The solution's initial setup was moderate, where it was neither too easy nor too complex.

I wasn't involved in the setup, but it was easy.

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

The initial setup is easy.

F5 BIG-IQ's initial setup was complex. The time it takes for the process depends, but typically it takes approximately eight hours.

The initial setup of this solution is not complicated, although migrating the service is. Our customer was using Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) prior to F5, and making the transition was difficult. We had to make sure that all of the rules were correct. I think that the migration was more complicated than the initial setup.

I've had some issues with the virtual deployment, or cloud deployment, for BIG-IQ. The compatibility with the Hyper-V from Microsoft is not very good.

When you are trying to implement a new VM, if you have already purchased BIG-IP from the website and you're trying to deploy it in the cloud (or you have a hypervisor), it's not so smooth to deal in terms of the interface. This is also true for Citrix servers. The only one that's worked perfectly for us was the VMware and virtual machine.

It took approximately three months to deploy.

It was already in place when I joined.

That's the problem, it's Linux. If you want to go to the config management at first, then you have to know the Linux command in order to have an IP configuration for your interfaces. After that, you'll have to manage it on the web. The initial configuration has to be on Linux, though. It was complex for me to set up BIG-IQ because I was coming in from a Windows background, not Linux.

The deployment time would be about two hours.

The solution is difficult in terms of integration. It's more based on design. There's a lot of technical architecture and it works for integrating on the new work, but not on the F5 configurations itself. Therefore, it's not exactly straightforward.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. The length of time required for deployment depends on the use case. If the customer is only installing the LTM and the APM then it will not take long. If, however, there are multiple modules involved then it may take longer. This is because it takes time for the configurations to be loaded, especially for the VAS platforms and the policies.