A10 Networks Thunder ADC Reviews

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is typically used for Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) related use cases.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC's caching and compression features are very helpful in reducing latency.

I would assess A10 Networks Thunder ADC's load balancing for improving application reliability during peak periods at around 9 out of 10, as GSLB is far better, and we are very satisfied with it. Load balancing also fulfills our requirements.

In future updates, I would like to see better speed in the features of A10 Networks Thunder ADC.

I have been using A10 Networks Thunder ADC for around five to six years.

In some of our deployments of A10 Networks Thunder ADC, we have employed DDoS and other security features, and for the past few years, we haven't experienced any major incidents, although there were minor incidents related to some airline and other customer DDoS attacks that A10 couldn't mitigate.

There are no complexities with the deployment of A10 Networks Thunder ADC feature-wise; it's entirely acceptable. However, when it comes to customer requirements, sometimes it's difficult to manage some requirements because they expect features that require another product, leading to some challenges. Other than that, the product is fine, so we can easily manage everything.

The support we receive from the team is quite excellent, and nothing directly comes to mind regarding improvements for A10 Networks Thunder ADC at the moment.

Normally, deployment of A10 Networks Thunder ADC takes around two to three days based on the customer requirement, and sometimes it is extended for one week.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC was purchased through AWS Marketplace.

I do not directly involve myself in the deployment due to my job role, but I manage and handle the team that is directly involved. When there is an issue, then I am also involved.

Normally, there are two people in each deployment, one being the main engineer who is handling the deployment, so we prioritize having two engineers per deployment as much as possible.

We do see a return on investment and cost reductions after the implementation of A10 Networks Thunder ADC, as I mentioned earlier regarding an incident related to one airline company.

I estimate that I can save around 20 to 30 percent of my budget with A10 Networks Thunder ADC, though it's not an exact figure.

We are working with some other vendors, not only A10 Networks.

Currently, we are working with tools such as F5 from other vendors.

I have experience with AWS, and I also have experience with both AWS and Azure, and sometimes GCP as well.

We utilize multi-cloud support with A10 Networks Thunder ADC.

We have customers utilizing A10 Networks Thunder ADC in the public cloud as well.

I didn't technically involve myself with analytics in A10 Networks Thunder ADC because I haven't been involved in that part in the past few years. According to my team, the analytics tools are quite prominent, so there are no issues there.

We have a distributorship with A10 Networks and are considered a partner.

I would rate this review 9 out of 10.

My main use case for A10 Networks Thunder ADC is web application load balancing. If I have multiple web servers hosting the same application, I perform load balancing. I do SSL offloading for HTTPS encryption, which can be CPU-intensive. I use it for high availability, global server load balancing, DDoS protection, API gateway, microservices, Kubernetes Ingress, telecom 5G networks, active-active data center design, multi-cloud traffic steering, and similar applications.

I use load balancing extensively with A10 Networks Thunder ADC. For example, with A10 Networks Thunder ADC load balancing, the requests are distributed. If a server fails, the health check detects the failure. There are different kinds of load balancing, including round-robin, least connections, and weighted load balancing. There is also layer four versus layer seven load balancing. In a real enterprise example, such as a banking application, the customers might go to A10 Networks Thunder ADC and then be directed to a login application, payment application, or API application. A10 Networks Thunder ADC responsibilities include SSL termination, session persistence, DDoS filtering, health monitoring, and traffic routing.

Mostly, I use A10 Networks Thunder ADC with load balancing and also in a data center. I need an active-active data center design and also use it for security for DDoS protection.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC offers many features. A few are advanced load balancing, which we already discussed. It does layer four and layer seven load balancing. It has extremely high performance. It can do SSL/TLS offloading. It has integrated security features including DDoS protection, web application firewall, DNS firewall, and single sign-on. It can do global server load balancing, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud support, strong automation and DevOps integration, telecom carrier-grade scalability, and multi-tenancy.

