F5 BIG-IQ Reviews

It is primarily around internet-facing web application security. It works very well.

We needed the product due to increased risk through security exposures.

I don't think it has improved my organizational functions. 

There is a lot less risk involved in having applications available on the Internet.

Scalability: To move from larger boxes to smaller boxes, along with virtualization. So, we are not locked into a particular size.

The reliability is excellent.

The scalability is excellent. It can move configurations between environments. It scales up and down, and has virtualization as well. 

The technical support is very good. We have had to use them only on a small number of occasions.

It was already in place when I joined.

I would like the product to be cheaper.

They are working to make the product more feature-rich all the time. Look for capabilities and features, not just price. The one thing that we found was that the F5 device does multiple aspects as opposed to having to put in different things to different devices for different functions. This made sense to us that we could do all our functions out of the same device. We didn't have to buy different devices for different functions.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Support
• Availability
• Reliability.

The use cases we're trying to implement together all access to their DMV and to deploy and add data to their data center. They were already using Citrix, but they wanted to replace it. I don't know why, but I think they already had contact with the F5 team.

Features like AFM, the Gateway, and Global DNS are the coolest features that save work for us.

The shell, kernel, or Linux has something like a delay, especially with the Virtual Edition when you are trying to implement it in the cloud and you want to access it remotely with web management. It would be great if they could improve their kernel. It was difficult for me, especially when I got started with BIG-IP. I was struggling to find which commands work with it. If you want to work with it, you have to be a Linux guy.

The GUI tries to be professional to work with. It's not designed for an amateur or someone that is just trying to get into the ADC world, network, or application delivery services.

We have been using this solution in-house for three months. Before that, I was studying BIG-IP and BIG-IQ. When we are already designed for a specific customer, then we have to implement it.

The stability of this solution is great.

In our current situation, we're not scaling anything, but in the future, as I know from my friend in the technical background at F5, we might look into scaling up.

The number of users depends if you look at our company size or the professional services from the F5 team. From my side, there would be two members. For remote, it would be two or three.

Their technical support is perfect. They were so supportive. The guys are great and they would do anything for you.

That's the problem, it's Linux. If you want to go to the config management at first, then you have to know the Linux command in order to have an IP configuration for your interfaces. After that, you'll have to manage it on the web. The initial configuration has to be on Linux, though. It was complex for me to set up BIG-IQ because I was coming in from a Windows background, not Linux.

The deployment time would be about two hours.

First, call F5 support before trying to implement it by yourself. That's what I tried to do and there were a bunch of problems, so I would call their support first.

I would give this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for web security, so for WAF. We also use the product for balancing some servers, and also to handle the panel's SSL.

The best aspect of the solution is that we can have everything integrated with a rather large capacity in order to personalize and configure specific rules.

The solution could be easier to manage and to administer. It's a little difficult at the moment. We need some expertise to exploit all of the functionality. 

The solution should improve pricing. It's expensive in comparison to other American solutions.

We've been working with the solution for about five years now.

The solution is stable. It's very reliable and doesn't have bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash.

The solution is not scalable. However, all of the on-premise platforms have the same problem. We know the limits when we buy the devices. It's a normal issue for on-premise platforms.

Our organization has about 2,000 workers, however, services are circulated across the population. There might be about 70,000 people, more or less.

I've never dealt with F5's technical support as our support is handled by a partner. I wouldn't be able to speak to the quality of F5's service as I've never used it.

This is the first WAF solution we've used in this organization.

We're currently looking to change to a new platform. We're looking potentially at Fortinet or another version of F5. For us, right now, F5 is too expensive.

The solution is difficult in terms of integration. It's more based on design. There's a lot of technical architecture and it works for integrating on the new work, but not on the F5 configurations itself. Therefore, it's not exactly straightforward.

We didn't evaluate other solutions first. We studied this solution with our partner. The market was not very wide here. We chose the best partner on time. This partner commercialized this platform. At the time this solution was the market leader.

We're a customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

I believe we are using the latest version of the solution. The model we are using is 2000IP.

I'd warn other organizations that you'll need to have a technical administrator on your team in order to manage the solution correctly. For that reason, I'd rate the solution four out of ten.

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

BIG-IQ is a centralized management system for F5 appliances. For customers with multiple data centers or a lot of F5 appliances, it helps to manage their environment. With a centralized solution, it is easier to complete tasks like software upgrades and performing backups.

The most valuable feature is the centralized management.

The reporting feature is quite good.

Integration with VAS is something that they need to work on.

I have been using BIG-IQ for close to one year.

My understanding is that the latest release is quite stable.

In this product, scalability is related to the number of devices. It is really good and it can scale up to 30 instances. The majority of our customers are medium-sized companies and enterprise-level organizations.

I have not had contact with technical support because I haven't had to raise any tickets.

Prior to BIG-IQ, F5 had a similar product called Enterprise Manager. It went end-of-life and was replaced with BIG-IQ. The reporting, integration, and certificate server have all been improved.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. The length of time required for deployment depends on the use case. If the customer is only installing the LTM and the APM then it will not take long. If, however, there are multiple modules involved then it may take longer. This is because it takes time for the configurations to be loaded, especially for the VAS platforms and the policies.

Licensing fees are based on the number of devices.

Overall, this is a good solution and I would recommend it but they need better integration with VAS.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.