F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

The F5 is something we purchased for another project that has not been turned on just yet.

The solution is very powerful.

The product is quite flexible. 

The horizontal scalability that is on offer is very good as well.

I would like to see some better documentation focused on our website and better search criteria. That's probably the best way to say that there needs to help with research.

The cost of the solution is pretty high. It would be ideal if it was more reasonable.

We were originally supposed to launch this project for a client, however, that hasn't materialized yet.

While we never really got around to scaling the solution just yet, there is horizontal scalability that is on offer that seems very good.

This is being deployed in a service provider environment. Therefore, it'll be impactful to all of our customers. However, I would say as far as internal support users, we have a team of probably ten that'll be supporting this product once it's launched in production.

In terms of technical support, so far it has been pretty good. That said, it's more to set up the solution versus actual production support. They're not helping us deal with bugs or glitches, they've just been helping us with a rather complex implementation. We've been satisfied with their assistance in that sense. They seem knowledgeable and responsive.

The initial setup is largely complex. However, we had a lot of help from their internal sales team or support team has been important in terms of working around the difficulties.

We have a staff of ten that are handling deployment and maintenance. They're not dedicated just to this product, however. They support our overall service provider architecture.

The cost is quite high. The long-term support in particular is quite high.

Customers need to be aware that each feature is licensable, which allows costs to accrue.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with F5.

The F5 is something we purchased for another project that has not yet been turned up. That said, the experience I've had with F5 has been very positive, specifically working directly with their corporate sales engineering team. 

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If it wasn't for the high cost of the product, I might rate it a bit higher.

I would advise those considering the solution to explore all options. Specifically, the total cost of ownership. It can be lower with some other vendors. A10 is oftentimes a lower cost of ownership. One challenge with F5 is everything is a licensable feature. Whereas something like an A10 is not. You see the same challenges with a Cisco type of device as well, however, it's in a different arena, with different products.

We are using this solution for the web application firewall and load balancing.

F5 has many capabilities for load balancing and web application firewall features.

There should be more logging improvements on F5. The logging features are too limited and do not give us a solid understanding of what's happening. For example, the web application firewall logs don't say complete, or why this is blocked, which signature or which root cause is blocking the log. 

Also, it can provide more understandable windows or dashboards regarding the latency of the application.

Citrix has cheap tools that show what is happening and describe why did they happen.

I would like to see improvements to the dashboard, latency reporting, and monitoring. Improvements in these areas would be very valuable.

I have been using F5 for approximately four years.

F5 is very stable. We have gone 300 days with no failures.

In regards to scalability, I have never experienced any bottlenecks of the hardware or the features of F5. F5 doesn't have any latencies.

With Citrix, at times we experience some latencies when the web application requires more complex directions, inspections, and more complex load balancing features.

The number of users is variant. Currently, we have more than 10,000 users.

I have not experienced any issues with technical support.

Citrix doesn't have as many options.

If you were to compare Citrix with F5, the pros of F5 is the idle features. It's very powerful and you can do tons of work with a few lines.

With Citrix, you have to learn and understand the regular expressions, but the regular expressions consume a lot of the hardware. Also, it is much more complicated.

F5 pricing is too high, compared to Citrix. 

If a big sector or a company needs more security and more control over applications and the ADC, F5 is the best choice. But if a company needs only an ADC, without the web application firewall features, Citrix is fine.

For those who are interested in this solution and you want more control over the applications then F5 is fine.

In the future, F5 will be our first choice, but everything can change.

What happens with the next features, we don't know. Maybe Citrix will overcome the problems and will become a more powerful tool than F5.

Without consideration of the price, I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.   

We are using the solution for our internal and client purposes. We are a cloud service provider.

The solution provides good application delivery and network optimization features. We use all the features provided by the solution. It fulfills our requirements. All our infrastructure is set up with high availability through hardware and virtualization in all flavors and levels based on the customer requirements.

The pricing must be more flexible. We get billed for firewalls based on the usage. It will be helpful if the solution provides such flexibility.

I have been using the solution for many years.

The tool is stable.

The tool is scalable. It meets the requirements.

We have contacted the technical support team. The team is customer-friendly and knowledgeable.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment takes just one minute because we use scripts. We need one technical person for the deployment.

The solution is robust and reliable. It provides us with security.

The product is expensive. We pay a yearly licensing fee.

We recommend the product to others. It is scalable and reliable. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The use case for F5 includes ADC, WAF (Web Application Firewall), network firewall, and CGNAT in one platform.

The combination of ADC and WAN is the most valuable feature. 

F5 is a bit expensive in comparison. Moreover, there is room for improvement in the user interface. It can be more user-friendly. 

I have been using this solution for three years. 