The advanced load balancing plus SSL offloading in A10 Networks Thunder ADC directly improves application uptime, speed, scalability, server efficiency, and user experience. I think intelligent load balancing and SSL/TLS offloading for high performance per appliance and built-in security are the best features.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC has impacted my organization positively in many ways. I have worked at many types of companies. Previously, I worked for telecom providers as an ISP. A10 Networks Thunder ADC provided positive impact by handling massive traffic volumes, carrier-grade scalability, DNS optimization, DDoS protection, and reduced latency. I have also worked for a financial institution, which needed high availability, secure transactions, and low downtime. A10 Networks Thunder ADC provided positive impact through SSL acceleration speed, application protection, fast failover, and secure customer sessions.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is quite solid, but there are some issues that I face, particularly with the user interface. A current issue is that the GUI is less polished than competitors. When compared against F5 BIG-IP or Citrix ADC, the GUI is not as good. The documentation and learning curve are areas that can be improved by A10 Networks. Compared with larger vendors including F5, Cisco, or Palo Alto, A10 has a smaller ecosystem. Although A10 Networks Thunder ADC supports cloud and Kubernetes, many enterprises now expect deeper cloud-native functionality. Improvement areas include Kubernetes Ingress maturity, service mesh integration, and auto-scaling intelligence.

I have worked with A10 Networks Thunder ADC for approximately five years.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is very stable in my experience.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is very scalable.

Customer support for A10 Networks Thunder ADC was good, but it can be improved, as it was not the best.

I can share many specific outcomes and metrics after implementing A10 Networks Thunder ADC. It improved uptime and availability. Before A10 Networks Thunder ADC, a single-server failure meant an outage, but now traffic is automatically redirected to healthy servers. There are also server cost savings because the organization now needs fewer back-end servers and has lower CPU utilization. It has faster application performance and reduced downtime costs.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is a great, economical product if you want a smaller ecosystem. I would advise starting with a clear business goal and deploying high availability from day one. Since it can do SSL offloading, I recommend prioritizing SSL offloading and designing health checks carefully. Automation is key, so automate early, keep the configuration simple initially, and plan the capacity properly. Monitor everything and train the operations team. Test failover regularly, use role separation, evaluate your cloud strategy early, focus on operational simplicity, and measure return on investment continuously. My rating for this product is three out of five.

My main use case for A10 Networks Thunder ADC is to ensure application delivery, security, and high availability.

One specific example of how I use A10 Networks Thunder ADC for application delivery and security in my environment is by using it for load balancing a public e-commerce website. A10 Networks Thunder ADC helps with load balancing on my public e-commerce site by ensuring this is critical for maintaining uptime and handling traffic spikes without impacting the customer experience.

I have another important use case for A10 Networks Thunder ADC, which is carrier-grade NAT or CGNAT. I use CGNAT with A10 Networks Thunder ADC for protection from DDoS attacks.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC offers several strong features that make it a very competitive solution. First, they provide advanced Layer 4 or Layer 7 load balancing. Another key feature is SSL offloading and encryption handling. A10 Networks Thunder ADC is also highly scalable and flexible.

Scalability for A10 Networks Thunder ADC shows up in my day-to-day operations during high-traffic events such as Black Friday. One feature I find really powerful and something underrated about A10 Networks Thunder ADC is A-Flex.

Beyond the standard ADC feature, what really stands out to me about A10 Networks Thunder ADC is how customizable, performant, and automated the platform is. A10 Networks Thunder ADC has a significant impact on my organization in several ways. First, it improves application availability and performance. From a security perspective, it helps protect applications against threats such as DDoS attacks. It also has a strong operational impact. In terms of cost, it can lower both CapEx and OpEx.

I chose a rating of eight or nine instead of a perfect ten because there are a few areas that could be improved for A10 Networks Thunder ADC. First, a stronger ecosystem and wider market adoption would definitely help. Second, enhanced integration with third-party tools would be beneficial. The improvements needed are not about fixing major issues, but more about enhancing usability, ecosystem, and integration.

I have been working in my current field for five years.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is stable.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC's scalability is impressive.

I am not certain about the customer support, but I believe Broadcom handles it.

Before A10 Networks Thunder ADC, we used F5.

