F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

I am an integrator. I implement solutions for our customers.

It's straightforward deployment application delivery control. 

Our customers have a lot of services that are public, in their internal network and external public network.

They use F5 BIG-IP to publish these services in a secure manner.

They use it for publish billing system services, and some uses for their internal services, such as the DNS active directory.

F5 BIG IP is a rock-solid solution. It's a very good solution.

I am very satisfied with the quality of this product.

There is a lot of documentation available.

I'm not very familiar with the services pattern. I am still exploring the features of this solution.

I am just working with a single application, which we need to publish. I don't know how many services they are using, and what kind of services they operate.

Technical support could be improved.

I am still a bit of a novice. I have only been using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for a year.

We are currently deploying this on the service providers but dealing with the IT department for our customers.

It's an enterprise network that is servicing the internal IT traffic for our customers. This is traffic from the IT management systems, and billing systems.

All systems have bugs, and F5 is not an exception. 

In my experience, I didn't face any critical bugs that stopped the deployment. 

I don't think that F5 is worse than other vendors in this perspective.

I had some cases where I contacted technical support.

They have a good quality level of support and have helped us resolve our issues.

However, I have had a situation where I had a bad experience, but overall it's not the norm, it was just an exception.

I would compare technical support with Cisco, although I would say that Cisco is better.

Technical support could improve.

The setup of the F5 BIG-IP system is a very straightforward process. It is very well documented and is described on the vendor information systems.

They provide a lot of information on their site and on the central portal. You can even find information on YouTube. 

I am not familiar with the price of this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others. I am very satisfied with it.

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

There are many use cases. It is mainly used for local traffic management. It can also be used as an advanced firewall for an application or as a VPN policy manager.

We have cloud, on-premise, and hybrid deployments.

Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful.

The user experience for dashboards and reports can be improved. They should make dashboards and the reporting system easier for users. They need to add more reports to the dashboard. Currently, for complicated reports, I have to do the customization.

It should have more integration with network firewalls to be able to gather all the information required for traffic management.

We were their partners for five years, and since last year, we are officially their distributor.

It is really awesome. You can scale from one or two servers to hundreds of servers. They have all the modules that a customer needs. You can go for on-premise or cloud deployment. You can have whatever you need.

Our clients are medium and large businesses.

They have 24/7 support. You can open a ticket directly in F5, and there is no need to use another system.

They reply very fast. They usually get back within four hours, and sometimes, you get a response immediately. They have four-tier system support.

Its initial setup is straightforward. It is just like a wizard and not complex. It takes only a few seconds.

You can buy it on a yearly basis, or you can go for a subscription. For on-premise boxes, it is just the RMA.

I would rate F5 Traffic Management Operating System a nine out of ten.

Mostly I support my clients in relation to the product.

I am very satisfied with the product overall. 

There is never a big number of false positives or false negatives. That's the most valuable aspect of the product. 

The solution is very easy to use and easy to understand. It's quite an intuitive system.

The user interface and GUI are very good.

I find the product to be very stable. I've supported customers for two years and haven't really had an issue with the solution.

I can't say that there are any features missing. I've overall been quite happy with it.

We once had an issue related to trying to publish some exchange application to a file and we experienced some problems there, however, the incident was not really related to BIG-IP. It was likely some kind of infrastructure problem the company was experiencing.

We haven't had any big problems of note.

Technical support could be faster. It's something I'd like to see them work on in the future.

The pricing could be more reasonable.

I've been using the solution for about two years at this point. 

The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had an issue in years. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is good. It's reliable.

Most of our clients are medium-sized entities.

For the one customer I typically deal with, there has been no need to scale or expand services. The product can be scaled by adding more licenses if necessary. That said, our clients have everything they need and have not actually done this. 

There are also add-ons that come from the ASM if a company is interested in that.

Technical support is slow and it could be faster. I had one issue once that was not very serious as it was on the Disaster Recovery Site. We were able to pull a previous version from a snapshot. However, the issue was that I was able to solve the problem myself before I even heard back from technical support. If they knew their technology, how is it that I could solve the problem faster as a person that's not as familiar with it? They need to be much faster. It could have been a much bigger problem. 

I'd say, overall, we aren't satisfied with the technical support for that reason.

I did not previously use a different product. This is my first Application Delivery Consult Solution.

The initial setup is very complex. The basic setup may be fine, however, right now I'm trying to do something in my lab environment. We've tried a few things over the years and it hasn't gotten any easier.

The costs could be lower. In a report, we found that Citrix Solutions are somehow cheaper - including in relation to encryption licensing. I cannot compare as I haven't spoken to Citrix. I don't know if it's easier or has the same (or more features). That said, I wouldn't describe this product as cheap. 

We're currently comparing F5 to Citrix. I'm not currently working with Citrix; I'm curious to see how they compare to each other. I had a presentation to a client and they just wanted some sort of comparison, which is why I began to look at Citrix.

We are resellers.

I'm a System Integrator. I have experience in virtual environments and with clients. I have some moderate experience with implementation and some bigger experience in supporting this product. I'm not an expert in the field, however, I'm trying to be.

I don't have any issues with the solution. It's pretty problem-free in general. Overall, I would rate it at a nine out of ten.

We use the solution as a proxy to our websites, load balancing all our servers as clients come onto our website and use our services. Our website provides around 15 different services. We are customers of F5 and I'm a solutions architect for telecom and network infrastructure.

