A10 Networks Thunder ADC Reviews

Our primary use case is for servicing a remote workforce. Especially these days when a lot of people are working remotely, a solution like this is important. We have to deploy applications and we do not necessarily want to upload the applications into the cloud or locally on desktops or laptops. ADC is really good for desktop virtualization and application delivery. Instead of having a full client, you look at a projection hosted in the data center. All the processing is being done back in the data center in the corporate domain. Because of the fact that the processing is not being taken care of locally, ADC is a very lightweight client that handles the feed on your laptop. It also enhances security.  

Everything is kept in the server room, not exported locally to someone's house or whatever location they are working in. You do not have to worry about securing the data. There are certain programs that you have to patch a lot, like Adobe Flash — which seems to always need a patch. Instead of doing that on all 100 laptops that are in the field, you just do it once in the data center and everybody uses that same version. That type of simplification for your deployments is another benefit of ADC.  

Because the maintenance is all happening at the data center, it is a lot more controlled and it is way easier. Another thing that this helps with is that only certain people get access to certain applications. The accountants are really the only ones who need access to the accounting software. It is really easy to set up groups based upon Active Directory and then define who gets access to those applications. That ability to limit access is really kind of cool and can potentially save money and licensing costs.  

The most valuable parts of this product have to do with the efficiency of deployments and data security.  

Everybody says Network Thunder works as advertised. It is just one of those things that actually performs as advertised. I take no news as good news. I do not really have any negatives. We usually like to get well-balanced reviews from people who have experience with the product and especially from the vendors themselves.  

As far as improvements, that may be different than things that are missing or broken. I just do not have any cons. I do not have any glaringly big needs for additions either. One thing that might be improved is the interface. I think it is pretty straightforward. It is just not the prettiest, but it is functional. That is getting pretty granular.  

Maybe one concrete thing that they can improve on is their two-factor authentication. Just do something to make the native solution more robust. That would probably be the one thing that I have heard mentioned. They have basic two-factor authentication. It is also nice that they have options for integrating with other two-factor products. The problem with that is that then you have to buy two products and license two solutions. One customer made a comment saying that it would be nice if we only had to buy one product to take care of the whole solution. In other words, they thought it would be better to just be able to buy the A10 and not buy two products to create the two-factor authentication they would have preferred. That should be something that A10 could at least offer.  

We have been selling A10 ADC (Application Delivery Controller) over the past couple of years. We have been selling the load balancer for going on nine years.  

There are not really any nagging glitches or any kind of little ongoing annoying problems. Certainly, there are none that I have experienced and not that I have heard of from people using it. If there are ever any issues they are just normal, temporary issues that you expect when you work with technology. That is if you can consider anything that is a glitch to be normal.  

If we are talking about load balancing, then I can speak more about stability issues. But the Network Thunder ADC has mostly been very good. There was an issue a few years back with one of my customers and A10 addressed the problem and took care of it promptly. Isolated incidents can have to do with a lot of things within a larger architecture. It would be a problem with the architecture then, and not the product.   

We never really tried to scale the internal initial deployment hands-on. It has been left as is. More users have been added over time but nothing so crazy that it really required some type of scaling of the product. This company is a little over a hundred users. They are all using it remotely, from home, daily.  

Roles for the users are just all over the board.  

For just Network Thunder, I have not had to deal with the A10 technical support team. Our clients never said anything about how they like it one way or another. I assume that means they have not had to contact them either. There has just been one load balancing issue a client had and it was isolated to that location. A10 took care of it. They are one for one as far as tackling problems I know about.  

The installation is absolutely straightforward. Nothing more to say about that.  

As far as how many people are usually required to maintain it, in this company it is just one technician for 100 people using the product. His role is probably considered a straight system admin. It would not be a senior tech or even someone dedicated to the product.  

I can just say that it is cheaper than other solutions that are supposed to do the same thing. That is actually one of the reasons that customers chose it.  

It is a pretty good product. On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate A10 Networks Thunder ADC as a nine-out-of-ten. I do not get too many complaints from customers. Giving it a nine seems fair. It works as advertised.   

On-premises

Carrier-grade NAT is the purpose of using A10 Networks Thunder ADC at Turk Telekom Mobile.

It solved the CGNAT performance issues and, within two years, it had no problems and no outages.

The Deterministic CGNAT feature.

I would like to see the scalability numbers for the virtualized version which are comparable to those I noted in my answer on "Scalability."

One to three years.

Every six months we made active-passive changes and upgraded to the latest version of the firmware. But we didn’t have stabiliy issues.

It scaled well for our numbers, up to 3 million subscribers for our most crowded region.

Technical support was mostly provided by another company, but A10 also responded our questions on time and accurately.

We used F5 load-balancers for the same purpose before, but those devices weren’t meant to be built for CGNAT. F5 devices built for CGNAT were also functioning well according to PoC tests.

It was easy. The CLI of the devices are universal and we had to make the solution as simple as possible in order to get scalability.

F5.

I would advise doing comprehensive PoC tests for your specific purpose, for all products.

One of the main advantages of A10’s line of ADCs is that they offer an all-inclusive licensing scheme for their products. This scheme enables enterprises to save significantly on costs, and makes managing licenses easier. A10’s ADCs is a solid, high-performance platform. It supports advanced traffic management and scripting features and broad set of security features using a third-party web application firewall. Lastly, A10’s ADCs have IPv6 support which gives it an edge over other offerings in the market should IPv6 functionality be required.

Though A10 has a solid offering, they have an on-going legal battle with Brocade. Depending on how this plays out eventually, this is a risk that must be evaluated carefully. Support can also be a problem if you are in the United States, as its main contact centers are in Asia. Application integration with third-party development tools is also a problem, as there are limited integration options available. Finally, A10’s products has limited web acceleration support for mobile users. This can be a problem if the application is intended for this purpose, but custom scripting is available to help alleviate this issue.

Overall, A10’s ADCs are a good product with the price many companies can afford and have features that even some high-end ADCs. I recommend it for those companies looking for advanced features offered by the product yet wants to keep costs down. However, the future might not be bright for this company, and I highly suggest that existing and potential users follow the progress of their legal battle with Brocade. Long term support might suffer if they lose their case, which a cause of concern for both existing and future customers.

The load balancing, proxies, and internal proxies are valuable features. 

• Improvement of the grid look
• Intuitive UI
• Syntax 
• Configuring

It is very stable. 

The scalability is really good. You can easily unify many devices at once. ADCs are simple to configure and each device is powerful. We have two engineers managing and monitoring multiple systems and it works well for us. 

For the past two and a half years, we have not had a need to open a tech support ticket. It is really stable. In the past, our experience with tech support was that they were extremely helpful. 

The setup depends on certain situations. In certain scenarios, it may be more complex than others. For example, while the initial configuration may be easy, the environment itself may be complex and that may limit the ease of deployment. It is easy for those who understand their environment.

The pricing and licensing are really easy because we bought the hardware and it has all of the license availability. The licensing is embedded in the hardware. We do not have to import any other license. The pricing is a third of the price of the F5 competition. 

We looked at A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs F5.

We are distributors and have been for a long time. We provide products to clients.

It's a very friendly solution, easy to configure, and it's very flexible.

The interface and integrated custom applications can be a bit difficult. They need to be improved.

In the next release, I would like to see improvements with the integration.

I have been working with this solution for more than three years.

The stability is good for us. We have not experienced any issues.

I have no complaints about the technical support. They have very good support. They guided us and helped us through the tool.

The initial setup is straightforward and very user-friendly.

It is easy to deploy and customize.

The price is good they are very comparative.

Definitely, I would recommend this product.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

On-premises