A10 Networks Thunder ADC Reviews

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

We use it for SLB and GSLB load balancing. We're using the Thunder ADC 1040 but before that we used their AX 2500.

The SLB and GSLB load balancing are the most valuable features. They meet our need to do server-side load balancing and global site load balancing so we can distribute traffic, not only intra-data center, but inter-data center.

We are using them in the cloud and they are flexible, supporting the cloud services that we use. We use Azure.

In my opinion, they need to improve their cloud support. There is support for cloud, but not all functions are there, such as high-availability.

We've been using A10 Networks Thunder ADC for eight or nine years. It's nothing new for us. It's been a while.

The stability is on par with what we expected. We have very little downtime that is related to the product itself.

Scalability for us is more horizontal, so it's easy for us to add nodes into the cluster. It's not really scaling vertically where we need more power. We're using the smaller devices; we don't use their chassis where you can add more power.

It is our only load balancing solution. We plan to transition into Azure, but we don't see a need, based on the way we use it, to grow it. It will just be transitioned.

Previously, we were using F5 Networks' load balancers and we moved away from them because they were not flexible and they did not provide a good value. Since we switched to A10 Networks, we have had all the features that we need in a more value-oriented package. In particular, they provide SLB and GSLB, whereas F5 wanted to charge us for every single thing. We like the all-in-one-bundling from A10 Networks. It turns out to be a good value.

The setup was straightforward. We worked with a support engineer from A10 Networks to plan the setup and they provided a migration tool. It was a straightforward migration when we switched from the AX to the Thunder series. Also, when we switched from F5 to A10 they provided resources to us.

We have it installed globally, so it took about three months to replace them all. The replacement strategy was to do it in pairs in each location, one at a time, to have the least impact with production.

I didn't have any complaints about the consultant from A10. It was a good experience.

We ran the numbers and our return on investment is projected to be five years out with A10, compared to if we had replaced our infrastructure, back then, with F5.

It's a regular CapEx purchase, and annual maintenance per device.

We evaluated F5 again, because it was time for a renewal. We evaluated Juniper — at the time they had a load balancing solution. We also evaluated Cisco.

The biggest lesson I have learned is that even though at that time A10 was an up-and-comer, it was worth the chance. As a smaller player at the time, it provided a product that was stable and provided a better value. Being willing to take a calculated risk was worth it in the long-run.

Don't only look at the dominant players like F5. Do your research on vendors that might not have dominant market share. That's not to say that you would just choose to go with any small player. It would have to be a smaller player that has stability and that has at least some size to support you on an enterprise level, which is what we found with A10 at the time.

We have about 10 administrators of the solution.

I would rate Thunder ADC at nine out of 10. There are some things that can be improved, but we've been happy with it.

We use it to load-balance the website.

It's seamless.

The solution has made things easier in terms of operations efficiency It's one less thing to worry about. It just sits and it runs. 

We don't use many of the features. We're just using the basic ADC features. We're not really using anything particularly extensive on them. They sit and work most of the time. 

The ease of use is very good. It's very robust. It just sits and works. We forget that it's there a lot of the time.

The user interface is what people complain about most of the time, particularly if they don't use it very often. Then they complain that it's a bit clunky. It works from an ADC point of view, but the interface is a bit clunky.

We've been using it for about eight years.

It's rock solid. It just sits and works. That's the way you want it.

It's definitely scalable. We've not had any problems. I'm looking at the CPU graphs and it's not bothered at the moment.

The support is very good. They're very responsive if we ever have any problems. That was what drew us to them in the first place.

Prior to this one, we had another Thunder ADC. Before that, we didn't really have a requirement for an ADC. This was the first one we ever had. We've did have some free, software-based ones in the past. But when it became a bigger requirement, we ended up with ADC.

The initial setup was straightforward because we had an A10 engineer who came onsite and helped set it up for us. It wasn't plug-and-play. We did have to have some engagement. The deployment took a couple of days. We have continued adding more and more services onto it.

We put it in primarily for Exchange, to do some load-balancing at the time. These days, if we put it in, we'd have a lot more change-control to go through, but back in those days we just put it in, set it up, and away it went.

There aren't any licensing costs associated with it. It's just an appliance and you get all the licenses with it.

We looked at Kemp and there was another one, but it was about ten years ago. We went with A10 because of price and support.

Do research. I'd probably look at virtual appliances if I was going forward. One thing we could do with is a proper Dev and Test environment, which we don't have. I would have had some virtual appliances for Dev and Test. We did talk about that, but we haven't gotten around to doing it.

There are about ten of us who use it from a management point of view. But all the staff and students benefit from it.

It requires two or three people for maintenance.

We don't have any specific plans to increase usage. A lot of things might be going to the cloud, so there might be less use going forward.

I would give it an eight out of ten because it sits and works, it's robust. But the interface could do with a bit of work.

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.

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.