F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Reviews

F5 delivers a full range of solutions that simplify service providers’ security architectures while mitigating threats. The full proxy architecture of F5 solutions also allows service providers to attain extensive visibility and control throughout layers 4 through 7. This enables granular control of all connections, more extensive security functionality, and comprehensive end-to-end protection against DDoS and other attacks. F5 solutions protect targeted network elements, the DNS infrastructure, devices, and applications with features that include application health monitoring, a robust web application firewall, web access controls, TCP optimization, web acceleration, L7 DDoS protection, and broad SSL support, including SSL inspection and offload.

I installed F5 on the DMZ zone of the firewall. The traffic will come to the virtual server of the F5. F5 will decrypt the traffic and offload the traffic to the firewall as clear.
This way, we can mitigate many attacks from the F5 and from the firewall.

Protection of published website. When using ASM, we can have a layer 7 protection in order to prevent the website from attacks.

F5 should improve or develop the reporting tools further.
They should improve the management policies on the BOX.

It's a stable product.

They have one box and you can implement many features with it like LTM, ASM, GTM. So it is scalable. And they have a virtual edition and an appliance edition.

Technical support is a seven out of 10. They provide quick solutions and they reply to us very fast.

Straightforward.

It's fair, it's not too expensive. Maybe just a little high.

It's a good product to use. It has many features so can use it to secure your environment. I'm satisfied with the product.

I am a reseller. We provide solutions to our clients.

We use F5 for various applications as our firewall.

The most valuable feature of this solution is IP Intelligence.

It is very powerful and has good performance. It meets our requirements.

The features included are more than enough.

The deployment could be simplified. From a technical perspective, it is complex.

The pricing could be reduced. 

I have been working with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) since 2020.

We are using 1G-V Virtual Edition.

It's a stable solution. We don't have any issues with the stability of the F5 product.

We have approximately 115 people in our organization who use this solution.

I have no issues with the technical support. They are good and provide professional service.

F5 is very fast to respond. Our team contacted technical support via email about issues, and after one hour they call us to resolve them.

Overall, F5 support is very good.

I was using Akamai from 2017 until 2020 when we started using F5.

When comparing F5 with Akamai, F5 is more powerful and has more intelligence. It also has the ability to update its software very rapidly.

Akamai is slow to respond, they can take up to four or five hours to respond to a complaint.

We use Microsoft in my office for our operational daily activity.

The deployment is complex. Technically, it is very complex.

It took us four, or maybe five weeks to deploy.

We did not use an integrator or consultant. We have a team in our organization.

F5 is expensive. Reasonable in comparison, but it should be cheaper.

This solution is focused on segment customers. I would recommend it to Telco companies, as well as for banking and customers who need to protect their applications, and websites. 

The F5 support is very responsive.

I would rate  F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) an eight out of ten.

I use F5 BIG-IP LTM to balance the load across multiple servers hosting a website or web application, ensuring none get overwhelmed. It is handy for ensuring that services like my email server or database stay available and responsive, even if one server goes down. Plus, it is not just for web traffic; it can manage traffic for any TCP or UDP-based service, like FTP or SIP.

The value and impact of using F5 BIG-IP LTM for application delivery control in our organization are significant. It ensures the availability, stability, and reliability of our applications, ultimately contributing to smooth operations and enhanced user experience.

One area for improvement with F5 BIG-IP LTM could be its pricing, which some may find on the higher side. Lowering costs could make the solution more accessible to a wider range of organizations.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager for about six years.

It is a stable solution.

F5 BIG-IP LTM is a scalable solution, especially when deployed as a virtual machine. You can increase resources and licenses as needed, providing flexibility for growth. However, with physical appliances, scalability may be limited by hardware and license constraints.

The technical support is excellent.

Setting up F5 BIG-IP LTM is generally straightforward. In a Windows environment, initial setup might take around thirty minutes, with additional time depending on specific needs and applications. The deployment process involves configuring nodes and tools for each server and application and setting up load balancing. Additional features like compression and caching profiles can be configured as needed. Once configured, it is typically self-loading, making ongoing management easier.

The initial investment in F5 BIG-IP LTM has been worthwhile for our organization.

The licensing cost for F5 BIG-IP LTM is typically on a yearly basis, with options for one-year or three-year terms. It is quite expensive.

In our organization, we use F5 BIG-IP LTM for local balancing and traffic management. It helps us evenly distribute incoming traffic across our servers, ensuring our applications like Tobe and DNS run smoothly. Plus, it handles traffic for other services, like STV, effectively managing our network flow.

F5 BIG-IP LTM has been crucial in enhancing application delivery and optimizing network traffic. Its robust features ensure that applications are delivered efficiently and reliably. From load balancing to SSL offloading, it handles tasks seamlessly, making applications run smoothly.

The features of F5 BIG-IP LTM that are most crucial for ensuring high availability, performance, and application optimization are its load balancing capabilities, SSL offloading, and traffic acceleration through compression.

The security capabilities of F5 BIG-IP LTM, such as SSL offloading and firewall services, are extremely valuable to us. 

