F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

I basically work for the solutioning only, so I've been migrating the F5 from the existing chassis to the new chassis for the last three years. Before that, I was a part of operations so I was working to support any incidents on F5. 

We have multiple solutions we can deploy through the F5.

The basic load balancing is acting as a round-robin. Other features we can use are based on the application team's requirements. F5 is not only basically giving solutions based on the network background, but it's also compatible based on the application level. Therefore, whenever the application team has a specific requirement, we can tweak it and we can provide the solution over the LTM.

For load balancing, for related solutioning, it is user-friendly. We have a good knowledge base over the F5 knowledge base. 

The stability is good.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support and documentation are excellent. 

For right now, I don't have anything I would suggest in terms of improvements.

I worked mainly on the CLI. Working on the CLI on the operations level or on the configuration level is sometimes a bit complex to understand. You have to have a good background in Linux so that you can perform the necessary solutioning or operations through the CLI. Whenever we want to investigate something we need to use the CLI, however, the CLI level troubleshooting and the solutioning, it is a little bit complicated. We have a limitation when it comes to the GUI. That said, I have found that we can do much better analysis with troubleshooting over the CLI.

Scaling up is complex. 

It's expensive. 

We need to have good security features available. It's something I still need to explore more, however.

I started using the solution six years ago.

It is quite stable. I never faced any issues. I would rate it ten out of ten for the LTM. It's a very stable product.

For scaling, there has to be a lot of planning when we need to scale up F5. It is a bit complex.

We cannot easily scale up the LTM. We cannot put an additional box into the production without any downtime with the user experience. So adding the box or scaling up has to be done with proper planning.

We have an extensive network of users across Office 365, SharePoint, custom applications, Skype for Business, et cetera.

Some customers who have been using the solution for the last six years are wanting to migrate or wanting to upgrade their chassis to the newer version. It is typically if they have a station-hungry application to deploy, like Teams, where this is quite a useful product. With F5, the transition is quite smooth.

I don't do any operation-related stuff. I don't deal with them too much.

Neutral

We also use many Cisco products.

I directly got the opportunity to work on the F5. I didn't work with any other vendor.

I worked on projects that were both difficult and simple. 

I remember I was working closely with the application team where they wanted to migrate their platform with zero downtime. They wanted to migrate the user data from one SharePoint to another SharePoint without any downtime. We used a specific i-rule. That i-rule checks the URLs and then it checks the decision as to whether to redirect the traffic to the specific node, which is the existing node, or in the new data center.

This was a kind of complex project. We had to troubleshoot when the users were getting the "page cannot be displayed" message. It was pointed out that it was an F5-related issue, however, later, when we check the per page of the node, which is behind EVIP, we tried to check the meeting URL on each node and we found that a specific node was giving the page cannot be displayed or 404 error. We learned we had to be careful about the migration of the application using the URL with zero downtime.

The main complexity was felt by the application team requirement. They wanted it in such a way that the user should not face any issues. The SharePoint migration should be from the existing infra to the new infra and should be transferred to the user. Due to that complexity, we have to work on the i-rule mainly, which was defining i-rules or providing solutions based on the URL part and it was a bit complex to do everything successfully. 

That said, on a normal application, a standard application, we have a good i-rule available over the F5, which we can use. It is only complex for custom applications.

For the standard application, it was very quick to deploy. We can deploy it in a day. If it is a complex i-rule with multiple URLs to be analyzed, or which checks the background, then it has to be tested well before being put in production. It takes longer. It takes time, based on the scope of the project and where you need to deploy.

How much help you need with maintenance depends on the scope of this project. If there is 24/7 support required in the operation, so based on the, let's say, specific DC, if we have one cluster for a specific application and additional, or two pairs of clusters or three pairs of clusters, I would say you would need three full-timers required in a day for operation-related topics. 

For solutioning, it typically depends on the scope of work, however, I would say a single full-timer can manage the solutioning. 

For complex issues we generally take a consultation from the F5, however, for the standard or medium standard application, we do it on our own. For the SharePoint migration using the complex i-rule, we took a consultation from F5.

We have seen an ROI. I would rate it five out of five in terms of the returns we've seen.

If you have LTM specifically, you can deploy multiple applications using one cluster and it will definitely be beneficial.

I'm not aware of the licensing costs. My understanding is that it is expensive. I'd rate it a four out of five in terms of the rather expensive cost.

We do pay for extra support.

I'm still one step behind the pre-sales in my current organization. I don't deal with any evaluations of other solutions. 

