F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

The primary use cases are application load balancing and as a web application firewall.

We resell F5 as partners. Our customers have a clear business case to reduce downtime, improving resource utilization.

The major applications that front-end core banking for most banks and Microsoft Exchange were experiencing performance challenges without F5. After front-ending these applications through an application delivery controller with F5, most of the performance issues went away.

It is very intuitive, easy to deploy, and manage.

The solution's capabilities has been most instrumental in supporting our customers. I find it reliable. Once it is configured, and up and running, then there usually is no downtime.

In terms of performance, we have seen a drastic difference without F5, then with it. If you run the same application from users to the server when there wasn't F5, there were delays. With F5, users can see a remarkable performance difference from a qualitative sense.

Implementing whitepapers with a lot more applications could easily be added.

This project is missing some relevant features: 

1. We set up the customer through the load balancer.
2. Then once it is there and functional, then the next step is to add the web application firewall on the same boxes. 

Not with the GA versions. Obviously, the betas are not that stable.

When you enable the web application firewall on the same platform, it requires more resources. If the use case is only for load balancing, but the customers using both load balancing as well as web application firewall, the sizing has to be done correctly.

The technical support is good and up to mark. 

There is a challenge in Pakistan. This is when there is a hardware failure. Sometimes, it takes more time to get a replacement because it is sent out from the U.S. or some other regional outpost. Thus, it takes two to three days to receive a replacement.

A few of our customers were using Brocade, Citrix NetScaler, or A10. We moved them to F5, because there were more customer references available for F5 in our country and the support structure was better.

The initial setup was very straightforward in GUI. It was not complex.

It is the best solution, but that comes with an increased price.

Try to negotiate all the software features that you require upfront. E.g., if you need three different software features and a web application firewall, then try to log the prices initially when you are buying the initial solution, even if you are not buying some of the software but at least log the prices for features.

Our customers normally evaluate others too and shortlist F5 based on ease of use.

It is best of the breed, or best in class. Our experience has been very good, in terms of performance, and securing our application infrastructure.

I strongly recommend the product, but through an experienced partner.

With these type of application delivery controller projects, the application teams have a significant role. It is networking team plus the application team. With better coordination between all the different teams who are engaged, project execution will go more smoothly.

There is more than one use case. The most important is the Local Traffic Manager (LTM). We are using it to load balance our web applications, SSL decryption and application adjusting, along with some TCP features. We are also load balancing traffic between appropriate back-ends for risk. 

We can use it for load balancing purposes on an HA proxy software. However, hardware load balancing is the best way due to some hardware flaws for incoming traffic. We are not using CPU resources for a load balancing SSL decryption and adjusting some parameters for incoming and outgoing traffic. F-5 has a lot of appliances, which can be used for appropriate tasks, e.g., for big tasks, we can use Vipiron devices. As well, we have a lot of software blades, which can be divided into virtual clusters, multi-purposes, etc.

We are using the Big-IP, LTM, ASM, and GTM modules.

• The Local Traffic Manager (LTM) provides a simple low balance and SSL decryption, in addition to some TCP parameters, for incoming and outgoing traffic to redirect appropriate traffic patterns to appropriate servers. 
• We are using Application Security Manager (ASM) as a web application firewall, where there is a security signature to avoid a web level breach. 
• We are using global traffic manager (GTM). Its main use cases is for application firewall modules, therefore we are not using it yet, but we are going to implement it for DDoS protection on some of our web services.

I would like to see F-5 implement a regular routing like in other Linux-based devices. We know the F-5 is not a router, but can be used for traffic forwarding, so it's not the same as other devices if we compare it with Citrix-based devices. It is a simple Linux-based routing software. I don't have any problems with it. However, in F-5, when we try and integrate in some complex networks, we have to use some additional routing scenarios from a Layer 3 perspective, then we have some problems. It would be great if this were fixed somehow.

We have to keep in mind features when we deploy an F-5 solution. Designing the same approach in Citrix can often be simpler. I have written syntax in F-5 which were complicated; not straightforward. For example, in a Citrix device, we have a lot of predefined patterns, and it's much simpler to implement.

We have not had issues with the stability, though we have experienced issues with the flexibility.

The support of F-5 is fine. In comparison with Citrix, F-5 technical support is much better.

We previously used Citrix NetScaler: 

• Citrix NetScaler SDX, which can be divided in multiple instances.
• Citrix VPX.

The licensing strategy for F5 is good.

We use it as an LTM and as a reverse proxy to publish web services.

It helps us recognize sessions from certain IPs that are authorized to manage the application. This is a function we haven't found anywhere else.

