F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

I am not the F5 administrator so I don't use all of the features. I primarily perform daily operations such as checking statistics and deploying new virtual servers.

Our deployment is not very complicated, from my point of view. The HTTP and HTTPS load balancing mechanisms are the core functionality for me. I have done things like created new virtual servers, changed the load balancing, and looked at statistics, but I have not looked into the security features, API gateways, and other features because that is the responsibility of other departments. As a pure network engineer, I think the box is performing very well.

I've worked a little bit with iRules and it is amazing. As long as you know what you're doing, it does everything you want it to do.

Technical support is somewhat slow and could be improved.

I have been working with F5 BIG-IP for the past two years.

My experience with technical support has come from two or three tickets that I have raised over the past two years. I would rate them a six or seven out of ten. I'm not sure if my colleagues have faced the same issues, but I have experienced delays in response, especially when I opened a case for iRules. It took them about a month and a half to get me to the point.

One of the reasons it took as long was because they considered this to be a problem for professional services, and not technical support. As such, it was not marked as urgent.

F5 was the first load balancer that I worked on.

The provisioning of the box from A to Z is of medium difficulty. It is not very complicated, nor very easy. I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of provisioning it for the first time.

Compared to using open-source products, the prices are not cheap.

Although we are happy with F5, we are currently evaluating NGINX and Kemp LoadMaster because our F5 boxes are approaching end-of-life. We are running them as demos, conducting a PoC for each to test and see how they run in our environment. There are several things that I have yet to test with these other products.

My understanding is that the support packages and the boxes themselves are not very cheap.

If ultimately we find that the other solutions do not meet our requirements then we will be renewing our service with F5. 

To this point, whatever we have needed has been available out-of-the-box. In our environment, we have not experienced limitations.

In summary, we are happy with the product and for me, it's ideal for HTTP and HTTPS.

Performance-wise, stability-wise, and feature-wise, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are using it primarily for load balancing. We also make great use of SSL interception (offloading and onloading), packet inspection, rewriting, and DNS wide IP.

It is a very good, flexible solution. It helps us to catch up on flaws in our partner solutions on top of its load balancing feature.

Along with load balancing, we perform a lot of packet inspections, URL rewriting, and SSL interceptions via iRule. 

I would recommend that the cost be lowered.

User tracking: Needs to provide a visual interface to follow a customer's activity (from client to BIG-IP to SNAT IP to the chosen server, then back). Today, we are still performing packet captures.

Not so far.

Not so far.

So far, we have not had to contact them.

We previously used Cisco ACE, which has very limited features.

The initial setup is straightforward. The GUI interface is user-friendly.

Software upgrades have been performed by F5 teams.

The initial migration was done by our technical team. 

The last implementation was done by the F5 team. I would rate them as a nine out of 10. I am not giving a 10 because we encountered some difficulties with the software upgrade from version 11 to version 12.

ROI is four years.

If you are planning to use security features, better to go for strong hardware and the best bundle license, which is great for web security.

No.

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.

We are using this solution as a load balancer and reverse proxy.

The most valuable feature is customization.

We are currently using BIG-IP and NetScaler and we wanted to have just one technology. We will be replacing F5 in March.

NetScaler is primarily used for Citrix purposes and BIG-IP is being used as a reverse proxy for our other applications.  We would like to manage it easily with one technology.

I would like to see better integration. I can remember when we were implementing ADFS, we had some challenges.

There is not a lot of documentation available where you can refer to and configure any new technologies.

I have been working with F5 BIG-IP for approximately seven years but our organization has been using this solution for 13 years.

This solution is stable. We have not experienced any issues.

It's a scalable solution and we have not had any limitations. We have approximately 3,000 users.

Technical support is very good in terms of their technical knowledge and assistance.

We have had contact with both F5 and Citrix. 

F5 has a good technical team who can assist and understand the problem and respond quickly. However, Citrix has been a challenge for us.

When we were setting up for Azure we had some challenges.

We have an internal team of two for maintenance and reporting.

I would definitely recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I need to have a deeper understanding of F5 technology.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use the whole pallet of the Big-IP products starting with the Application Security Management, the web application firewall for the F5. We use it for the protection of files at sites and we also use the load balancer. I also have experience with the airlock and we're now researching the possibility of exchanging our Big-IP system with something else. We're hoping to find a solution that's better for the cloud but which can be a hybrid. We have a partnership with several vendors and I work as an IT security engineer.

I've found Traffic Learning to be the most valuable feature in this solution. 

This solution could be improved by reducing the cost. It's the main reason that we're considering another option for our website even though we're very satisfied with the way the Big-IP works and the way Big-IP protects our environment, but it's very expensive. We are keen to find out if there is a similar system for technology that would suit us and cost less. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

This is a very stable solution. I've been using their products for years and have never had any issues. 

This solution scales with ease. You can add equipment, reduce equipment, add configs, it is very flexible.

Technical support respond quickly and they are helpful. Their communities are very involved. I would say I'm super satisfied.