I'm a customer and end-user.

Currently, it's on-premises, however, we are targeting the cloud.

Sometimes we have to definitely look for external support, which is very good. They provide good support and good documentation. Once you have their help, with a good document, you can get some idea of what to do and how you can further customize the solution for other needs. For the very complex options, it's a good idea to have F5 support included at the beginning just to not waste time.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

In the last two years, the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager implementations for a client had pointers, primarily ones pointing inwards to the onsite cloud-type systems, but they also did have pointers to some cloud-service-based instances as well. So it was actually doing a bit of hybrid. 

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager has improved the load balancing systems of organizations I've worked for in the past. 

The F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager features I find the most valuable are the load balancing, the rest of the cell offload capabilities, and some of their security future capabilities.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is sometimes a bit cumbersome to deal with some builds, although that's gotten significantly better over the years. 

There is also room for improvement in the integration between security set features that were available on their security tools to work more seamlessly with some of their load balancing functionality. It works well, but I would personally think they could improve it. 

Simplifying the user interface would be nice to see as well. 

I started using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager probably about a decade ago. I have been using it on and off ever since. The last experience I had working with them was more from a planning perspective. Previously, I had not only done planning, architecture, and design, but the actual implementation.

I've been very impressed. Once you get it working, it's been very stable.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is scalable. That's one of the reasons I always went for it. Some of the clients I have worked with have been Fortune 100 companies with thousands and thousands of servers they needed front-ended.

Some of these sites had multiple thousands of web instances that needed to be load balanced. We were also doing both local and global load balancing. We'd use a global load balancer that would point to local load balancing that would port it out within a specific data center.

These clients had millions of end users. I believe that nearly all of those organizations ended up increasing their load balancing platform environment.

The tech support we got from F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager directly was pretty good.

Before using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager, I evaluated Citrix, Cisco, and several others. No other solution ever came up to quite the specs that we were looking for in terms of flexibility, capabilities, integrations, and ease of implementation. The big battle was whether or not to go with Cisco. The product is good and it integrates well with router platforms. However, with Cisco, you lose a slot in your chassis and it's kind of expensive to lose and the solution is not as good. It is not as flexible. Of course, Cisco lost the market in the end. 

The initial F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager setup is fairly complex. Granted, I wasn't working with discrete products. I haven't worked with any of the F5 discrete units. It's all been modular chassis-based for me. That gave me a lot more flexibility because I could put multiple instances; it's a much better bang for your buck and a lot more flexibility for large architectural implementation, which is really all I've ever done with it.

The instances I've built in the past had 25 to 30 segments, each having hundreds of servers. I have not done anything small-scale. One of our migration changes alone took 45 nights. 

The deployments were primarily done in-house. I would basically order and buy it. I would come up with the architectural designs for the network, work with some of the web server folks and some of the server people, and we would come up with a list of what was needed, which was usually thousands of things. Then, I would just develop an architectural model that would use the products.

In each instance that we deployed F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager from scratch, it was a return on investment that was positive in the eyes of the clients we were working with.

The biggest advice I would give about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is: to make sure you are aware of what your options are and what your own environment is. If you are a cloud-based environment, there is not much value in the local, load balancing. You would need to go with a cloud-based type load balancing capability, whether it is based on a fixed solution, like an F5, Avi, Citrix, or one of the cloud-based platforms. But, if you are still in an in-shop environment, there is much value to deploying it locally.

Overall, in terms of performance, on a scale of one to 10, with one being the worst and ten being the best, I would give F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager an eight. 

For everything, F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is used. We used it for our exchange server before migrating to Teams, and then for Skype. It currently operates several large broadcasting and streaming services.

Our jump server is quite large. To keep the high number of connections, we had to deploy it behind the F5. That saved us a lot of time and achieved our goal of having a stable jump server. When you put it behind an F5, you divide the connections between a couple of nodes, which was something we didn't have before.

We are using almost all of the features. What we like best about this solution is its stability. It is extremely stable.

So far, everything appears to be fine. I wouldn't be the best person to comment on something like APIs because I haven't really dug into a lot of APIs. However, I believe F5 falls a little short when it comes to APIs. But I'm not certain.

I have been running F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for nine years.

We haven't done an upgrade in three years.

It is being used internally. We have a large number of internal services.  We kept a few services, say two or three services that are being published, but it's primarily intended for our internal services.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is very stable.