I have not seen a return on investment with A10 Networks Thunder ADC, as that is not for me but for another department.

The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for A10 Networks Thunder ADC is a question for another department, not for me.

Before choosing A10 Networks Thunder ADC, I evaluated other options including F5, NetScaler, Cloudflare, Kemp, NGINX, and other solutions.

The most important advice for others looking into using A10 Networks Thunder ADC is to clearly understand your use case and requirements upfront. I would recommend that you clearly understand your use case and requirements before implementing A10 Networks Thunder ADC. I have given this solution a rating of eight.

I primarily use A10 Networks Thunder ADC for load balancing and application delivery across my production environments, sitting in front of my critical web and API services that help solve problems by distributing traffic efficiently and maintaining uptime during peak loads. A significant part of the use case is ensuring high availability and minimizing downtime during maintenance or unexpected spikes whenever there is more traffic or a network issue. One of the main cases is also a combination of application delivery and basic security handling, using A10 Networks Thunder ADC to manage traffic across multiple application servers while leveraging features such as DDoS protection and SSL offloading. Whenever major traffic occurs, I use this to run it efficiently in a hybrid environment where some workloads are on-premises and others are in the cloud.

I use A10 Networks Thunder ADC mainly in front of my e-commerce platform that I have built for a client, and during seasonal sales, I saw traffic spikes at around three to four times the normal load that I was receiving on that site. A10 Networks Thunder ADC distributes the traffic across multiple backend servers and handles SSL offloading, which keeps response times stable, and without it, my app servers would have become overwhelmed very quickly.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC fits quite seamlessly into my overall workflow, and once it is set up, it became more of a set-it-and-monitor-it, autopilot mode component rather than something I constantly have to tweak. Most of my interaction is around policy updates or scaling decisions rather than day-to-day firefighting and working hard, shifting me to working smartly rather than hard.

The standout features in A10 Networks Thunder ADC are definitely its load balancing capability and SSL offloading because these are very crucial and primary features that I seek from any service. The traffic distribution is quite reliable even under heavier loads, and SSL offloading has helped reduce the burden on my backend server, especially when I saw three to four times higher traffic than usual during sales. I also appreciate the flexibility in configuring policies, giving good control without being overly complicated. A10 Networks Thunder ADC handles high traffic volumes very efficiently, showing consistent response times even during the spikes I mentioned. SSL offloading is one of the key features that I was seeking, significantly improving my backend performance. Overall, all these features feel optimized for speed and stability because, in the end, I also want my client to have the best experience.

After enabling SSL offloading, the most noticeable change was reduced CPU utilization on my backend servers because that was taking much more load and cost at my backend and my working capital. Reduced CPU utilization on my backend servers was a game-changer, as a good portion of resources was going into handling encryption and decryption before I shifted that load to A10 Networks Thunder ADC. I saw roughly around a fifteen to thirty percent drop in CPU usage during peak hours, translating into better response times and more headroom for handling additional traffic and more clients, becoming very cost-efficient for me as a company.

The CPU usage and response times have definitely impacted my organization positively, with A10 Networks Thunder ADC handling SSL offloading and providing my backend systems with more headroom. From an end-user perspective, the improvements translate into faster and more consistent response times, and that reliability has been a clear positive for me, especially during high traffic times that I mentioned multiple times. I definitely received fewer complaints, and the differences are huge. After implementing SSL offloading on A10 Networks Thunder ADC, performance became more consistent, especially during peak traffic. I saw fewer complaints around slow response times, and overall, the experience felt smoother from the client side.

One area where A10 Networks Thunder ADC could improve is the user interface, which is functional but not the most intuitive, especially for new users, making it a bit under-utilized. Some workflows take a bit of time to get used to, and simplifying the UI would make onboarding much easier.

I want to add that around documentation, the core capabilities of A10 Networks Thunder ADC are strong, and having more structured, real-world configuration examples would make a big difference, especially for teams that are new to the platform, helping reduce the initial learning curve for them.

