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F5 BIG-IQ vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IQ
Ranking in Process Automation
26th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
vCenter Orchestrator
Ranking in Process Automation
22nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IQ is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Orchestrator is 0.9%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
vCenter Orchestrator0.9%
F5 BIG-IQ1.0%
Other98.1%
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Bikale Kassu - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager for Implementation and Administration at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Has faced challenges with visibility and technical support but allows centralized management of multiple sites
The configuration part is complex for F5 BIG-IQ. The simplicity and visibility part needs improvement. The dashboard, especially the analytics part, needs to be more simple and presentable. For the security part, it is difficult to present to our management, so we have to capture it and prepare manual reporting options rather than getting them directly from the system. The automation part in F5 BIG-IQ is limited; we are still using it only for load balancing for some services. We haven't integrated it with our Accesso or implemented any automation options. The setup process for F5 BIG-IQ would rate a five out of ten.
NB
Hybrid Cloud Engineer at RealPage
Boosts operational efficiency with flexible workflows and reliable cluster management
We currently use vCenter Orchestrator's pre-built workflow templates for our IT processes. The templates are flexible, allowing us to create and convert processes simply and manage patches. Regarding integration capabilities, we do not integrate any third-party tools. We exclusively use VMware products. The integration within the VMware infrastructure is limited to Single Sign-On (SSO). I have not created any workflows in vCenter Orchestrator as workflows are only used for change management. I have not encountered any drag and drop interface. The version control and logging features of vCenter Orchestrator have significantly improved the reliability of our automated processes, particularly during upgrades or patching to the cluster-wise. Previously, it would be done on a one-to-one cluster or one-to-one host basis, but now we only need to monitor it for upgrading or patching the entire cluster. I cannot comment on the pricing and licensing of vCenter Orchestrator as these aspects are managed by our onsite counterpart. Overall, I rate vCenter Orchestrator 8 out of 10. The rating reflects occasional delays in support response times and portal stability issues.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Their technical support is perfect, they were so supportive, the guys are great and they would do anything for you."
"F5 BIG-IQ is a central management system for the BIG-IP."
"The most valuable features are load balancing and WAF."
"The customer service is great."
"The F5 solution scales very easily, and if we have more boxes then we can just join them to the cluster."
"F5 is a leader in this space and this is a solution that I recommend."
"There is a lot less risk involved in having applications available on the Internet."
"The backup, monitoring and logging are the best features."
"The storage motion is a good feature. It is a very good tool."
"The DRS feature from VMware is very valuable to us because it balances workloads."
"vCenter Orchestrator's best features are the workflows, integration with third-party applications, and the workflow library."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The positive impact I have seen from using vCenter Orchestrator includes benefits such as cluster and versioning, frequent updates, and updates on the Dell side."
"User-friendly and easy to deploy."
"I definitely recommend this solution."
"The technical support services are excellent."
 

Cons

"I would like the product to be cheaper."
"F5 BIG-IQ is a complex solution, and it cannot manage everything related to BIG-IPs."
"From a hands-on experience perspective, more resources should be available on the Internet, like labs and lab preparations."
"A bug caused me to lose all the configuration."
"For us, right now, F5 is too expensive."
"I had trouble with high availability deployment in my environment."
"If they had a GUI interface for creating security rules then it would make it easier."
"They could use YAML or JSON if they wanted to make it a little bit easier for us."
"I think that vSAN can be improved."
"I would like to see, from within the Web Console, being able to define the project and custom templates per user; almost like how CloudSpec has approached the solution."
"The custom workflows are very difficult and confusing."
"There are no good manuals or guidelines on integrations. Hence, you need to be asking someone."
"vCenter Orchestrator's debugging capacity could be improved."
"The only problem with the product is that it is very expensive, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The solution has a limited count of parallel executions, which can be a bottleneck for larger environments."
"Its technical support team takes a long time to escalate the issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would like the product to be cheaper."
"There is only one licensing fee for F5 BIG-IQ and everything is included in the price."
"Users have to pay an annual subscription fee for the solution's iSeries."
"F5 BIG-IQ is a cheap solution."
"The price is reasonable, and one of the reasons that this product was selected."
"We pay a yearly fee, based on our entries."
"My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."
"The concept of hyper-convergence is smart. I don't know if it can be applied with less cost to be more affordable for small or medium-sized companies. The cost is a very important factor for it. We are currently depending on SAN storage. However, the hyper-converged solutions are depending on the storage within the hosts, such as vSAN in the VMware. It is a smart solution."
"vCenter Orchestrator is an expensive solution."
"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. We pay for the license and then we pay the support every year."
"My organization didn't have to pay extra for vCenter Orchestrator. It was already included, so it's basically free. Even VMware regular support is included."
"This solution is expensive and the licensing is more attractive for Haveri."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
16%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IQ?
From the pricing perspective, F5 BIG-IQ rates an eight out of ten as it's reasonably priced.
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IQ?
The configuration part is complex for F5 BIG-IQ. The simplicity and visibility part needs improvement. The dashboard, especially the analytics part, needs to be more simple and presentable. For the...
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IQ?
Currently for WAF, we are moving to another device, F5. We are not using Imperva. F5 BIG-IQ is the Web Application Firewall we're currently using, but regarding the Imperva products, now we are flo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Orchestrator?
We're running a low-profile budget. This is not our main focus on investment technology, so we're trying to reduce costs due to the change from perpetual to subscription licenses.
What needs improvement with vCenter Orchestrator?
For our environment, I do not see any areas of vCenter Orchestrator that could be improved or enhanced. We are currently satisfied with the orchestrator. If any improvements are needed, I will prov...
What is your primary use case for vCenter Orchestrator?
My usual use cases for vCenter Orchestrator involve managing all the ESXi hosts from the US, as we have almost 1200 to 1500 ESXi hosts.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Beiersdorf Shared Services
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IQ vs. vCenter Orchestrator and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
918,957 professionals have used our research since 2012.