F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

I use the solution for load balancing.

The most valuable features of the solution are in the area of DDoS and WAF.

Price is an area of the tool where improvements are required.

I want to see CDN capabilities in the product.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for five years. I recommend the solution to my company's customers. I am a reseller of the tool.

I am satisfied with the technical support provided for the solution. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

I only work with F5, apart from a local LAN platform. I switched to F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) from another tool because I was not satisfied with it.

The tool is a bit expensive. I cannot recommend another tool in its place to those who don't find it budget-friendly.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is better than other tools as it is easy to install and configure. The tool has a good UI.

The tool's SSL offloading capabilities had no impact on our network performance.

The tool does not fit my traffic requirements.

Speaking about application security and compliance, I use the tool for all the local LANs and applications in my environment.

There is no AI in the tool.

I recommend the tool to others.

I wouldn't recommend the tool to small companies, considering its high price and the infrastructure needs of small businesses.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

F5 Big-IP Local Traffic Manager has multiple use cases that serve as both layer 3 and layer 7 load balancers. It places a very important rule in the microservices environment and functions as an ingress controller for microservices.

F5 Big-IP Local Traffic Manager has better modular features especially LTM, which according to the clients, is very beneficial. Most of the users opt for a combination of big IP LTM and WAF which helps them to leverage application load balancing and enhance application security many-fold. 

There is a need for a more modular version to concentrate on the current monolithic structure of both the virtual and hardware versions. The existing code, which dates back almost two decades is being evaluated and there are plans formulated for the new modular version. However, I believe that the transition to a new modular, design should make the application more agile, lighter, and conducive.

I have been sing F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager, since my experience in the sales team which is almost 2.5 years. 

It is a stable solution and I would rate it 9 out of 10. 

The scalability of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is rated around six or seven on a scale of one to ten. The introduction of a chassis-based architecture allows for scalability by accommodating multiple blades within a chassis, providing flexibility in handling traffic. However, individual boxes have limitations, and to scale further, one might need to add switches or replace the box with a larger one.

They are responsive, but there is room for improvement in the support. The support team needs to be more adequately trained and aware of tools and cases.

Neutral

Before, I was with a company called Synovir, which deals with mobile number portability and roaming services. In the setup for mobile number portability, we had multiple servers, and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager was chosen for load balancing across various servers. I was involved in the overall solution alongside F5.

The initial setup requires some training and is not to be considered easy. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate it six. It is certainly not among the simplest processes but offers flexibility and extensive configuration options. Therefore, this makes it more involved than some other load balances setups, but once deployed and monitored users almost forget about it until renewal time which indicates that the solution has stable performance even after initial complexities.

In my view, the cost is somewhat on the higher side. There are discounts available, but I wouldn't say it's overpriced. It's not cheap either, and the value for money is a bit higher from that perspective.

I would rate it 8 out of 10.

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.

For my clients, the primary use cases include load balancing, both for server and link load balancing.

We have used it to link two or three servers and make them communicable from outside. It works well as a load balancer.

There is room for improvement in terms of stability. The F5 BIG-IP LTM allows multiple virtual machines to run on a single appliance. However, if one of those virtual portions fails, it can cause issues and impact the overall stability of the solution.

I have been working with this solution for four years. I have worked with F5 as a system integrator, partner, and MSP.

It is a stable solution. I would rate it an eight out of ten. Rather than having separate appliances for each virtual machine, the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) allows multiple virtual machines to run on one appliance. However, if one of those virtual portions is no longer available, it can cause issues.

It is scalable. I would say it's around eight or nine out of ten. Our clients are at the enterprise level. 

The customer service and support is good. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy. I would rate the initial installation a nine out of ten, one being very difficult and ten being very easy.

We installed the solution in a web-based environment and have implemented it in two data centers, one located in New Jersey and the other in a different location. We have used F5 for both firewall load balancing and link load balancing. We have two sets of F5 deployed at each location. 

We completed the installation within a week with the help of a team of five people. At present, a team of five is managing and maintaining the solution in the data center and for the local portion.

