We performed a comparison between Citrix NetScaler, F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), and HAProxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Citrix, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)."The load balancing and VPN features are most valuable. AAA authentication is also valuable."
"The most valuable features are the VDA Delivery, Gateway Fort, and the load balancing."
"Its customer support service is good."
"It is a complete solution for those looking for an all-in-one."
"The load balancing feature of this solution is very good."
"Citrix NetScaler offers robust security features, including SmartAccess and customizable policies, making it a reliable choice for safeguarding user data."
"NetScaler Gateway: Why? Availability/Security: We delivered more than 200 applications thru Xenapp. This feature give us the possibility to deliver the applications anywhere. Currently, 30% of access is made through our NetScaler Gateway (Internet connections)."
"Manageability and visibility are good."
"We like the capability to combine the content switching with the intrusion prevention and adding the security roles, so we can expose certain sub-pieces outside without exposing everything."
"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."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The configuration and integration into the AWS environment was pretty easy."
"The product is quite flexible."
"Along with load balancing, we perform a lot of packet inspections, URL rewriting, and SSL interceptions via iRule."
"Routing and load balancing are its most valuable features."
"It offers features Kemp doesn't provide. For example, there are predefined templates for handling Office 365. You can download them for automatic configuration."
"Reliability. HAProxy is the most reliable product I have ever used."
"It solves a problem for me where I can build files, not based on the health of the check, but rather the speed of the check."
"Performance configuration options with threads, processes, and core stickiness are very valuable."
"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."
"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."
"I can simplify configurations of many internal services (e.g. Web server configs) by moving some elements (like SSL) to HAProxy. I can also disable additional applications, like Varnish, by moving traffic shaping configurations to HAProxy."
"The anti-DDOS PacketShield filtering solution (embedded in the physical appliances) as well as the BGP route injection are great features and heavily used."
"The technical support has been, in one word, perfect. Every time I call, I’m on the phone with a representative within five minutes who is highly skilled and willing to help, whether in the case of critical issues or simple advice."
"The product provides some templates to integrate with applications like MS Exchange, MS SharePoint, SAP Enterprise Portal, and others. However, the last update for these templates was 2013 (lots of applications are running on versions newer then 2013)."
"It does not have a sandbox cloud service and antivirus. It should have on-prem or cloud sandboxing and antivirus."
"Scripting and writing expressions need to be improved by putting logic behind the rules and improve policies involving some of the scripting part, which is a tedious task to do."
"The vendor provides frequent patches, however, the security of the website has room for improvement."
"Some of our customers have questioned the security of this solution lately, wondering whether it is safe or not, so enhancements in this respect would be good."
"The licensing model and technical support of the solution could be improved."
"Citrix should improve the documentation. It is not really clear how to set up many features to our advantage. When we setup Citrix NetScaler ADC, we have to figure it out by ourselves without a lot of documentation."
"The GUI should be improved."
"In terms of native integrations, there is a lot of instability. Also, integration is not robust with F5."
"Implementing whitepapers with a lot more applications could easily be added."
"Native support for containers should be added to future releases, as this is the future of load balancing."
"This is a very expensive solution."
"An expensive solution for the minimal features we use."
"Logging is a bit of a problem. Logging and monitoring are only in plain text. You have to search and you have to know what you are searching for to find anything. So of course, monitoring and getting alerts for abnormal situations is hard. There are no tools for monitoring and alerts"
"The pricing model has caused some frustration. My clients implemented the solution and later wanted to upgrade the features but the pricing structure was complicated. There are other solutions with better pricing models."
"There is a need for a more modular version to concentrate on the current monolithic structure of both the virtual and hardware versions."
"We would like to see dynamic ACL and port update support. Our infrastructure relies on randomly allocated ports and this feature would allow us to update without restarting the process."
"There is room for improvement in HAProxy's dynamic configuration."
"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model. It could be cheaper."
"HAProxy is very weak in the logging and monitoring part and requires improvement."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Pricing and Cost Advice →
