F5 BIG-IP DNS Reviews

We are a solution provider and F5 DNS Delivery is one of the products that we implement for our customers. This product is normally deployed for high application availability. That means we use the local traffic manager module the most. The DNS module is used for global server load-balancing and fail-over across data centers.

The messaging between NGINX and F5 should be simplified. When I do presentations to customers, they sometimes are confused about this issue. It is not clear where NGINX gets into the network.

I would like to see deeper integration with VMware in the sense that F5 compliments VMware, in the context of application availability. VMware has the Site Recovery Manager that looks at the virtual machine side of things. If there's deep integration with VMware, where F5 is able to figure out that an application is impaired and it wants to failover, it should be able to tell VMware to trigger that process.

Better pricing for this product would make it more competitive on the market.

We have been using F5 DNS Delivery for three years.

This product is highly scalable, especially given the fact that you are not confined to one particular port speed. You can upgrade as your traffic grows using different transceivers.

We have customers in several countries. In Botswana, we have between 27 and 35 clients. In Zimbabwe, we have close to 60, and in Zambia, there are fewer than 15.

F5 technical support is quite good and they follow up if there are any issues. F5 support is available even before the deployment, right from the pre-sales stage to the deployment itself, as well as after-sales support.

I have also worked with Kemp load balancers and they don't even come close to F5.

The initial setup is straightforward. Once I have all of the information required in order to deploy, it takes one day to complete.

For my customers, I am deploying the current version, which is 16. For others, we haven't upgraded them. I'm simply patching the areas necessarily as identified by F5. 

We are the system integrator and handle the deployment for our customers.

This product is quite pricey but if you compare the feature set and its compatibility with similar products on the market, you would understand why it's that price. Licensing is either perpetual or subscription-based, depending on the modules that you want.

We're doing a campaign now to question our customers about business resilience using the F5 product. Most customers have invested in business continuity but sometimes they find that what they have done doesn't conform to their own business continuity plans. We go into this type of environment and introduce F5 to ensure that their continuity plans are on point.

In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it. That said, no product is perfect.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

One of our primary use cases for F5 BIG-IP DNS is local traffic management. We also use the LTM module, application services, load balancer, and advanced firewall. F5 BIG-IP DNS is a secure web gateway. 

It would be great to see a F5 BIG-IP DNS cloud version. What we within the Australian government are looking at doing is utilizing a secured DNS service much the same as the English GCHQ version of their protected DNS service. That's a fully-managed external platform and it's used by multiple government agencies, so we get a better holistic view of all malicious DNS traffic that is occurring. 

We have been using F5 BIG-IP DNS for about six years, although we are looking at migrating off to a central government-provided DNS upstream service. We are doing this because we have adopted a cloud-only policy. 

F5 BIG-IP DNS has been rock solid in terms of stability for years. 

We have not had to scale it much as our internal infrastructure was small. We have 1,000 individuals using F5 BIG-IP DNS. 

The tech support is always great. 

Positive

It took us about six months to get it all bolted down and working as we expected it to. It was relatively simple for us to launch. 

We received a bit of external support from F5 – from one of the channel partners here in Western Australia, but it was relatively simple to turn on in-house. 

Moreover, once we set it up, the ongoing maintenance turned out to be relatively small.

One a scale of one to five, with one being expensive and five being adequately priced, I would give this solution a four. However, the solution we are migrating to is free. 

We did not evaluate other options because when we picked up the BIG-IP package, we wanted to implement a number of things, and DNS is a bonus blade that we picked up. Therefore, we didn't do a full evaluation because what we were buying for was more like ASM module and the load balancing features out of that BIG-IP box. We just picked up DNS as a subsequent bonus.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being the worst and ten being the best, I would give F5 BIG-IP DNS an eight as a solution overall. 

F5 BIG-IP DNS is used for global load balancing.

F5 provides us with a mechanism to accomplish complex product balancing.

Hand management and working with rules are two areas that need to be improved.

It would be beneficial to have information and categorize it for licensing, features, and what is included in which license. I would like to see more marketing documentation, rather than technical documentation.

I have been working with F5 BIG-IP DNS for five years.

F5 BIG-IP DNS is more stable than Loadbalancer and Citrix.

F5 BIG-IP DNS is easy to scale. I don't have any issues with the scalability of F5 BIG-IP DNS.

If I am not mistaken, I don't have any support cases.

I have experience with Citrix, Kemp, Barracuda, Cisco, Loadbalancer.org, and NGINX.

I  use LTM, and my colleagues have set up an access manager, DNS, and other security features. LTM is used for local load balancing.

In most cases, I work with ADC and my colleagues work with the security, we divide the work.

The initial setup varies depending on the scenario. Generally, it requires some knowledge.

In some cases, it is expensive. F5 BIG-IP DNS doesn't provide the best prices for new or small customers.

We recommend it for customers who have complex product balancing requirements. For example, if a customer needs to parse network packets and needs to change them. 

We are partners with both F5 BIG-IP and Loadbalancer.org.

I would rate F5 BIG-IP DNS an eight out of ten.

We are using the latest version of FS BIG-IP. We use the solution for classic reverse proxy authentication. We have approximately 800 internal staff and 2,000 external customers using the solution.

F5 BIG-IP DNS is useful, depending on how you use it. Once you write to it, you can do anything you want from it, making it a very powerful solution.

The solution is complicated to use. It is difficult to write to. F5 BIG-IP DNS is powerful but challenging to use.

I would like to see the login facilities improved, as well as more troubleshooting.

I have been working with F5 BIG-IP DNS for two and a half years.

The solution is stable.

I have not scaled F5 BIG-IP, it is only a single-box solution.

Prior to using F5 BIG-IP, we used PMG. We switched because PMG was at end of life.

The initial set up of F5 BIG-IP DNS is complex. It took approximately six months to deploy.

We implemented the solution through consultants. We are still using the consultants, so we will need to add someone to our team to handle future deployment and maintenance.

Anyone deciding to implement F5 BIG-IP DNS should be aware that it is a complex and powerful product.

I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

Our primary use case is DNS security.

The most valuable features are DNS security and the speed of operations.

It is easy to administer.

Pricing could be reduced.

Scalability is a concern, it could be improved.

I have been working with F5 DNS Delivery for approximately two and a half years.

We are working with version 13.

It's a very stable device.

It is not highly scalable because it's an appliance.

Scalability is a concern, and it needs improvement.

Most of the people in our company are using this solution.

Technical support is good. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is easy to set up.

We have a group of 15 administrators to maintain this solution.

Cost is a factor. It is really costly.

Price is an area that can be improved.

It's a good solution, I would recommend using this solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.