F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition - GOOD (PAYG, 200Mbps)
F5, Inc. | 17.1.1.4-0.100.9Linux/Unix, CentOS 7.3 - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
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Along with load balancing, we perform a lot of packet inspections, URL rewriting, and SSL interceptions via iRule
We are using it primarily for load balancing. We also make great use of SSL interception (offloading and onloading), packet inspection, rewriting, and DNS wide IP.
How has it helped my organization?
It is a very good, flexible solution. It helps us to catch up on flaws in our partner solutions on top of its load balancing feature.
What is most valuable?
Along with load balancing, we perform a lot of packet inspections, URL rewriting, and SSL interceptions via iRule.
What needs improvement?
I would recommend that the cost be lowered.
User tracking: Needs to provide a visual interface to follow a customer's activity (from client to BIG-IP to SNAT IP to the chosen server, then back). Today, we are still performing packet captures.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Not so far.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Not so far.
How is customer service and technical support?
So far, we have not had to contact them.
Which solutions did we use previously?
We previously used Cisco ACE, which has very limited features.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward. The GUI interface is user-friendly.
Software upgrades have been performed by F5 teams.
What about the implementation team?
The initial migration was done by our technical team.
The last implementation was done by the F5 team. I would rate them as a nine out of 10. I am not giving a 10 because we encountered some difficulties with the software upgrade from version 11 to version 12.
What was our ROI?
ROI is four years.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
If you are planning to use security features, better to go for strong hardware and the best bundle license, which is great for web security.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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Improves our program performance and security
We use it for local traffic management and for the application firewall. We are trying to deploy virtual appliances in AWS.
How has it helped my organization?
It has improved our program performance and security.
What is most valuable?
* The web application firewall.
* The configuration and integration into the AWS environment was pretty easy.
What needs improvement?
We would like to see load balancing between the cloud and the on-premise, a straightforward deployment feature.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is almost there. Sometimes it hangs or there are unpredictable performance issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's easier to scale.
How is customer service and technical support?
Technical support could be better.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price is high.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at A10. When deciding whether to go with F5 or A10 it depends on the business requirements. Sometimes I propose one and sometimes I propose the other. It depends on the customer's requirements and budget. For our internal use we went with F5 because it's the best tool.
What other advice do I have?
The on-prem version and the AWS versions are almost the same.
In terms of the experience purchasing through AWS marketplace, because we are a partner, the way we purchase it from AWS is different. We don't buy directly from the market.
F5
What do you like best about the product?
I like that if handles firewall, active directory, logging controls, SSH, DDos
What do you dislike about the product?
They might not be flexible especially then we're talking about corner cases. We had very special problem to fix with them once. They came to our place, told us that the problem is peace of cake. Two years later the problem is till there
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We're small government agency. F5 helps us to keep our team small
Recommendations to others considering the product:
It's a no brainier for agencies and firms that take security seriously. You don't have to do a thing since F5 will handle it for you.
It is a central point of entry for our user base providing user authentication
We use it for brokering services.
How has it helped my organization?
It has made it a single entry point for all users, verging across all the VPCs. It is more of an SSO solution versus multitier user loggin.
What is most valuable?
* Central point of entry for our user base.
* User authentication
* PPI
* Integration with our website.
What needs improvement?
We would like to have integration into encryption and PKI integration with SafeNet. That is probably the key component in using External PKIs, letting people bring their PKIs with them. On the back-end, we have a SafeNet component. They are going to bring additional features in, so allowing integration with encryption and PKI, and tying it back into Microsoft AD in the back with an LDAP lookup for users.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability seems fine. We provide fault tolerance with HA, so we have two of them up and running. We have built in integration. Therefore, we do not worry about workload issues
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It seems very scalable now. We have 200 users, going to about 10,000 within the next year. There are multiple VPCs and multiple AWS accounts.
How was the initial setup?
The integration and configuration of the product in our AWS environment seems to be pretty straightforward. There doesn't seem to be anything complex. We haven't needed anything additional, like Professional Services.
What about the implementation team?
We did use technical support on the original engineering.
What was our ROI?
We have seen ROI because we are not hosting it. We moved this to the cloud for our ingest, so our workload is moving to the cloud and Amazon.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good. We chose to go through the AWS Marketplace because everything that we needed was a soft appliance. We needed something to work in Amazon, and this product was available there.
We have found the pricing and licensing on AWS to be competitive.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at F5, Citrix, and VMware. We chose F5 because it has a better market name, seemed to be vendor-agnostic for providing capabilities that others didn't, and its reputation.
