F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

The solution is used for deploying applications.

The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP LTM is the operating system. It is nicely designed and orchestrated. The solution has all the features that are necessary for medium to large-sized enterprises would need to ensure their application are available throughout the globe. The LTM and DTM features combined provide a great service to organizations for presenting around the world which includes load balancing. 

If there are any problems with the applications during integration they can be managed well with the solutions' ability to provide visibility.

The solution could improve the ease of use, the management could be simplified. Other solutions are easier to use.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for approximately 15 years.

The stability of F5 BIG-IP LTM is great.

50 percent of my customers are using this solution.

F5 BIG-IP LTM is a scalable solution.

I have not needed technical support from F5 BIG-IP LTM.

If you are an expert in F5 BIG-IP LTM then the solution is simple to implement. If someone is new to implementing the solution it is difficult.

The length of time it takes to do the deployment depends on the size of the network it is being deployed in.

We do the implementation of the solution.

This solution comes with a standard license, and there are also extra licenses that can be obtained. The licenses are purchasable for durations of one, two, three, and five years. The hardware is something to consider when purchasing

I recommend this solution to my customers.

I rate F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager a nine out of ten.

iRules are very valuable. In addition to that, the way profiles are depicted by the LTM is also very good.

A lot of functions that are attributed to iRules can actually be simple profile changes. iRules do have a certain performance impact. Therefore, instead of writing simple iRules, they can create certain profiles for classes that will perform the same function.

Its scalability and pricing can also be improved.

I have been using this solution for more than 12 years. We are currently using version 15.1.2. The latest one is 16.0, but we are still evaluating it.

It is very stable.

It is not scalable. It is a licensed product. They are coming up with some scalable options, but for existing products, throughput is limited. Currently, if you have a 200 Mbps license, then it can go to a maximum of 200 Mbps. If you want it to go further than that, then you have to buy a new license.

Their technical support is good.

I've been working for 12 years, and F5 was the first LTM product. In addition to F5, I've also worked on Citrix NetScaler, Load Balancer, Kemp, and Cisco ACE (no longer in service). I prefer F5 over all of them.

Its initial setup is very easy. The biggest advantage that F5 has is that its initial setup is very simple.

It is quite expensive as a product. Because it is very stable, it is also expensive.

For mission-critical applications, you can trust F5 with any of your load balancing functions. However, if you have a UAT environment or a test setup, it won't be suitable because it is a pricey product. You can then go for an open-source product or any software with load balancers. VMware has recently come up with AVI load balancers.

I would rate F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) an eight out of 10.

We are primarily using it for load balancing, and with BIG-IQ managing Layer 7 security policies.

We did get good flexibility as well as the capabilities to accept declarative API and create per app dashboard and create a better view on the telemetry dashboard.

• Cloud templates 
• Declarative onboarding
• API service gateway
• Policy-based security management.

Services to be improved: 

• Multi-cloud consistency, like to simplify administration with centralized policies with multi-cloud vendors
• F5 lateral scalability within the container is still restricted.
• Web application firewalls and service mesh would be a nice-to-have feature.
• Drive programmable application with 100% restful API
• Cover deployment
• Monitoring
• Policy-based control. 

We have around 12 data centers. On average, in every data center, we have 14 to 15 F5 load balancers. We manage everything from a central location, then we deploy policy for use, giving us a place for our control managers.

I have Big-IP change and control manager, which give me the roll back option. Therefore, I can view the last things which happened on the device.

In future, I would like there to be more device security. I would like the tool to support SSL links, along with SSL and TLS. It also needs to disable the old cipher suite, which is a very old. There are ciphers, like D5, still available on the device.

We have faced security stability issues, but we work around it.

It is very scalable.

F5 tech support is helpful. I would rate the technical support with an eight out of 10.

We used to have Cisco, then we have Citrix NetScaler. The Citrix NetScaler is just a load balancer. It did not me the complete ADC features. That is why F5 is the king of load balancing.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward; not complex.

Security should be involved in any base license. When you bring on F5, you only have default license. Then, the ASM product license has to be purchased. It would be great if F5 could include the ASM in the base license. 

I use BIG-IP LTM for load balancing and WAF.

The multi-data center is perfect.

BIG-IP LTM's sandboxing integration could be improved.

I've been using BIG-IP LTM for two to three years.

BIG-IP LTM is completely stable, and its performance is good.

I believe BIG-IP LTM is scalable, but you have to pay for extra expansions.

The initial setup was straightforward, and I would rate the ease of the setup process as 4.5 out of five. The ACC deployment took one day, but the WAF tuning took around two weeks because it was a new application and needed tuning.

We used an in-house team.

I would rate our ROI as 4.5 out of five.

BIG-IP LTM isn't a cheap solution - I'd rate its pricing as three out of five.

I evaluated Citrix 40 Web.

You need an expert to set up the policies, as it's not a straightforward process. I would give BIG-IP LTM a rating of nine out of ten.

Currently, we use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager as our traffic management solution. As a consultant, it is project-based with my clients rather than hands-on. Our clients use the solution to load balance their current application server in the DMZ and also in the data center.

The most valuable feature of the F5 BIG-IP LTM solution is load balancing.

To improve the product, they could add more load balancing solutions in Kubernetes.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP LTM for two years.

F5 BIG-IP is a stable solution. It is quite mature and does not have many concerns.

Scalability is good. We use it for active and passive, and we also do some TCMP.

I would rate technical support a four out of five. Their support is quite good, however, they could be a bit more responsive and react faster to requests.

Positive

The biggest concern for my clients is the pricing.

Before choosing F5 BIG-IP, we compared the product with other vendors. We chose F5 BIG because of its technical support as well as its documentation. Their knowledge base is easy to read and access to information is available on their website. It is a complete product for an ADC solution. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten and recommend this solution to users that are looking to use it.

We are using it for web application firewall and load balancing features. We have its latest version.

It is stable.

Its scalability and deployment should be better. It should be more scalable, and it should be easier to deploy.

I have been using this solution for a couple of months.

It is stable.

It is not scalable. We have about 2,000 users in our organization.

I don't have any experience with their technical support.

We didn't use any other product.

It is neither easy nor complex. It needs experience. Fortinet is easier to deploy than this.

I did it myself. We have an IT team of 60 people.

I would recommend this solution. We plan to keep using it. 

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

I think the product is a good product. I think where they can improve is in the licensing. It's quite expensive. They could make it more aligned with the business model than with the hardware.

I have been using F5 for about two years.

It is a stable product but sometimes we have some issues. I have other products that are competitors of F5, and they are also good. The performance of F5 so far is good.

Usually, because we are responsible for providing high availability, we run our architecture with redundancy. Usually, for example, when I have F5, I have a couple of F5s, the active one and the standby one. Today, I had problems. I don't know what happened; it couldn't reload automatically. The other one assumed that I have problems with my infrastructure. That's unfortunately the life of an operations guy.

It is scalable and should meet our future requirements.

Technical support is OK. Usually, you don't have direct support from the vendor. You have intermediating in the middle.

The setup is not straightforward. To set up this product, you must know how to do it. Otherwise, you can't do it. It's not plug and play.

They could buy it but there are other choices such as Cisco ACE products, as well. We have it. They are also good. F5 are good. Usually, I'm not locked into one vendor.

The reality is our bookkeeping department unfortunately has a problem with them. Because of that, I have had some issues concerning getting services from the vendor.