Sometimes implementation is simple and sometimes it's complex, it really depends on the situation. If you've done it before, deployment can be accomplished in half an hour, but if it's from scratch it can take anywhere up to two days. For anyone with experience in deploying this kind of equipment, it's usual that something always happens and problems arise. It usually takes one or two engineers to carry out the deployment. 

I don't have much advice other than to suggest that people look for high quality solutions to implement. It's really about what the client wants and if they're prepared to take the risk of a less expensive solution they need to realize that it might also mean a product that is less good quality. 

I would rate this product a nine out of 10. 

There is more than one use case. The most important is the Local Traffic Manager (LTM). We are using it to load balance our web applications, SSL decryption and application adjusting, along with some TCP features. We are also load balancing traffic between appropriate back-ends for risk. 

We can use it for load balancing purposes on an HA proxy software. However, hardware load balancing is the best way due to some hardware flaws for incoming traffic. We are not using CPU resources for a load balancing SSL decryption and adjusting some parameters for incoming and outgoing traffic. F-5 has a lot of appliances, which can be used for appropriate tasks, e.g., for big tasks, we can use Vipiron devices. As well, we have a lot of software blades, which can be divided into virtual clusters, multi-purposes, etc.

We are using the Big-IP, LTM, ASM, and GTM modules.

• The Local Traffic Manager (LTM) provides a simple low balance and SSL decryption, in addition to some TCP parameters, for incoming and outgoing traffic to redirect appropriate traffic patterns to appropriate servers. 
• We are using Application Security Manager (ASM) as a web application firewall, where there is a security signature to avoid a web level breach. 
• We are using global traffic manager (GTM). Its main use cases is for application firewall modules, therefore we are not using it yet, but we are going to implement it for DDoS protection on some of our web services.

I would like to see F-5 implement a regular routing like in other Linux-based devices. We know the F-5 is not a router, but can be used for traffic forwarding, so it's not the same as other devices if we compare it with Citrix-based devices. It is a simple Linux-based routing software. I don't have any problems with it. However, in F-5, when we try and integrate in some complex networks, we have to use some additional routing scenarios from a Layer 3 perspective, then we have some problems. It would be great if this were fixed somehow.

We have to keep in mind features when we deploy an F-5 solution. Designing the same approach in Citrix can often be simpler. I have written syntax in F-5 which were complicated; not straightforward. For example, in a Citrix device, we have a lot of predefined patterns, and it's much simpler to implement.

We have not had issues with the stability, though we have experienced issues with the flexibility.

The support of F-5 is fine. In comparison with Citrix, F-5 technical support is much better.

We previously used Citrix NetScaler: 

• Citrix NetScaler SDX, which can be divided in multiple instances.
• Citrix VPX.

The licensing strategy for F5 is good.

Currently, we use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager as our traffic management solution. As a consultant, it is project-based with my clients rather than hands-on. Our clients use the solution to load balance their current application server in the DMZ and also in the data center.

The most valuable feature of the F5 BIG-IP LTM solution is load balancing.

To improve the product, they could add more load balancing solutions in Kubernetes.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP LTM for two years.

F5 BIG-IP is a stable solution. It is quite mature and does not have many concerns.

Scalability is good. We use it for active and passive, and we also do some TCMP.

I would rate technical support a four out of five. Their support is quite good, however, they could be a bit more responsive and react faster to requests.

Positive

The biggest concern for my clients is the pricing.

Before choosing F5 BIG-IP, we compared the product with other vendors. We chose F5 BIG because of its technical support as well as its documentation. Their knowledge base is easy to read and access to information is available on their website. It is a complete product for an ADC solution. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten and recommend this solution to users that are looking to use it.

We are in the security business, basically working in two segments; the first is in the financial sector, with the largest banks in the country, and second, we work with some government organizations and corporate businesses. Only B2B for now, not much retail. We have a few projects in insurance companies. The solution is deployed on-premise in our office and we basically use it for demo and testing purposes. We deploy for our customers both on-premise and on cloud. We are a distribution channel, like a reseller. I'm a channel development manager.

For BIG-IP, I think the most requested functionality is its NetFlow balancing and traffic balancing, as well as its secure access and its optimization of access to applications. The solution is the most requested by our customers, so it's an important direction for our business.

I'd like to see a more intuitive interface. The market now is moving into salvage services, different kinds of services, not only hardware solutions. 

I've been using the solution for four months. 

The product is scalable, we have around 200 users in our company. In terms of our customers, there would probably be over 1,000 users.  We have a huge company, but our department for network security products consists of about 25 people. In half of them, users are the technical specialists.

We're just starting to work on setting up our own support service for clients. We hope that maybe next year we could add support products to our product line also.

We have other vendors in our portfolio, all of them working for performance network, performance optimization, and application implementation. We generally propose a few solutions to our customers. 

We have a technical department with a lot of certified specialists who work on the implementation side of things and we also support some of our departments and external clients. It's not my area of expertise. 

We are planning to expand to other segments in the market, healthcare or logistics or even some FMCG retail companies. We hope the F5 solutions will help us to expand. We intend to continue providing this solution and to involve more partners in the F5 business. I would recommend this solution. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.