What other advice do I have?
Use F5. It has a good reputation. We experienced easy implementation and had an overall good experience.
It can determine if the system is going down, then route the traffic somewhere else
We are using it for load balancing and security.
When someone requests data through the load balancer, we pull the certificate name out to identify who that person is. This is one of the things that F5 does. We haven't able to replicate this so far with the Amazon products. That is why we are going to F5.
How has it helped my organization?
It has the ability to do the security work that we need along with the current thing which is supporting the load balancer. Therefore, it can determine if the system is going down, then route the traffic somewhere else.
It does what we need.
What is most valuable?
We had a problem where customers were doing transactions in our system, pulling health records, and the system had to be shut down for maintenance. Unfortunately, we wouldn't know that the system was being shut down, and we would lose that information. Then, the customer would get upset.
Using the F5, we were able to build rules to detect that the shutdown was occurring, then begin to route people elsewhere, so we didn't have any outages or downtime. This made customers a lot happier, and it made us a lot happier.
What needs improvement?
They could improve the product's ease of use. There has been a bit of complication on some things from the admin side. There is some confusion how to operate it.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I don't think too much stress placed on it. In F5 Studio, the stability been very good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We run 14 servers. We get up to about half a million transactions an hour, and the scalability has been good. It has not been a problem.
How is customer service and technical support?
I would rate the technical support as a five out of ten. Our admin had to learn everything and do it himself. He seems to have had difficultly at times with the tech support. However, this may be a manifestation of the fact the government bought it, but didn't buy the support.
How was the initial setup?
The integration and configuration of this product were pretty good. Once you get going, it gets easier to use.
It works with Red Hat JBoss application server, and it integrates reasonably well.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is sort of a commodity product. A load balancer is a load balancer. What will be, at the end of the day, the cheapest option or have the best performance, that is what it will come down to. Can it do the necessary performance that we need, and if so, is there a cheaper alternative? If not, then we'll stick with what we have.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We also evaluated some free stuff on the AWS Marketplace, or some cheaper stuff. We also looked at the Amazon offerings, like the Elastic Load Balancing.
The customer wanted to take what they had on-premise and put it in Amazon: full stop. Because we could obtain the certifications for security and the existing Amazon products didn't do 100 percent of what F5 did, they didn't want us to change any code. They just wanted us to keep going the way we were. This is the reason why we pulled F5 over.
What other advice do I have?
Try doing a proof of concept or a prototype, before you go full in on a load balancer, to make sure it does everything you need.
It is the centerpiece of a lot of the solutions that we build
We use it for a number of solutions that we build, mostly for identity and access management control.
How has it helped my organization?
It is the centerpiece of a lot of the solutions that we build, and it has integrated with everything that we have needed it to.
It is the best value for our engineers and architects who know how to use it. It meets the government's requirements every time that we've used it. It is easy for us to keep integrating with our solutions.
What is most valuable?
We have found the consistency of the application always being the way it is supposed to be as its most valuable feature.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We put a lot of stress on the application. It is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is awesome. Our environment is thousands upon thousands of instances in AWS.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was very simple. The main reason that we went this way was the simplicity of buying it there. It is maintained and upgraded for us, and this makes it easy to stay current.
It supports APIs and virtual additions for cloud and VMware
We use it for load balancing and routing.
How has it helped my organization?
It supports APIs and virtual additions for cloud and VMware.
It integrates with various firewall and networking devices along with application services, and it works fine.
What is most valuable?
* Routing
* Load balancing
What needs improvement?
* Cloud native integration should be provided.
* Native support for containers should be added to future releases, as this is the future of load balancing.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is great. We put our production load on it, which is very stressful.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability has been great. We have thousands of severs. F5 has scaled very well.
How is customer service and technical support?
They provide average enterprise technical support.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I also evaluated Cisco, but chose F5 because it had better features in terms of load balancing. I liked the various features in F5, including input/output routing, load balancing, and global load balancing.
What other advice do I have?
Explore the API support and integration with the open source products. Those are the key thing to analyze. F5 are the experts in their area.
Load balancing brings high availability and a bigger ability to scale out
When we migrate workloads into the cloud, we need the same functionality in the cloud, and low balancing is part of that. Being able to manage the platform on cloud, the same as on-premise, is the use case.
How has it helped my organization?
Load balancing generally brings high availability and a bigger ability to scale out. In some cases, it brings security, depending on how it is configured.