The load balancing aspect is valuable to us. 

We use a limited amount of features so the biggest issue for us is the price. For what we're using, it's an expensive solution. 

We've been using this solution for 12 years. 

The solution is very stable and scales easily. Our networking team deals with the maintenance.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. We had external help for implementation and I believe deployment took about two days. 

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

The solution is mostly used for the LTM load balancer. Recently more of our customers are using it for the web application firewall. Some of my other customers are using the GTM model also. 

My experience in selling this solution is approximately two and a half years.

The solution is stable.

The scalability of the solution depends on the sizing of the network. Generally, the scalability is quite good.

The technical support is one of the best I have seen in their field. They have been good so far.

One of the strongest areas of this solution is its ease of install. It did not take more then a couple of hours.

The deployment can take some time because you can do a lot of configuring to meet the needs of the use cases for clients. This will take more time to configure the different areas than just the general install. We typically have two technicians on site doing the deployments.

The solution is quite expensive if we compare it with the competition. For only load balancer, it is too expensive. The license is subscription-based, except for the security model.

I would recommend this solution.

I rate F5 BIG-IP a seven out of ten.

We are a reseller of F5, but we haven't had many projects that we've deployed with F5. In terms of use cases, it is used when clients have web servers, and they are hosting on their own infrastructure. When they have web applications that are publicly visible, they use F5 to balance that incoming traffic for their web servers.

The web application firewall feature is the most valuable and useful feature. It is a leading industry product when it comes to load balancing.

Its user interface is very simple. There isn't a steep learning curve. When we initiate someone to F5, they start using it quickly.

Its price can be better. It is a bit expensive.

I have been using this solution for the last five years.

It is very stable.

It is very scalable. 

I never had a case that required technical support.

It is very easy to set up. It is not a complicated product. The deployment duration depends on the architecture that you're deploying, but it usually doesn't take much time.

The number of people required for its deployment depends on the size of the deployment. For a very big deployment, you need less than three people. For a fairly normal or standard deployment, just one person would be fine.

It is a bit expensive product. Kemp Loadmaster is much cheaper than F5. 

Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It can be for one year or three years.

I would recommend this solution. It is a really good solution. It is fairly straightforward, and it does what it is meant to do.

I would rate F5 BIG-IP a nine out of ten. In terms of features, it is good, but its price can be better.

We are a solution provider and we work with a lot of products from F5.

In our internal network, we use F5 BIG-IP. We also have a few implementations with this product, including some that are integrated with other solutions such as IBM Guardium. 

One of the great use cases is capturing an application user through F5 and then pushing it to Guardium. This is very useful for our customers because they can then connect to the database with a real application user, which is something that is very hard to achieve through other vendors.

The main reason that we suggest this product to our clients is the great integration with other security tools, such as IBM Guardium. 

This product is very user-friendly, which is good for customers who have an implementation done by a partner but want to handle administration in-house.

All of the functionality can be achieved from one console.

Even on Hyper-V or a VMware appliance, the performance is very good when you use it as a proxy or a web application.

The documentation is very good.

We have been working with F5 BIG-IP for between three and four years.

This is a stable product.

From our perspective, it is scalable.

We have all of the help and support that we need from the F5 office in this region.

Technical support from F5 is very good. As a partner, I have had a very good experience with them. They have shared knowledge with us and support us in our projects, which is definitely a big plus.

It is very easy to install, especially when doing so to VMware. For example, we have spent almost a day installing security tools by other vendors. For BIG-IP, we need only two or three hours to complete it.

For the complete deployment that includes implementation and configuration, it takes between 10 and 15 days. The length of time depends on the client's goals and requirements. For example, some just want to use it as a web application firewall, whereas others want to use more functionality. The more functionality there is, the more time it takes to complete.

Our in-house team implements and deploys this solution to our customers. 

You need two or three people, including a security manager who will configure all of the rules and policies.

The price should be reduced because it is expensive when compared to the competition. Alternatively, bundled packages should be offered. This is an issue that shows up for most of our customers.

In summary, this is a very good product and we are actively suggesting it to our customers. It is something that should be more present in our market, especially because of the functionality that it provides.

In the end, we get very good results from BIG-IP.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The load balancing is very good.

The tech support is helpful and knowledgeable.

Everything is okay within the solution. It works well.

The product offers pretty good security.

The solution is easy to install. It's a straightforward process.

The interface is excellent.

We've found the product overall to be simple and easy to use.

Currently, the product offers everything we need. I can't recall any features that may be lacking.

I've only used the solution for one year. In comparison, I've used Radware for three years.

We've had the solution installed for a year now and it is working as it should. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. We find it stable and reliable. It's been a good experience so far.

The product can scale quite well. We haven't had any issues. If a company needs to expand it out, they should be able to do so without trouble.

Right now, I'm the only one at the office who uses the product.

I've been in contact with technical support in the past. So far, I've been happy with their level of service. They have been very helpful and responsive overall. I don't have any complaints.

We also use Radware, which we've used a bit longer.

The initial setup isn't too complex. We can handle the process pretty well. It's straightforward. I consider it to be pretty easy. There's no difficulties during the instllation.

I'm not sure of which version of the solution we're using right now. I have a few customers who are using it, and they may be using different solutions.

I'd recommend the solution. Our customers seem to be very happy with it.

Overall, I would rate the solution nine out of ten.