The most helpful thing is that it's open-source. It's very easy to program and customize.

Logging is a bit of a problem. Logging and monitoring are only in plain text. You have to search and you have to know what you are searching for to find anything. So of course, monitoring and getting alerts for abnormal situations is hard. There are no tools for monitoring and alerts. If you have problems and you need to diagnose them, you really have to know what you're looking for in order to find it.

Logging and monitoring could be something out-of-the-box that are more accessible.

Stability is one of the advantages. It's very stable.

We haven't bumped into scalability issues. The limitation is actually through licensing. Throughput is limited by licensing. We had an error with the license and we reached the limit but we fixed that. But there has never been trouble with the capacity or scalability.

I have never used technical support directly. I use F5 through integration services and there were a few times they didn't know how to resolve an issue and they had to turn to support. But there were answers every time.

We used Microsoft Gateway called CMG. This product was end-of-life, they decided to kill the product. We switched because there is no other solution that does the same thing.

It was complex compared to the Microsoft system. But after we learned the product and understood how it works, it worked seamlessly.

We only use a fraction of the capabilities of F5. There are different modules that we have heard others speak highly of, but we don't want to use them locally. It's an on-premise server. For example, there is a WAF (web application firewall) model and others that we don't use. 

It's not a cheap product, but there are no other replacements for what we do with it.

We checked other options, but nothing could deliver the solution we need.

I would advise excessive testing before moving to production. It's a new product, it's a "language." You have to learn the product thoroughly before you really can implement it.

GTM and LTM are the primary uses of the solution. Our company has two active data centers and a data center that is being activated. F5 BIG-IP helps us a lot. 

Global DNS, Link Controller, and Server Load Balancer provide our company service with high availability.

Valuable features include Link Controller and Server Load Balancer with cloud support and application enhancement security.

Internet and cloud support could be improved. Security enhancement should be more user friendly.

Publishing of many applications through the F5 reverse proxy to the Internet.

We are also using the F5 as an IdP server.

• It makes the publishing of applications to the Internet safer.
• Permanent updates give us more security.

• The automatic inspection of, e.g., SSL (TLS) traffic. 
• It is an easy way to build application policies (graphical).

It would help to get more training, even better in local languages. While we are able to speak and understand English, sometimes it is much easier to use the language you truly understand.

Previously we had an IdP on a Linux server. However, this was a pain to configure. With the F5 this has become easy. Therefore, more and more of our applications are now transferred to SAML.

I really like the ease of use of it in general. If I were to choose one in particular, perhaps it would be the iRule feature. It’s a really versatile tool.

The SharePoint SSO part has some room for improvement. Opening documents and spreadsheets on local applications in on our specific situation is not possible.

None at all.

No issues with scalability.

F5 is a big company. They have a great community and TAC. The advantage with this product is that it isn't new. They have many engineers who have been working with it for a long time and have a lot of experience.

We used to have a Barracuda WAF. It was unreliable and it didn’t have all the features of the F5. It was out of maintenance and we decided never to use Barracuda again.

Easy switch from our Barracuda to F5. The setup was done with an engineer. However, if you pay good attention you can manage it afterwards. I also have a F5 test environment on a VM. These cost around $100 but are worth that money for testing purposes.

We tried FortiADC briefly. However the big contender was Citrix NetScaler.

Be sure of what you will use. F5 isn’t cheap but is worth the price. Also, take a good look at all the different options and make sure you take the correct hardware platform. You can always add more licenses, but if the physical device isn’t up to the task you’re stuck.

The primary use case is the common use case for everyone. It has performed well.

The benefit is security. It's able to track issues, the attacks. So that enables us to catch the attacks before they hit us. We are able to nail them down.

DDOS protection.

They can improve on the DDOS solution and have more stable solutions.

It's stable.

I haven't done any upgrades yet, but it is scalable to some extent.

Technical support is good. I would rate it seven out of 10.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor are the market value, the cost, and the stability of the product.

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10 because it fulfills my requirements.

Implementing load balancing services inside managed hosting services based on VMware solutions. The solution is presented as IaaS. F5 BIG-IP VE will be implemented in cooperation with the Cisco ACI solution.

F5 will improve our position in the customer service market. We plan to create packages of services from which it will be possible to build comprehensive tailor-made solutions.

Beyond the basic balancing function, other modules are important to us. In particular, a web application firewall, application security module, and a remote access module for customer applications.

As a service provider, we will target F5 BIG-IP VE solutions to customers who request infrastructure as a service. Improvements should enable customers to build a tailor-made solution in the future through a service portal.