It is a stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

The scalability is good. I would rate it a ten out of ten. There are over 50 users in our organization using the solution. Mostly the manager and the person in charge use this solution, but we usually work with the security and network teams as well.

The customer service and support team is quite good. 

The initial setup is quite complex. It took us around one to two months to deploy the solution. 

For the deployment process, we have to perform an assessment because it's quite complex. There are a lot of parameters that need to be counted before redeployment. So, an assessment is recommended before the deployment process.

We use the yearly-based license. I have personally not seen any additional costs. 

I would definitely recommend it. I would advise them to check their requirements thoroughly in order to load balancing and also to protect their data.

Overall, I would rate the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager a ten out of ten. 

BIG-IP has multiple uses, including VPN, application firewall, and load balancing.

BIG-IP can do anything. It's like a Swiss Army knife. 

BIG-IP LTM is taking a long time to mature in cloud environments. They plan to improve cloud integration in the next version, but it isn't out yet. It's essential because more companies are moving to the cloud these days and using things like Kubernetes or microservices. F5 needs to improve in that direction, and they are. 

I have used BIG-IP for about 15 years

BIG-IP LTM's hardware is stable, and the operating system is great. 

BIG-IP can scale horizontally or vertically because it's a blade system.  If you need more hardware on the same appliance, you can put blades on it. They are a bit expensive but work fine. You can create a cluster if you want to scale horizontally and put any hardware you need on it. You can scale as much as you want.

I rate F5 support seven out of 10. The response time is okay, but sometimes you have to explain your issue to multiple support engineers before it gets resolved. It's a common issue with most tech support. 

Neutral

Setting up BIG-IP LTM was complicated in the beginning, but it has gotten easier over time. The deployment time varies depending on your environment. You have to connect and activate the license, but the operating system and modules are pre-installed. The basic setup takes only an hour, but you might need to do some additional configuration. 

BIG-IP LTM is somewhat pricey for a small company with a limited budget. 

I mainly use LTM to protect applications.

LTM's most valuable features include application security, data collection, and parameter-level rules. 

LTM would be improved with the inclusion of signature-based blocking. In the next release, LTM should include the ability to configure account details and access user logs.

I've been using LTM for six years.

LTM is a stable product.

LTM is scalable.

The initial setup is straightforward, so long as you have some understanding of the solution, and it should take around forty-five minutes. However, if you're unfamiliar with LTM, it will take longer.

I would recommend LTM to other users and give it a rating of nine out of ten.

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.

We are using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager for all the modules for DNS applications. It is a core product for us.

Since the COVID pandemic hit the whole company has been working remotely. It's improved the remote working by handling the security and the reachability of the company.

The most valuable features are DNS, APM, and ASM. Additionally, it is easy to use and you have a lot of flexibility to use the solution within a network.

The user interface could be improved in F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager.

There's can be some improvements done on the access policy manager(APM) such as supporting APIs and web services.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager for approximately eight years.

I have found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager to be stable.

The scalability of the solution is good.

We have approximately 20 engineers using the solution.

The solution is extensively being used and we plan to increase usage.

We use many other solutions in our company.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We did the implementation of the solution in-house.

We have one engineer that handles the support of the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager.

We have seen an ROI by using this solution.

We are on an annual license to use the solution.

We have evaluated other solutions but we found the scalability and usability to be better in F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager.

I strongly recommend this solution.

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

My primary use cases of this solution are as a big IP solution, a WAF solution, EPM, and reverse proxy.

This product has improved our load balance, especially when it comes to using the termination at the A5 level, making us more efficient.

The most valuable features are the WAF and the big IP.

I've been using this solution for over eight years.

This solution is very stable.

My impression is that it's scalable.

The initial setup was straightforward, but it took some time to complete.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

We are using it for internal traffic management and traffic load balancing. Its version is up to date.

Its user interface is very easy to use on a day-to-day basis. It is very user-friendly.

My only point of contention would be that it is a little pricey.

I have been using this solution for about three years.

Its stability has been great. I haven't had any issues with it in terms of downtime.

It is scalable, especially in the cloud. On-prem, it may need additional licensing or an additional appliance. That depends on how large and what the use case is specifically for the customer.

I'd evaluate their tech support as a five out of five. They are very knowledgeable. They have the answers, and if they don't, they're able to escalate and point us to the correct people or provide the correct literature.

Positive

I was not a part of the initial deployment or rollout. There are three people who are managing it and deploying it. They are system admins.

It is a little pricey. I wish the pricing was cheaper, but I wish the pricing was cheaper for everything.

Make sure that you know how much traffic you're going to have coming through because that can affect whether you need a big box or a small box.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.