I have been using A10 Networks Thunder ADC for the last three years.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is sometimes stable in my experience, but I am not certain about this assessment. It is not really bad and not a major downtime issue. Most of the time, it just runs in the background without issues.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC can handle growth easily, and I have scaled up during higher traffic periods.

Before choosing A10 Networks Thunder ADC, I do not know if the organization evaluated other options, but I assume they were discussing Citrix ADC.

I would advise others looking into using A10 Networks Thunder ADC to integrate it nicely, as it is a powerful solution, and you will get the most value when your architecture, traffic flows, and policies are clearly defined upfront. Also, take time to understand its advanced features gradually rather than trying to use everything at once, getting into it slowly. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

According to my understanding, the licensing model and the application availability time in A10 Networks Thunder ADC provide a good solution for all operation-critical customers, and they might find the high availability feature very useful.

Application load balancing in A10 Networks Thunder ADC plays a crucial role in improving application reliability during peak periods.

I believe that A10 Networks Thunder ADC utilizes technology with one of the protocols in its load balancing solutions, and I think it's a great solution that I found in the market. I conducted research and clearly see their licensing model and the technical methodology to connect and maintain high availability, which I think are the major features highlighted in the solution.

DDoS protection is one kind of extra feature in A10 Networks Thunder ADC solution, but I see that in the inbuilt solution, the data classification part is pending there, creating a gap between the DDoS and the data classification parts. I think that is the main improvement that should be addressed in the next couple of years.

In the Sri Lankan market, we mainly expect a budget-friendly option for physical appliances from A10 Networks Thunder ADC, particularly in the 3GB to 6GB range, while they are currently releasing a hardware appliance for 10G bandwidth throughput. I think that should be improved much better.

Recently, government taxes have increased A10 Networks Thunder ADC prices according to their taxing policies. For the moment, I think we can go with a competitive price, even though sometimes we face a similar price to our competitive products. If that can be adjusted, that would be better.

In the vThunder series of A10 Networks Thunder ADC, they have a perpetual license model and a subscription model, but in the Thunder series, the physical appliance does not have a perpetual license model, mainly operating on the subscription model. I think adding that feature could expand the market. Specifically, I want to highlight that a low number of throughput can be released to at least the APAC region, which will be very useful. At the perimeter level, we don't have access to implement the virtual appliance model and must use a hardware box. Compared to the current release version, we cannot match their budget with a good price, so that is my primary expectation. If there is any chance to launch a box with 3 to 6 throughput, I think that would be better, as we could easily switch to our BFSI and enterprise customers, who have a big pain point in their firewall load balancing. However, the challenge remains that we cannot deploy a virtual appliance there and must go with a physical appliance, so making that adjustment would create a good opportunity to expand the market.

I can give A10 Networks Thunder ADC a rating of 10 out of 10. Their tech support is very responsible, and their response time is very low, providing superb support.

Positive

Before A10 Networks Thunder ADC, I handled the WAF solution. I joined as a product manager for the WAF solution, and I previously worked for the SI industry in Sri Lanka, where I highlighted that WAF is the main requirement for the Sri Lankan market infrastructure.

I didn't have a chance to capture those areas regarding A10 Networks Thunder ADC caching and compression features. The previously mentioned areas are covered from my requirement gathering and customer meetups.

As per my experience, the vThunder series of A10 Networks Thunder ADC is very easy to deploy, and the cost is also very reliable and justifiable. On the physical appliance side, they have added WAF and all, resulting in a higher cost while ensuring reliability. They guarantee 10-16 years online for that physical appliance, which is very beneficial for the Telco and BFSI side.

For the moment, I haven't had any kind of scenario with A10 Networks Thunder ADC multi-cloud support.

I didn't have a chance to explore A10 Networks Thunder ADC analytics tools.

I can give A10 Networks Thunder ADC an overall rating of nine out of ten as a product.

My use case for A10 Networks Thunder ADC is only for application delivery controller.

The functions or features in A10 Networks Thunder ADC that I have found most valuable are difficult to answer because the question is very generic. It is not like a single function, but mostly like a part of the product. For example, it is easy to use, easy to integrate, or the product helps save time. A10 Networks Thunder ADC load balancing helps me improve application reliability.