It is cheaper than the average on the market. I would rate it as a five since it is in the middle range, with ten being the most expensive. It is good, and the price is reasonable. 
Moreover, I have only worked on five or six devices and have not dealt with licensing rules. However, in my previous job as a system integrator, I did work on local installations, which were relatively quick and inexpensive.

In my opinion, the Radware product is also good. F5 and Alteon products are equally good, so I would rate them an eight.

I would recommend using the solution. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

I work for a bank, and we have a mobile banking app with around 25,000 users.  We use LTM for load balancing on the internal network, and the web feature helps us fill holes in application security due to vulnerabilities in legacy applications. 
It also provides perimeter protection against DDoS attacks and SQL injection. 

F5's attack signatures and automation are the most valuable features. The disaster recovery capabilities are also excellent. You don't need to do anything. It has automatic failover from production.

LTM's cloud capabilities could be improved. Cloud providers all offer load balancing, but you can't get the same level of security. F5's cloud service is still not on par with its on-prem service. 

F5 acquired multiple companies a few years ago, but they still haven't integrated those solutions. For example, F5 acquired Shape Security, which had an excellent solution for detecting bots and automated login attacks, but F5 offers the solution in an inflexible way. 

It is only available as a cloud-based solution. It isn't zone-based. Some companies are restricted from sending financial data outside the country because of GDPR in Europe or other national regulations. Here in the UAE, we can't send host data out. 

I have used LTM for 10 years. 

I rate LTM nine out of 10 for stability.

LTM is highly scalable, especially if you are moving away from hardware appliances. You can go for a VM and follow the basic steps of sizing, etc. and you can buy additional licenses if necessary. 

F5's standard support isn't the best, but their premium support is good if you're willing to pay for it. 

We used a different product called Avi. Its load balancing wasn't as mature as F5's, and Avi couldn't perform automated disaster recovery as well. We used it extensively for a year and a half for internal services.

Setting up LTM is simple if you have basic network and security knowledge. We have on-prem and cloud versions because we are still not fully migrated to the cloud. Some of our services are still running inside the data center. 

LTM is a good product, but it's expensive. They should make it more competitive because cloud providers offer free load balancing. Cloud providers can't cover all the security aspects of F5, but you get a decent amount of security. Cloud environments are becoming the norm across the IT industry. Many of the larger companies that previously used on-prem infrastructure are switching to the cloud, so companies like Fortinet and Palo Alto are reducing their prices. Otherwise, they can't compete in the cloud. 

I rate F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager nine out of 10. If you are considering LTM, you should think about your requirements. Do you have an enterprise use case? Do you need security? If not, you might be fine with just a simple load balancer. However, LTM is a good option if you need security automation and load balancing with granular capabilities. It depends on what your business needs.

Our primary use cases for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager are high availability for applications and SSL offload certificates.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager helps reduce our downtime for maintenance purposes. It also offers us ease of use for the deployment of certificates onto a central location, as opposed to individual nodes.

The feature I find the most valuable is the support infrastructure.

I would like to see tighter integration with all the product lines. A more hybrid approach would be beneficial for users. 

It would also be great if the solution was less expensive. 

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager for more than 15 years. 

I think it is very stable. 

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is very scalable. We have quite a few people using it within our organization, from admins to vice presidents. Maintenance is also very minimal. 

Prior to using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager, I used Cisco's and Nortel's versions. 

How straightforward the initial setup depends on the build. Overall, on a scale from one to five, with one being complex, and five being straightforward, I would give F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager a four. It might take us two or three months to get everything up and built.

We implemented in-house. 

We have seen a return on investment. 

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is an expensive product. However, the only additional cost we have with it is the yearly support cost. 

We did evaluate other options. Ultimately, we chose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager because of the user community and the solution's ease of use. 

The advice I would give to others who are looking to implement F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is this: look at their user knowledge base first to see if the solution truly fits what you need.

On a scale of one to 10, I would give F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager a nine. 

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.

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.