We are a broadcast company. We have streaming services running behind this box. This streaming service has been released, with 19 to 20 streams. We haven't received any complaints about these streams since the streaming service was deployed behind F5. Despite the fact that these streams consume a lot of bandwidth and have millions of sessions. We haven't received many complaints about them.

It reaches a point where scaling is no longer possible. Assume you have two boxes, and you want to expand. You can divide it into what is known as vices or virtual systems, but then you're stuck. This is where, NGINX comes in, in a better way, where you can simply scale up by adding more VMs or appliances without running into problems because you have an NGINX controller that controls everything.

The users are mostly administrators and network engineers like myself. The number of end users is somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000.

They were extremely helpful in both SLA and non-SLA cases. An SLA case is one in which assistance is required, and the assistance must provide you with a solution.

Technical support was also helpful in non-SLA cases where I requested assistance, as well as in sharing guides and documents.

I would rate the technical support a four and a half out of five.

Positive

We are using a combination of F5 and NGINX.

I am still relatively new to NGINX. We recently implemented it in our environment.

We are interested in NGINX. We would like to explore the NGINX platform. It has multiple platforms such as security, APIs, and application gateways.

We are looking into it, as well as the LTM module of it.

We are also interested in learning more about Kemp LoadMaster.

Nothing goes as smoothly as you might expect, but it wasn't all that difficult. We had a few issues at first, but it's been running very smoothly since then.

I wasn't present when F5 was installed. It has been nine years. However, I have completed a few deployments in one of the branch offices, and to be honest, it wasn't all that complicated.

Because it was a new deployment, it didn't require any strategy, migration plan, or anything else.

We do not use third-party vendors. Everything is completed in-house.

This solution is managed by two network engineers, myself, and a colleague.

I would rate the ROI a three out of five.

I would rate the pricing a three out of five.

There are no additional fees to the standard licensing fee; everything is paid once.

I was comparing products like Apache Web Server, F5 LTM, Fortinet FortiADC, Kemp LoadMaster, and NGINX Plus.

It depends on the use case. However, if you are not interested in the application side, F5 would be useful. If you just want a load balancer that balances multiple servers, that's all you need. Not basic, but basic to intermediate material. F5 takes first place with no one even close to matching it. However, if you want to go deeper and more advanced, you should look into NGINX or any other vendor that has more options or more features.

As a network engineer, I am totally happy with the product.

I would rate F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) a nine out of ten.

All the cyber security vendors and their products need improvement, including F5 and this product. No one is 100% secured, because attacks are more sophisticated now, and the hackers have become more advanced.

Recently, I've seen one of the attacks on this particular network, where they managed to bypass its multi-factor authentication. They were able to bypass that level of security, and they managed to get into the network.

Every cyber security vendor needs to be proactive. No one is perfect, so even the rank one cyber security vendors should also keep their eyes open all the time.

It would also be better if F5 provided free product training for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), so end customers could have more awareness and understanding of the product, so they'll know how to use it.

Our level of requirements, usage, and scalability are being met by this product. If we needed additional features, or if we needed additional licenses, all we need to do is just buy the additional features or licenses, so we currently don't have any additional features we'd like to be included in the next version of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM).

My experience with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a total of four years now. We have customers, e.g. from the government, who prefer this solution. We also propose it to them because they have a bigger environment, compared to the environment size of private companies. We have customers from the government, e.g. from the Department of Communication.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is scalable and secure, so we propose this solution to customers with bigger environments, e.g. those in the government.

I'm rating F5 technical support a nine out of ten.

We used Fortinet, but what we were getting from F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) was always more than what we got from Fortinet, even when using FortiWeb and Forti WAF cloud as a service, and even when considering the functionality of each product.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is more complex to implement. Implementation of this product would be much easier if you have the right service, e.g. consultation services included, support from the distributor or directly from the vendor itself, or a certified partner. Having consultation and support will help make it much easier for the end customer during implementation, but the implementation process for this product is more complex than Fortinet.

The cost is high for this product, so small customers, e.g. those in a private bank, won't be able to afford F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), and they also don't really need the kind of support and functionality that this product gives.

For customers who are in the government, we propose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) despite its cost being high, because they'll really need it. They host their applications in the cloud, and in private data centers, e.g. private cloud services, so they'll need the kind of protection that this product provides.

It depends on customer. Whenever we see that customers can't afford, or the environment is smaller, we propose Fortinet, or some other solution that's cheaper than Fortinet. We don't propose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) to them.

I was able to evaluate Fortinet.

