F5 BIG-IQ Reviews

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

BIG-IQ is a centralized management system for F5 appliances. For customers with multiple data centers or a lot of F5 appliances, it helps to manage their environment. With a centralized solution, it is easier to complete tasks like software upgrades and performing backups.

The most valuable feature is the centralized management.

The reporting feature is quite good.

Integration with VAS is something that they need to work on.

I have been using BIG-IQ for close to one year.

My understanding is that the latest release is quite stable.

In this product, scalability is related to the number of devices. It is really good and it can scale up to 30 instances. The majority of our customers are medium-sized companies and enterprise-level organizations.

I have not had contact with technical support because I haven't had to raise any tickets.

Prior to BIG-IQ, F5 had a similar product called Enterprise Manager. It went end-of-life and was replaced with BIG-IQ. The reporting, integration, and certificate server have all been improved.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. The length of time required for deployment depends on the use case. If the customer is only installing the LTM and the APM then it will not take long. If, however, there are multiple modules involved then it may take longer. This is because it takes time for the configurations to be loaded, especially for the VAS platforms and the policies.

Licensing fees are based on the number of devices.

Overall, this is a good solution and I would recommend it but they need better integration with VAS.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The most valuable features are load balancing and WAF.

I had trouble with high availability deployment in my environment. I had searched for solutions online but have not been able to determine the root of the problem. Ultimately, I contacted F5 support to resolve the issue.

I would like to see the Advanced Web Application Firewall included with this solution.

I have been using F5 BIG-IQ for about three years.

At the moment, this solution is stable.

The F5 solution scales very easily. If we have more boxes then we can just join them to the cluster.

The support team has good knowledge and attitude when working with me to solve my issues. I prefer the support team in Vietnam because they have more personnel and I think that it is better.

It took approximately three months to deploy.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The use cases we're trying to implement together all access to their DMV and to deploy and add data to their data center. They were already using Citrix, but they wanted to replace it. I don't know why, but I think they already had contact with the F5 team.

Features like AFM, the Gateway, and Global DNS are the coolest features that save work for us.

The shell, kernel, or Linux has something like a delay, especially with the Virtual Edition when you are trying to implement it in the cloud and you want to access it remotely with web management. It would be great if they could improve their kernel. It was difficult for me, especially when I got started with BIG-IP. I was struggling to find which commands work with it. If you want to work with it, you have to be a Linux guy.

The GUI tries to be professional to work with. It's not designed for an amateur or someone that is just trying to get into the ADC world, network, or application delivery services.

We have been using this solution in-house for three months. Before that, I was studying BIG-IP and BIG-IQ. When we are already designed for a specific customer, then we have to implement it.

The stability of this solution is great.

In our current situation, we're not scaling anything, but in the future, as I know from my friend in the technical background at F5, we might look into scaling up.

The number of users depends if you look at our company size or the professional services from the F5 team. From my side, there would be two members. For remote, it would be two or three.

Their technical support is perfect. They were so supportive. The guys are great and they would do anything for you.

That's the problem, it's Linux. If you want to go to the config management at first, then you have to know the Linux command in order to have an IP configuration for your interfaces. After that, you'll have to manage it on the web. The initial configuration has to be on Linux, though. It was complex for me to set up BIG-IQ because I was coming in from a Windows background, not Linux.

The deployment time would be about two hours.

First, call F5 support before trying to implement it by yourself. That's what I tried to do and there were a bunch of problems, so I would call their support first.

I would give this solution a nine out of ten.

At my previous job, I worked with a service provider in Qatar. We used F5 as a load balancer for the service to the customers. We also used it to secure their websites and email. At my current company, we use this solution and implement it for our customers as well.

This solution is deployed on-premises.

If they had a GUI interface for creating security rules then it would make it easier. As it is now, to create an application rule for the web, or policy, then we need to create a script to do it. There are a lot of scripts available on the internet for people who know how to use them, but with a graphical interface, it would be easier for new users.

I would like to see the Debian feature installed, without having it in a separate box.

We use this solution on a daily basis, and it is very stable. The only time we have had trouble is during an upgrade.

Scalability depends on the version you decide to buy. For us, we have a mixed service and we installed the medium-sized version. We knew how much traffic they would have. We have now been using the same box for about four and a half years, and it is fine.

We have nineteen customers who use this solution, and some of them have one thousand or two thousand users. Some of their users are employees, while others are their own clients.

The F5 technical support is very good, and in Qatar, they are very experienced and very supportive.

We have customers who have switched from Barracuda, as well as customers who have switched from Microsoft Forefront TSM.

The initial setup of this solution is not complicated, although migrating the service is. Our customer was using Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) prior to F5, and making the transition was difficult. We had to make sure that all of the rules were correct. I think that the migration was more complicated than the initial setup.

We perform the integration of this solution on our own. We do, however, use the professional service from F5 at times. We used them to migrate service for two of our customers, and we do the remaining customers ourselves.

We had planned to use Barracuda, but we found that this solution is more flexible as a service.

F5 is a leader in this space and this is a solution that I recommend. For anybody considering this solution, if they have virtualization then I would suggest getting the F5 Big-IQ Virtual Edition, rather than the physical one. It will make it easier to install and troubleshoot.

I don't know any solution on the market that is better than this one, but I do think that they need to make some enhancements.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

It is primarily around internet-facing web application security. It works very well.

We needed the product due to increased risk through security exposures.

I don't think it has improved my organizational functions. 

There is a lot less risk involved in having applications available on the Internet.

Scalability: To move from larger boxes to smaller boxes, along with virtualization. So, we are not locked into a particular size.

The reliability is excellent.

The scalability is excellent. It can move configurations between environments. It scales up and down, and has virtualization as well. 

The technical support is very good. We have had to use them only on a small number of occasions.

It was already in place when I joined.

I would like the product to be cheaper.

They are working to make the product more feature-rich all the time. Look for capabilities and features, not just price. The one thing that we found was that the F5 device does multiple aspects as opposed to having to put in different things to different devices for different functions. This made sense to us that we could do all our functions out of the same device. We didn't have to buy different devices for different functions.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Support
• Availability
• Reliability.