I am not satisfied with how A10 Networks Thunder ADC works in reducing latency for my application with the caching function. The primary problem with A10 Thunder devices is the documentation and the knowledge base. This causes us to spend much more time conducting research and testing, which is the worst case that we have experienced. Generally, the device is good, but the documentation it has is not satisfactory, particularly for complex environments and complex tasks.

There are functionalities of A10 Networks Thunder ADC that I am not satisfied with. When checking something in the A10 professional guide or documentation on their website, it only provides basic definitions. For example, it tells what a command means, but that is all. The information provided is very poor.

I have been working with A10 Networks Thunder ADC for about five to six years.

I rate the stability of A10 Networks Thunder ADC as five.

Regarding scalability for A10 Networks Thunder ADC, I rate the ability to scale as three because the scalability is acceptable. In one virtual chassis, I can have up to eight Thunder devices, if I am not mistaken. However, the problem is that if I have different models, I am not able to configure them in one virtual chassis. From the point of view of scalability, it is not very scalable. It depends on what the task is, and from my own experience, it is not very scalable.

I rate technical support from A10 as seven. The problem is that even the support team from A10 is not very familiar with their device. I currently have an open ticket that is about two months old, and I am still negotiating with them.

The initial setup for A10 Networks Thunder ADC depends on what I want to accomplish, meaning what tasks or business requirements I have. If I do everything, it is not very simple. It is a bit complicated. It would be more complicated if my environment or infrastructure is complex overall or if I have a data center environment, for example, with data center technology and topology. In this case, the initial setup would be much more complex than if I were to apply it in a traditional network.

We had some plans for switching to another product, but we have not done anything yet. We may want to try F5.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC SSL Insight and DDoS protection are not used because they are different services that are not related to ADC.

Regarding the caching and compression function in A10 Networks Thunder ADC, compression is not used because it does not have any relation to ADC. Regarding caching, I have configured some templates and that is all.

For the multi-cloud environment, I am unclear on what is meant by multi-cloud with A10, but we have a hardware base. This may refer to multi-tenant or multi-partitioned environments, not multi-cloud.

Regarding the analytics part of A10 Networks Thunder ADC, I am uncertain what is meant by analytics, such as collecting metrics or something else.

A10 itself does not provide useful information using its native dashboards. For analytics, metrics, and monitoring, I must configure everything myself or integrate A10 Control, which is not free of charge. I must collect monitoring information using SNMP protocol or APIs. The administrator, network engineer, or A10 engineer who is configuring and maintaining A10 must be fully aware of how it works to accomplish this. My overall review rating for A10 Networks Thunder ADC is six.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC was used to check the current status of the balancer as it was placed before two servers for mobile applications built to run mobile applications. It was used for checking the WAF and for payments, and it was potentially used for fraud detection in payments.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC offers SSL/TLS offloading and high performance for throughput as its best features. SSL offloading and high-performance throughput have helped boost performance, and with just two servers, it was critical to handle the load between the two servers and check for a flooding attack that occurred one day.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC has a good logging feature that can be downloaded and checked for further investigation. After using A10 Networks Thunder ADC, I noticed a user interface that provides detailed status of the load balancer and which servers are connected, as well as the opportunity to create specific algorithms for balancing.

Improvements can be applied to the user interface of A10 Networks Thunder ADC, as it is not user friendly.

I have been using A10 Networks Thunder ADC for about two years in the payments field.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is stable.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC's scalability is quite good, as it gives the opportunity to scale up to ten servers for load balancing based on experiments I conducted.

I did not use any other solution before choosing A10 Networks Thunder ADC.

We did not evaluate any other solutions before choosing A10 Networks Thunder ADC.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC's impact on my organization has been slightly positive as the cost was very high, but since we are in the banking field, we have significant funds to spend. However, there were not many further benefits from using other load balancers.

I do not have any knowledge regarding A10 Networks Thunder ADC's AI capabilities for governance and security, as I did not have the opportunity to check these features. I have not used A10 Networks Thunder ADC's AI capabilities much, especially regarding accuracy and reliability of output.

