buy into it, then you have to wait for the license, and then you have to wait to have somebody to pay for it. You can't deploy quickly.

F5 technical support is good. They have a lot of good people there. Once you get into the area of expertise that you need help with, those people are very good at helping with the problem. Every time I call in, I go right to tech support and they're really good help. 

The initial setup can be complex but it's not because of the F5 itself. It's because of your own network. You can get in your own way. What makes it complex is the fact that you have to stand back and figure out the configuration. F5 is there to help you with that and give you some idea on where to place it and what to do. Some of that also falls underneath the realm of managed services or just services in general. They start you with a brand new spiffy product, but you're left with the migration process. 

They are expensive. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. Not a ten because of the usability and a manageability. I've had to send somebody to F5 University to get trained, whereas with the Citrix NetScaler I don't necessarily have to send them out to training. I was able to pick up NetScaler right away. Whereas, F5, if you have it, you should probably get trained on it because it's a little more esoteric. 

Everybody wants the best of a name brand. If F5 was like a Tesla, would you want to buy a Tesla or a Toyota? They're both big name brands, but when you hear Tesla, you know exactly what that is; it's the futuristic top-of-the-line electric car. If you can afford a Tesla, then buy the Tesla but if you can't afford a Tesla, and you want something that's going to get you from point A to point B at a halfway decent price, go with Citrix.