What is most valuable?
* Flexibility
* Capacity
* Reputation in the market.
What needs improvement?
I would like them to expand load balancing, being able to go across multiple regions to on-premise and into the cloud. This could use improvement, as it is sometimes a little cumbersome.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. It's a pretty solid product.
Our clients use it pretty heavily. Most all of them are production workloads and some of them are external facing workloads, so you can see seasonal peaks.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's very scalable. Probably the largest implementation I did was with hundreds of servers behind it.
How is customer service and technical support?
The technical support is very good.
What about the implementation team?
We haven't had any issues with the integration and configuration of AWS. It works just like it would on-premise. I have some questions around its scale in the cloud. We haven't done as much work in the cloud as we've done with on-premise. However, so far we haven't had any problems with it either.
What was our ROI?
My clients have seen ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It could be priced a little less, especially on the virtual side. It gets a bit expensive, but you get what you pay.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There is always the Cisco on-premise solution in play. There are also the AWS native functionalities.
The ease of management is the tie-breaker for F5, being able to manage the on-premise and cloud with the same tools.
It's fairly easy to integrate. If you compare it to Cisco products, Cisco is very regimented and works best with themselves. F5 has been forced to play nice with others, which is a bonus.
What other advice do I have?
The three key things to look at closely:
* Look at the flexibility of the products.
* The ability to work with it on-premise and in the cloud is a huge advantage.
* The ability to integrate it with other non-F5 products.
We use both the AWS and on-premise versions. They work about the same, which is what I like about the product: same management plane and configuration.
It integrates with AWS WAF, which makes it easy to deploy without changes to your infrastructure
We use it to deliver services on the cloud.
How has it helped my organization?
It improves the overall performance of applications by decreasing the burden on servers associated with managing and maintaining applications and network sessions, as well as by performing application-specific tasks.
What is most valuable?
* Application security
* Automation
* Orchestration
* It is a fast and available solution.
What needs improvement?
They have to scale, developing more products.
I would like them to have more flexible models.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is the perfect solution when you have high workloads in your IT environment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
They have the potential to scale in better way.
How was the initial setup?
I have integrated F5 rules for AWS with web exploits and OWASP Rules, and it is so easy to deploy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There are three relevant things about purchasing through the AWS Marketplace:
* It Increase protection against web attacks.
* It integrates with AWS WAF, which makes it easy to deploy without changes to your infrastructure.
* F5 manages your AWS WAF rules, so you don't have to.
We purchased through the AWS Marketplace because it was a popular way to go, and we were intrigued. The price of this product is not an issue. They have good pricing and licensing.
What other advice do I have?
It helps you to manage workloads in a better way on your cloud environment.
The integration and configuration into the AWS environment was pretty good. However, we are ending up with a whole bunch of ghosted IPs.
We use it for low balancing.
It has been in our environment for four to five years, but I have only been using it for a little over a year.
What is most valuable?
* The detail that you have available when setting up iRules.
* How the traffic routing works in F5.
What needs improvement?
The management process seems a bit difficult.
The management interface is unclear, complex, and not concise. I would like a better user interface.
For integration with other AWS environments, we do some tie-ins with some autoscaling groups. This has been challenging for us. We have had issues, where when autoscaling groups scale up, there are some instances which are not showing up in the proper size. Then, those IPs would get registered with F5, but never get released. Therefore, we are ending up with a whole bunch of ghosted IPs. However, this is more an implementation detail than an F5 detail.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. I have no concerns regarding stability for F5.
We are seasonal, so we go from low to high volumes. F5 has never been a concern of ours for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We run an Active-Active version of two instances, so scalability between the on-premise and AWS versions hasn't been a huge issue for us. Where we are finding the AWS version helpful is when we are trying to scale up new environments. AWS Marketplace helps here a lot.
How is customer service and technical support?
We have support agreements in place, but they are managed by the infrastructure team. I do not contact the technical support, they do.
How was the initial setup?
The integration and configuration into the AWS environment was pretty good.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The product was already in place when I came onboard.
My preference is to use AWS natively, but there are some issues around session management and so on, which have prevented us from using it. While a lot of these issues have been solved, a lot of our applications are tied to the F5 infrastructure.
What other advice do I have?
Always use the Automatic Synching between F5. Don't try to use the API to do the synching. This is where we went wrong. We were trying to push the nodes to F5 individually instead of letting F5 handle the synchronization process, and it doesn't work.
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