F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

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.

All the cyber security vendors and their products need improvement, including F5 and this product. No one is 100% secured, because attacks are more sophisticated now, and the hackers have become more advanced.

Recently, I've seen one of the attacks on this particular network, where they managed to bypass its multi-factor authentication. They were able to bypass that level of security, and they managed to get into the network.

Every cyber security vendor needs to be proactive. No one is perfect, so even the rank one cyber security vendors should also keep their eyes open all the time.

It would also be better if F5 provided free product training for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), so end customers could have more awareness and understanding of the product, so they'll know how to use it.

Our level of requirements, usage, and scalability are being met by this product. If we needed additional features, or if we needed additional licenses, all we need to do is just buy the additional features or licenses, so we currently don't have any additional features we'd like to be included in the next version of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM).

My experience with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a total of four years now. We have customers, e.g. from the government, who prefer this solution. We also propose it to them because they have a bigger environment, compared to the environment size of private companies. We have customers from the government, e.g. from the Department of Communication.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is scalable and secure, so we propose this solution to customers with bigger environments, e.g. those in the government.

I'm rating F5 technical support a nine out of ten.

We used Fortinet, but what we were getting from F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) was always more than what we got from Fortinet, even when using FortiWeb and Forti WAF cloud as a service, and even when considering the functionality of each product.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is more complex to implement. Implementation of this product would be much easier if you have the right service, e.g. consultation services included, support from the distributor or directly from the vendor itself, or a certified partner. Having consultation and support will help make it much easier for the end customer during implementation, but the implementation process for this product is more complex than Fortinet.

The cost is high for this product, so small customers, e.g. those in a private bank, won't be able to afford F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), and they also don't really need the kind of support and functionality that this product gives.

For customers who are in the government, we propose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) despite its cost being high, because they'll really need it. They host their applications in the cloud, and in private data centers, e.g. private cloud services, so they'll need the kind of protection that this product provides.

It depends on customer. Whenever we see that customers can't afford, or the environment is smaller, we propose Fortinet, or some other solution that's cheaper than Fortinet. We don't propose F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) to them.

I was able to evaluate Fortinet.

We have a partnership with Fortinet, as a reseller of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other F5 products. We are also a reseller of Cisco and Forcepoint products, though we just started with Forcepoint, so we haven't been doing much with their products currently.

My advice to users of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), including people who are thinking of implementing this product, is that they need to have product awareness. What we are seeing in our government customers is that they don't have awareness, in particular, they don't know what they're using, which is why they're having issues. They need to understand the product first, and they need to go and get the training first, but they are hesitant to pay for the training.

Unlike Fortinet who provides free training, F5 doesn't. Ever since the pandemic, Fortinet has provided free training, but certification is not free. If F5 can provide free training for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), that would be better.

My rating for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is eight out of ten.

We usually use the product for load balancing, as a web server, and for web traffic.

We're hosting a website for our company, and the solution has helped a lot with load balancing. 

The load-balancing features are great. You can do several different types, depending on the application. 

The solution offers good automation. 

It's stable and reliable. 

The solution can scale.

The setup is pretty easy.

They offer good technical support.

The GUI needs improvement. They need some sort of help section in the GUI, like descriptions of certain features. There are a lot of features, and it is hard to remember what does what. Having some sort of prompt or pop-up in the GUI would help a lot. 

I've been using the solution for around six years. 

The stability and reliability are great. I'd rate stability nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability is good. I'd rate it nine out of ten. It's easy to expand. 

We have two or three users directly dealing with the solution. 

Technical support has been helpful and responsive so far. 

Positive

While I was involved in the on-premises deployment. For the cloud, I didn't have to do much. It's a pretty straightforward setup. The only complex part is building the HA since it's linked to following a certain procedure. In that case, the ease of implementation depends on the experience of the one who's going to deploy it.

Two people should be able to handle deployment. 

We have witnessed a return on investment. 

I'd rate the pricing three out of ten. It is quite expensive to scale up. 

The product can be deployed on-premises and on the cloud.

If a customer really wants a robust and stable load-balancing appliance, they should go for LTM.

I'd rate it eight out of ten. 

It is for internal load balancing of servers.

It provides load balancing. So, it potentially brings some performance improvement and high availability. If one server goes down, there is a seamless transition to the other one. 

The load balancing function, the monitors that you can create, and iRules programmability are most valuable.

Its GUI could be a bit better. Other than that, it's already pretty good. We don't use it in a high-performance environment. So, we don't really care so much about too many features.

It has been quite a few years. We might have been using it for six to eight years.

It has been stable and reliable. It has been working well for us.

It is scalable, but we didn't really need to scale. It met all the performance requirements we had. So, we had no issues where we were not able to add something.

Currently, its usage is quite low, but it's not because of the product. It's because of how our company works. In other words, how much we need to use it. It's not used a lot, and we don't plan to expand its usage.

We did open some tickets, and usually, it was a very good experience.

For load balancing, we previously had Cisco solutions. We had CSS and then Application Control Engine (ACE). We switched because they stopped that service. It was end-of-life, and Cisco discontinued that range.

It was straightforward. I would rate it a five out of five in terms of the ease of setup. 

There were no issues or obstacles, and its deployment was pretty fast. We had to do preparation of all the surroundings, such as the VLAN or IP assignment, but the deployment itself was just a couple of hours.

We have a managed service provider, and they hired a consultant. We had some help there, but that was not just because of LPM. We also had other modules of F5. It was our initial or first experience with F5, and there were also other things to be migrated, which were much more complex than the LPM module. That's why the consultant was there.

For deployment, there was one person deploying it. For maintenance, we have a managed service provider. So, we have a team of people, but they're also looking at other devices and not just F5.

It was probably a one-time purchase and then you have maintenance, but I don't have the details on that. We bought what they called the Best bundle at the time, which pretty much included all of the modules. There was probably no additional cost afterward.

There were evaluations. There were Citrix NetScaler and Application Delivery Controller from A10 Networks, but in the end, F5 was chosen because of the virtualization environment that we were using at the time. We were using VMware, and we are still using it. They had better support for the VMware VDI solution. They were able to act as a gateway for the VMware VDI.

One piece of advice would be that if you are not that much concerned with performance or you definitely don't need physical hardware, you can go for a virtual edition. It might save you the migration effort when the hardware is end-of-life. 

If you need a load balancer, go for it. We didn't have any hurdles or obstacles. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager to balance traffic. 

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is expensive. Pricing needs to be improved. 

I have been using the solution for five to eight years. 

The solution is stable. 

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is a scalable solution. 

I rate the product a ten out of ten. 

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.