We have a partnership with Fortinet, as a reseller of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other F5 products. We are also a reseller of Cisco and Forcepoint products, though we just started with Forcepoint, so we haven't been doing much with their products currently.

My advice to users of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), including people who are thinking of implementing this product, is that they need to have product awareness. What we are seeing in our government customers is that they don't have awareness, in particular, they don't know what they're using, which is why they're having issues. They need to understand the product first, and they need to go and get the training first, but they are hesitant to pay for the training.

Unlike Fortinet who provides free training, F5 doesn't. Ever since the pandemic, Fortinet has provided free training, but certification is not free. If F5 can provide free training for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), that would be better.

My rating for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is eight out of ten.

It is for internal load balancing of servers.

It provides load balancing. So, it potentially brings some performance improvement and high availability. If one server goes down, there is a seamless transition to the other one. 

The load balancing function, the monitors that you can create, and iRules programmability are most valuable.

Its GUI could be a bit better. Other than that, it's already pretty good. We don't use it in a high-performance environment. So, we don't really care so much about too many features.

It has been quite a few years. We might have been using it for six to eight years.

It has been stable and reliable. It has been working well for us.

It is scalable, but we didn't really need to scale. It met all the performance requirements we had. So, we had no issues where we were not able to add something.

Currently, its usage is quite low, but it's not because of the product. It's because of how our company works. In other words, how much we need to use it. It's not used a lot, and we don't plan to expand its usage.

We did open some tickets, and usually, it was a very good experience.

For load balancing, we previously had Cisco solutions. We had CSS and then Application Control Engine (ACE). We switched because they stopped that service. It was end-of-life, and Cisco discontinued that range.

It was straightforward. I would rate it a five out of five in terms of the ease of setup. 

There were no issues or obstacles, and its deployment was pretty fast. We had to do preparation of all the surroundings, such as the VLAN or IP assignment, but the deployment itself was just a couple of hours.

We have a managed service provider, and they hired a consultant. We had some help there, but that was not just because of LPM. We also had other modules of F5. It was our initial or first experience with F5, and there were also other things to be migrated, which were much more complex than the LPM module. That's why the consultant was there.

For deployment, there was one person deploying it. For maintenance, we have a managed service provider. So, we have a team of people, but they're also looking at other devices and not just F5.

It was probably a one-time purchase and then you have maintenance, but I don't have the details on that. We bought what they called the Best bundle at the time, which pretty much included all of the modules. There was probably no additional cost afterward.

There were evaluations. There were Citrix NetScaler and Application Delivery Controller from A10 Networks, but in the end, F5 was chosen because of the virtualization environment that we were using at the time. We were using VMware, and we are still using it. They had better support for the VMware VDI solution. They were able to act as a gateway for the VMware VDI.

One piece of advice would be that if you are not that much concerned with performance or you definitely don't need physical hardware, you can go for a virtual edition. It might save you the migration effort when the hardware is end-of-life. 

If you need a load balancer, go for it. We didn't have any hurdles or obstacles. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) as a load balancing solution. We use many of the features associated with the solution, such as the Local Traffic Manager and Access Analytics that are associated with the SSL.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is very easy to use, from SSL Management to enabling, disabling loads, applications, systems, and monitoring. Overall the solution keeps our application functional from a client's perspective 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We have rules that are set up to detect if any part of the application in one of the nodes is not functioning correctly, having a problem, or is experiencing any sort of error, it will automatically pull it out of the load balance bundle and alerts somebody to go take action and at the address. This means our clients are happy because they are not receiving strange errors because somebody's typed something somewhere incorrectly and we are happy because our uptime is reliable.

The solution could improve the documentation.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for approximately 

The stability is very good. We have to power off a system to reboot it after firmware or other updates, but I have not had a problem with the stability of the units at all. We had a system cluster go down but that was a physical issue with the hard drive. They shipped us out a new one, plugged it back in, and it almost self-configures. We had to put some details in the hard drive, but it takes the configuration from the other units and runs well. We have had zero downtime over the last five years.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is very scalable. We have recently expanded the cluster to five nodes and I am running in an active scenario. I did the upgrade live and it did not require any downtime.

The technical support is good. I have not had any problem asking questions that a support person can not answer. Technical support is not engineering and that was something that I had to learn. If you have something that is already functional and you need to figure out why it stopped working, why it is now broken, or you did an upgrade and something is wrong, the technical support can help with that. I have called them a dozen times over the five years and they have had my issue resolved within approximately one hour.