I advise others looking into using A10 Networks Thunder ADC to become an expert in using the user interface. My overall rating for this product is six out of ten.

We use the solution for ProTechVIP, the software, the client, the servers, and the firewalls. We mix them, protecting the connection and the servers from direct access.

We can control access based on the specific application. If other devices are attempting to directly access the servers, you can block them. Additionally, you can balance the load among servers to optimize performance. For example, utilizing caching can make the application run faster.

It's very simple to use.

The product is expensive. 

I have been using A10 Networks Thunder ADC as a partner for over two years.

The solution’s stability is very good.

The solution’s scalability is good. We also sell directly to the government, sometimes more than 20 boxes.

If you need more specific guys, it takes time, or you can get support from them. After sending many emails, Thunder calls directly to talk, and then we can talk.

Neutral

The initial setup is very simple. The issue is that it achieves high output across all its features, specifically the output ports. This affects the customer's solution because sometimes, the customer is even aware of the user's activity on certain servers. If you have all the necessary information, we can quickly deploy the solution within two to three days.

The size of the Thunder ADC depends on its configuration. For example, the cache converter typically includes more than two rack units, often requiring at least three rack units for adequate space.

I rate it a ten out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

ROI is very good because it optimizes the process.

I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. However, When you use KPS, I rate it five because it's very expensive.

A10 Networks' Thunder ADC is being sold by adding hardware (HxD) and configuring certain aspects like the Exponent. These modified versions are sold directly to customers. They are using HPANETX Thunder models, some of which originate from JTerrin. I believe these models come from Microsoft, which has a significant data analytics contract. Here in Brazil, UsersBox is being utilized, and there is an issue when I try to sell a new box from ATEM. My box is five times more expensive than the other one. I sent the box's serial number to GuidePhone A10 for verification, and it turns out that the box is from Microsoft Japan. Despite the conference being for Microsoft Japan, these boxes somehow ended up here in Brazil.

The solution requires less maintenance.

The A10 Networks Thunder ADC can be more expensive than alternatives offering similar performance. Another issue is its architecture: when using our software architecture, there are limitations when creating new instances, such as a new VS. Typically, with solutions like F5, you need to define and allocate resources upfront when creating a new instance. If you need more resources allocated to a Virtual Service, you must often delete and recreate it. In contrast, A10 Networks allows for more flexible resource allocation adjustments without needing to recreate the instance.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for load balancing purposes.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is an easy-to-use and flexible solution.

The solution should add automation features in the next release.

I have been using A10 Networks Thunder ADC for five to seven years.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is a stable solution.

Less than ten people are using the solution in our organization.

The feedback from the solution's technical support was satisfactory.

The solution’s initial setup was easy.

Our organization did an infrastructure refresh some years ago from Cisco to A10 Networks Thunder ADC. The migration was quite easy from Cisco to A10 Networks Thunder ADC.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC can be deployed on-premise or virtually.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is used for global load balancing.

The most valuable features in A10 Networks Thunder ADC are the ease of configuration, user-friendliness, and simplicity to sell to customers.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC could improve on the Application Delivery Controller. it's not a fully-fledged web application firewall solution. For example, application data and support need to improve.

I have been using A10 Networks Thunder ADC for approximately two years.

The stability of A10 Networks Thunder ADC is good.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is scalable.

We have approximately a team of six using A10 Networks Thunder ADC.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC has a very good support structure. In each region, they have a very well-experienced team to support when it comes to pre-sales. They have a very capable team.

The setup of A10 Networks Thunder ADC is very straightforward. If everything is in order, onboarding one application can be done in a few hours.

The price of A10 Networks Thunder ADC depends on capacity and the customer's requirement. They have several offerings. They have different price models and options to choose from. Additionally, you need to subscribe to support for the hardware appliances.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is a very natural solution in the industry. When compared to the other vendors, it's easier to use, more user-friendly, and more mature.

I rate A10 Networks Thunder ADC a nine out of ten.