F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Other Solutions Considered

RP
Sr. Architect at a media company with 10,001+ employees

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. 

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JO
Senior Network Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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AC
Senior Technical Consultant at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

I'm still one step behind the pre-sales in my current organization. I don't deal with any evaluations of other solutions. 

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Buyer's Guide
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
OD
Design and Conception Engineer at SFR

We have been considering using Nginx as an alternative or complementary solution to our application delivery and security needs, but we have not pursued this option further at this point.

For the most part, we are looking for a solution that has better support for virtual machines, and Nginx is one alternative we have looked at because of its good virtual machine support. 

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Saurabh-Pal - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Security Specialist at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

In my opinion, the Radware product is also good. F5 and Alteon products are equally good, so I would rate them an eight.

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Mohammed Abdul Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
F5 Consultant at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

I also evaluated Cisco and Citrix. I evaluated the F5 based on its stability, customization and reliability. No other product can match it.

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TH
Senior IT Engineer at Lumeris

I am a fan of using AWS natively. It is much cheaper.

We also looked at Check Point and Barracuda, but they were not markedly cheaper. The whole reason to use AWS was its ability to create resources which have more economic scale. This has almost started to get lost with the prices that these companies are charging.

I started my PoC back in April, which is when  I finished three PoCs across different deployments for F5. So, I'd probably been using the product for about eight months.

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KO
Network Engineer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I was comparing products like Apache Web Server, F5 LTM, Fortinet FortiADC, Kemp LoadMaster, and NGINX Plus.

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EF
Managing Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

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.

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MariosChristodoulou - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Information Officer at F.P. eSafe Solutions LTD

We did evaluate other solutions before choosing this product. However, it was a long time ago. I can't recall the products we looked at. One might have been Barracuda.

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AR
Sr. SAP Portfolio Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

We had evaluated a few SAP solutions, but we found F5 to be more suitable at that time.

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RS
DevOps Manager at TaxACT

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.

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it_user109836 - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Leader Mainframe & Webservices at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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GJ
Staff Engineer at UbiNavi
SP
Senior ICT Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I was able to evaluate Fortinet.

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KO
Network Engineer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Although we are happy with F5, we are currently evaluating NGINX and Kemp LoadMaster because our F5 boxes are approaching end-of-life. We are running them as demos, conducting a PoC for each to test and see how they run in our environment. There are several things that I have yet to test with these other products.

My understanding is that the support packages and the boxes themselves are not very cheap.

If ultimately we find that the other solutions do not meet our requirements then we will be renewing our service with F5. 

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MufeedSiaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Presales Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

I evaluated Citrix 40 Web.

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Hilman Gunawan - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at PT Nusantara Compnet Integrator

Before choosing F5 BIG-IP, we compared the product with other vendors. We chose F5 BIG because of its technical support as well as its documentation. Their knowledge base is easy to read and access to information is available on their website. It is a complete product for an ADC solution. 

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EZ
Network Presales Manager at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

We did not evaluate other options but chose 5 BIG-IP on basis of merit.

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JW
Chief Security Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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GS
Security Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Over our year of engagement with F5, we evaluated multiple products from other vendors and competed with many others, and we always found F5 products to be our first and best choice to advise our customers to use, with respect to:

  • Performance, protection, stability, scalability
  • Being modular based, for a better long term investment

F5 is dedicated to a specific technology line, which makes it the best of breed in the application delivery market. F5's main business is always focused on application delivery, whether in availability, security, or performance.

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it_user223881 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We did evaluate other options. We had already used products such as NetScaler, Microsoft NLB, and a vast array of Cisco load balancing products. F5 was chosen due to the level of power that the product has. I have not seen many single solutions that fulfill all the criteria that an F5 BIG-IP appliance can.

It is not superior to its competitors due to how advanced the features are and the modules that can be used. The product can be used with iRules, which are an advanced ways of making functions available on a load balancer via use of scripting in TCL.

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PK
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

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.

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it_user521838 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect/Application Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I have not actually used any of the competitor products.

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LF
Security Governance at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
SR
Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

We're currently comparing F5 to Citrix. I'm not currently working with Citrix; I'm curious to see how they compare to each other. I had a presentation to a client and they just wanted some sort of comparison, which is why I began to look at Citrix.

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JC
Associate Systems Engineer at Frontline Education

We did not evaluate anything else.

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it_user147228 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Specialist with 1,001-5,000 employees
Full analysis of the ADC space was undertaken, evaluating all competitors in the GMQ. All were discounted because of the vast distance between technologies and their capabilities. F5 was the clear and only choice for us. View full review »
RG
Technical Product Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
it_user591900 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

We checked other options, but nothing could deliver the solution we need.

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it_user850398 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees

We tried FortiADC briefly. However the big contender was Citrix NetScaler.

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it_user526731 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Engineer at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees

Citrix, NetScaler.

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SG
Director Technology Solutions with 11-50 employees

Our customers normally evaluate others too and shortlist F5 based on ease of use.

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YU
Security Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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

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SS
Site Reliability Engineer at Apple

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.

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DK
Head Of Technology at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

If we move all of our on-premises systems onto the cloud, we will probably look for another solution. We may rely on the cloud provider for this. 

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it_user717243 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

No, straight to F5.

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AF
Technical Team Leader at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

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.

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NA
Thermicien with 51-200 employees

We evaluated NetScaler. F5 is the better product for our location.

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it_user617790 - PeerSpot reviewer
Games, Apps and Web Developer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Citrix, RadWare, and LBL.

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it_user750990 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Administrator at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It has many features compared to other products.

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Buyer's Guide
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.