Avi Networks Software Load Balancer vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Avi Networks Software Load Balancer and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Avi Networks Software Load Balancer vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The WAF - the web application firewall itself - is great.""The interface and software features are the most valuable aspects of this solution.""The solution is stable.""The most valuable feature of the solution for my organization is its UI since it allows us to see the clusters while providing a very specific and good overall understanding.""Its visibility and login mechanism are the best parts. In addition to the great visibility it has a great dashboard and an easy to configure graphic user interface, a beautiful GUI.""The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management.""The friendly user interface is valuable.""What's most valuable in Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is its deployment capability, the ability to deploy in a dispersed service, with the service engines that can disperse and have a single control plane that can control the load balancing services across any available platform, wherever needed. The analytics of Avi Networks Software Load Balancer and flexibility of deployment are its most valuable features and the reasons why many people buy it."

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"LTM's most valuable features include application security, data collection, and parameter-level rules.""Users can see a remarkable performance difference from a qualitative sense.""There is a lot of documentation available.""The setup is pretty easy.""it has TCP LAN and WAN optimization features. It has has caching.""The capability is at a seven or eight out of ten.""It is the perfect solution when you have high workloads in your IT environment.""We're able to do load balancing and global load balancing. When you marry those two products together, you can do a lot more. We're able to deliver our applications more securely and faster. It has improved our deliverability where we have more service across the shared data centers. We can intelligently reach all of those client connections across all of the servers and do it fairly quickly. It has helped improve our application delivery and performance."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Pros →

Cons
"The network analytics and monitoring features are not effective.""IDS and IPS sites need to be more progressive.""I did not go with it because their APM module is a different product altogether. It's a common thing that companies do. They sell something and then they add on top of it as a different product. It is a type of marketing strategy. But when it comes to the overall management, it takes a lot of time to really look into it.""The initial setup is a bit complex.""Avi Networks Software Load Balancer needs to improve its documentation.""In terms of improvement, the pricing and documentation need improvement. We have had problems getting the documents.""One struggle with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is its integration with other VMware products. Integration could be improved in the solution so that you have a more unified control plane with it and other data center security and networking products that VMware sells. There has been a bit of a lag on the roadmap of new features that have come out there recently, but better interoperability with the hyperscale environments such as the AWS, Azure, GCPs of the world, and simpler deployment and interoperability with those existing tools, are areas that are receiving attention and could use additional attention today. These are the areas for improvement in Avi Networks Software Load Balancer.""It doesn't match the development structure or user community of our existing product. It pales in comparison to that."

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"The solution is scalable.""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.""Cloud native integration should be provided.""In terms of native integrations, there is a lot of instability. Also, integration is not robust with F5.""Its scalability and deployment should be better. It should be more scalable, and it should be easier to deploy.""The management interface is unclear, complex, and not concise. I would like a better user interface.""There are some aspects of F5 BIG-IP that could be improved, the main one being virtual machine support. We have seen that even with the virtual editions, there are some things that we would like to do that are currently not possible with virtual machines.""We would like to see load balancing between the cloud and the on-premise, a straightforward deployment feature."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "With Avi Networks, you can buy a 10-Gig license and, if your primary data center goes down, in the flick of a switch you can move that license to your backup data center and it will generate the traffic... there are a lot of cost-effective measures."
  • "The licensing costs for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer are really variable. The product can be sold from a bandwidth utilization perspective. It can be sold from a per CPU perspective, depending on if you're looking at on-premises or hyperscale environments. Licensing costs vary quite a bit if you're familiar with the AWS Calculator, where you can see that it can widely vary per licensing model. On a scale of one to five, with one being not very good value for the money and five being great, I would rate the pricing for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer a five because its pricing is extremely competitive. Not all features are included with the license, for example, there's single licensing."
  • "I rate the solution price a four to five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high, since it is an affordable tool."
  • "The tool is expensive."
  • More Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Though functionality is high, its cost can be considered slightly higher than its competitors​."
  • "The licensing pricing seems relatively easy enough to get your head around. I would advise anyone to ensure that you have a conversation with an F5 consultant before purchasing, as you would with most products."
  • "Take a look at the modules that you are going to use. Look into the best bundles for them."
  • "The only area that has room for improvement would be pricing, so its competitors do not have a say."
  • "If your IT budget is good, go for it."
  • "This product is costly from a licensing perspective considering its competitors."
  • "Check other vendors like Cisco, Citrix or A10 Networks. There are plenty in the market with which you can achieve same thing."
  • "Great product for the money. But they can get really expensive, so get what meets your needs."
  • More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of the solution for my organization is its UI since it allows us to see the clusters while providing a very specific and good overall understanding.
    Top Answer:I rate the solution price a four to five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high, since it is an affordable tool. There are no additional costs to be paid apart from the standard… more »
    Top Answer:Avi Networks Software Load Balancer needs to improve its documentation. If there is no documentation in Avi Networks Software Load Balancer, we need to search for a new trainer, for which we spend… more »
    Top Answer:The support from F5 BIG-IP LTM is good.
    Top Answer:There are a few licensing options available for F5 BIG-IP LTM. You can have a perpetual license which is a lifetime license. You then only need to renew the support, if you choose to open a ticket… more »
    Top Answer:The pricing must be more flexible. We get billed for firewalls based on the usage. It will be helpful if the solution provides such flexibility.
    Ranking
    Views
    3,127
    Comparisons
    2,028
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    730
    Rating
    8.8
    Views
    10,717
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    8,912
    Reviews
    30
    Average Words per Review
    483
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Avi Software Load Balancer
    F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
    Learn More
    Overview

    Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is an application delivery controller (ADC) platform. The solution provides scalable application delivery across any infrastructure and allows your organization to deliver multi-cloud application services, such as load balancing, autoscaling, application security, container networking, and web application firewall. It is designed with 100% software load balancing to ensure a fast and secure application experience. Additionally, Avi Networks Software Load Balancer offers elasticity and delivers intelligence across any environment.

    The Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is unique because

    • It can scale from 0 to 1 million SSL transactions per second in minutes.
    • It can achieve 90% faster provisioning and 50% lower TCO than a traditional appliance-based approach.

    Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Product Highlights

    • Troubleshoots application issues in less than a minute.
    • Alerts you of potential risks with SSL certificates and TLS versions used.
    • End-to-end timing for each transaction to help solve end-user experience issues.

    Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Features

    Avi Networks Software Load Balancer has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Automated application delivery
    • Seamless integration with the CI/CD
    • Built-in analytics
    • End-to-end visibility
    • Actionable insights
    • Security
    • “Network DVR”-like capability to record and replay specific transactions
    • Google-like search filters transactions based on device, location, errors, etc.

    Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Avi Networks Software Load Balancer. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Multi-cloud application services: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer provides consistent, enterprise-grade application services, including load balancing, WAF, and container networking across heterogeneous environments. The multi-cloud application services can be deployed on bare metal, VMs, or containers in any data center or public cloud environments.
    • Faster application provisioning: With this solution, you gain automation with 100% REST APIs and self-service like public cloud.
    • Better business decisions: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer uses analytics to deliver application insights and help you drive more intelligent decisions.
    • Containerized applications: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is a proven solution to deploy container-based workloads in production environments using Kubernetes/OpenShift/Tanzu clusters. It includes multi-cluster, multi-site support for containerized applications.
    • Lower TCO: The solution is 100% software, and does not require any proprietary hardware. In addition, because it offers on-demand autoscaling, there is no over-provisioning. Lastly, point-and-click application troubleshooting means there is no need for a black box.
    • Software-defined architecture: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is designed with a software-defined architecture with a centralized control plane (Avi Controller) and distributed data plane (Avi Service Engine). Because of this, elastic autoscaling is made easy.
    • Better end-user visibility: The solution gives you granular visibility into end-user experiences and server response in real time. It also empowers application owners with end-user stats to optimize and improve apps.
    • Application health score: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer summarizes analytics information into a helpful health score that provides a quick snapshot of the overall applications. The health score it provides is determined by server response time, resource usage, anomalous traffic, and security posture.

    F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.

    BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.

    Sample Customers
    Palo Alto Networks, DGDean, Swisslos
    Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Government9%
    Healthcare Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider20%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Media Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Government9%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise68%
    Buyer's Guide
    Avi Networks Software Load Balancer vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Avi Networks Software Load Balancer vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is ranked 9th in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 8 reviews while F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is ranked 1st in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 116 reviews. Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is rated 8.2, while F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Avi Networks Software Load Balancer writes "Easy to set up and has good integration into the host environment but needs better third party integration". On the other hand, the top reviewer of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) writes "Helps deliver applications to users in a reliable, secure, and optimized way". Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is most compared with Citrix NetScaler, HAProxy, NGINX Plus, A10 Networks Thunder ADC and Fortinet FortiADC, whereas F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is most compared with Citrix NetScaler, Fortinet FortiADC, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, NGINX Plus and Radware Alteon. See our Avi Networks Software Load Balancer vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report.

    See our list of best Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) vendors.

    We monitor all Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.