As a system administrator, I find the F5 BIG-IP LTM interface very user-friendly and intuitive. It simplifies complex tasks, making management easier. Compared to other vendors, it stands out for its ease of use. Plus, its analytics features streamline monitoring and decision-making.

My advice to new users is that if you are considering using F5 BIG-IP LTM for application delivery control and firewall capabilities, I would advise starting with a clear understanding of your organization's needs and objectives. Evaluate how F5 BIG-IP LTM aligns with your requirements, considering factors like scalability, performance, and security features. Additionally, explore alternative solutions like F5 ASM or FortiWeb to ensure you choose the best fit for your specific use case.

Overall, I would rate F5 BIG-IP LTM as a nine out of ten.

We are using F5 BIG-IP LTM for our application which is a reverse proxy. We use it for availability, and to process the application because it is used in the financial industry.

The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP LTM is it helps our delivery team to make policies and rules for application.

The user interface of F5 BIG-IP LTM is old and could improve.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) for approximately five years.

I rate the stability of F5 BIG-IP LTM a nine out of ten.

The scalability of F5 BIG-IP LTM is good.

This solution is best suited for medium to large-sized businesses in the finance and telecommunications industries.

I rate the scalability of F5 BIG-IP LTM a nine out of ten.

The support from F5 BIG-IP LTM is not good.

I rate the support from F5 BIG-IP LTM a five out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup of F5 BIG-IP LTM is simple because our project is not complicated. The implementation took approximately three days.

I rate the initial setup of F5 BIG-IP LTM a seven out of ten.

The price of F5 BIG-IP LTM could improve.

I rate the scalability of F5 BIG-IP LTM a ten out of ten.

This is a good solution, but it is expensive. I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate F5 BIG-IP LTM an eight out of ten.

It is a stable product from a stable company. Recently, they have been more focused on security as well.

Right now, there are a lot of products within F5's portfolio. They acquired a couple of companies like NGINX and Volterra. Some features and technologies overlapped when this acquisition occurred. They need to refine it and come up with a single, proper solution.
F5 should focus more on zero trust network access (ZTNA).They should be more focused on that framework because the industry is moving towards that. Everyone is talking about SASE and zero trust.

I've worked with this solution for about two years.

It's a stable product.

It is scalable.

In my experience, I have received excellent support from F5 for any technical issues that I or my customers have faced. I have had no issues with technical support.

The initial setup is easy.

The price is little bit on higher side, compared to the cost of NGINX.

If you are a partner, then I would recommend that you go through the partner portal videos because they have very good training videos that help you to learn the product and technology when it comes to implementation. It helps a lot with implementation, and they have detailed documentation that explains the implementation process step by step. Once you go through that, you'll definitely have a clear understanding of the implementation process. Without that, it may be a little bit tricky for you to complete the implementation in a smooth manner.

I would rate F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) at eight on a scale from one to ten.

As an IT developer, mostly I use load balancing for the traffic. Currently, it's distributing the load perfectly, as per my understanding of our requirements.

It's definitely scalable and is stable as well.

The initial setup is not complex, and the technical support is fine.

I'm not very sure about the security with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). We have our own private data center, but we are going to migrate our private data center into the Azure cloud environment. Security will then be a major concern when we migrate our own whole infrastructure to the public cloud.

So, I think they should improve in terms of security because nowadays, most organizations try to build their infrastructure on public cloud.

More documentation should be uploaded because very limited documentation is available on the internet. It will also help us to understand the system before purchasing the product.

I've been using this solution for two years.

It's a stable solution.

It's definitely scalable. It's a distributed architecture and micro services, so it's scalable. In fact, we are planning to increase usage and scale horizontally.

I don't have any issues with respect to technical support; it has been fine.

The initial setup is not complex. 

If you have your own data center, then you can use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). I don't see any issues because they have been in the industry for a long time, and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is very stable.

I would rate this solution at eight on a scale from one to ten.

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.

• The detail that you have available when setting up iRules. 
• How the traffic routing works in F5.

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.

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.

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.

We have support agreements in place, but they are managed by the infrastructure team. I do not contact the technical support, they do.

The integration and configuration into the AWS environment was pretty good.

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.

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.

We were previously using the on-premise version, but now we are using the AWS version. They are about the same as far as functionality.

Central solution to control traffic or web applications (besides NG Firewall).

• Easy administration
• A lot of features
• Scriptable (iRules and REST API)

I have some experience with other load balancing providers. The BIG-IP’s interface is more intuitive than other GUIs. It is well structured, not overloaded, and does not have too many gimmicks.

The ASM administration is quite complex. I am a technical GUI expert (not UI). They did improve the ASM administration in each version, but added new features, too. The topic itself is pretty complex, so it is not easy to provide a nice, clean interface. There are a lot of references and dependencies in-between the different subareas.

I have not yet encountered any stability issues.

I have not yet encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is good. I have had nothing to complain about up until now.

I previously used a different solution. We switched because the hardware was too old, and the other vendor did not have the same set of features.

Initial setup was straightforward. We were up and running in three hours.

Take a look at the modules that you are going to use. Look into the best bundles for them.

Before choosing this product, I compared it with Radware. Cisco was already off the market, and Citrix was not as big as it is today.

Use the community and DevCentral.