Setting up the solution on the systems is not difficult but enabling applications and configuration can be complex. The difficulty level can also depend on the environment, we have a more complex environment. You have to have some base knowledge of the solution for what you are doing before you can go do it. Configuring the solution is not something that a layperson is going to be able to do. You have to know what you are looking for before you will be able to find it.

My advice to those wanting to implement this solution is they need to do their research ahead of time and know what problems you are trying to solve. In our case, our solutions engineer from F5 directly has been amazing. If you receive a good team in account management, they can point you in the right direction, and in a lot of cases, they can get you moving along. The support from him has been tremendous, it has been extremely valuable.

Our configuration is not simple. There is some custom code that is written in our system, but everything works as they say it should, it is a great solution.

I rate F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) an eight out of ten.

We're offering services to citizens who access them over the internet, and we use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for load balancing between many physical servers or backend servers.

I like that F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a product that comes with valuable features, but what stands out from all features is load balancing.

An area for improvement in F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is troubleshooting on the command line, which should be more graphical.

Another area for improvement is that it's a high-priced product.

What I want to see in the product's next release is more analytics.

I've worked with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for about five years, and I'm still using the solution.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is stable, so I'm rating it nine out of ten.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a scalable product, but my company has yet to try scaling it because there's no need.

The technical support for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is responsive. F5 has a beneficial knowledge base that allows my team to solve many problems by consulting the knowledge base.

I'd rate support eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) was straightforward, so I'd rate its setup as nine out of ten.

It took a few days to deploy F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) because the company had a lot of applications.

My company set up the hardware, configured the network parameters, then tested the product on one application before applying it to all applications.

We used a consultant to deploy F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM).

I found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) an expensive product. The costs would depend on the appliance and infrastructure size. However, my company didn't have to pay extra to use additional features.

As F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is very pricey, I'd rate its pricing as two out of ten.

I'm working with ADC products, particularly with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM).

A total of five people deployed F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for my company. Three were internal, in particular, engineers, and two were consultants.

The solution requires maintenance when my company has a new application to publish and when, at times, there's a need to reset the backend configuration.

My company has many F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) users, with four people in charge of the administration and management of the product, though there's a plan to replace it because it will be EOL. The company is still prospecting and looking for alternatives, such as Barracuda or Fortinet.

I'd tell anyone looking to implement F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) that it's a good product, but its only problem is pricing.

My F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) rating is eight out of ten.

My company is a customer.

I use the tool as a load balancer to distribute user traffic across different servers. It is used for scalability purposes. Depending on the amount of traffic that comes in, I can send that traffic to different servers and load-balance it. Also, the web application firewall protects our servers and applications from cyberattacks.

The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is that it allows you to manipulate things. Now, manipulation here is in the sense that you can do whatever you want to do in the solution using something called iRule, which is a programming interface for F5. So, this is something I find to be extremely useful when compared to other vendors.

Based on my experience using F5 and by only taking into consideration the last seven years, I have found that the reporting mechanism is bad. F5 seems to prioritize its core functions and has not placed a strong emphasis on logging and reporting. I say that the reporting is bad based on my experiences and after considering the requests from customers over the past 11 years. They often ask for specific reports and information that are not available from the devices.

I want the response from tech support to get faster.

I have worked for almost 11 years with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager.

The solution's stability is pretty good.

I handle almost a hundred-plus customers who are using this solution. The solution comes in different form factors. The high-end models are scalable owing to their ability to cater to certain requirements. So, since there are different models available, the solution is scalable.

I am not happy with the tech support. If I compare it with Fortinet, it is not great. Though I am able to connect over a call with the tech team, it is very difficult to get the right engineer at the right time. When it comes to Fortinet, you get the right person to help you at the right time.

While the initial setup of the tool is easy and straightforward, the complexity of onboarding each application can vary and depends on the specific application being used. Also, since I have been working on F5 for about 11 years, it may take me a day to deploy the whole setup.

I am not aware of the exact cost of the product. However, it is expensive. The pricing can either be on a yearly or monthly subscription basis, and this choice is left to the customer's discretion. The product also includes a basic hardware support guarantee and subscription-based services, which can affect the overall cost.

People need to have a basic understanding of HTTP and SSF. Additionally, this device is not solely a networking device but rather a solution that operates as an application device. Therefore, knowledge of applications, programming, and related fields is essential. I just mean to say that the people who are planning to use this solution should not only have a background in networking but also should possess some application programming knowledge. I rate this solution an eight out of ten.