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The BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) is the industry's most trusted and comprehensive app delivery and security solution. Providing everything from intelligent traffic management and visibility, to app security, access, and optimization, BIG-IP VE ensures all of your apps are fast, available, and secure.
Overview
This offering includes a free, full featured 30-day trial as well as access to F5 premium support.
BIG-IP VE PAYG instances are available with GOOD, BETTER, and BEST (GBB) license bundles - more detailed information available at here.
The GOOD bundle includes:
BIG-IP LTM - Optimize app availability and user experience with intelligent L4-L7 load balancing, SSL/TLS offloading and visibility, and programmatic traffic manipulation with F5 iRules.
Combining BIG-IP VE with F5 Container Ingress Services (free & open-source) delivers advanced application services to container environments including Kubernetes.
Additionally, F5 has made it faster and easier to deploy and configure BIG-IP VE via the following mechanisms that can be integrated with all common automation and CI/CD tools:
For sales inquiries, contact our sales organization at here. and for all other general inquiries, email F5 at tellaskf5@f5.com .
Highlights
- Extend proven app services to AWS: Accelerate your cloud migration by taking your on-premises BIG-IP services and policies with you to AWS or any other environment.
- Fast, automated deployments: Leveraging F5's Automation Toolchain (inclusive of AWS CFT's), you can quickly automate the end-to-end deployment and configuration of BIG-IP VE instances, and integrate with your preferred choice of CI/CD and automation tools.
- Enterprise grade support network: F5 support centers are strategically located across the globe - offering support through native speaking support engineers who are available when you are.
Details
Sold by
Delivery method
Delivery option
64-bit (x86) Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Latest version
Operating system
CentOs 7.3
Typical total price
This estimate is based on use of the seller's recommended configuration (m5.xlarge) in the US East (N. Virginia) Region. View pricing details
$1.022/hour
Pricing
Free trial
Try this product at no cost for 30 days according to the free trial terms set by the vendor. Usage-based pricing is in effect for usage beyond the free trial terms. Your free trial gets automatically converted to a paid subscription when the trial ends, but may be canceled any time before that.
Pricing is based on actual usage, with charges varying according to how much you consume. Subscriptions have no end date and may be canceled any time. Alternatively, you can pay upfront for a contract, which typically covering your anticipated usage for the contract duration. Any usage beyond contract will incur additional usage-based costs.
Additional AWS infrastructure costs may apply. Use the AWS Pricing Calculator to estimate your infrastructure costs.
Instance type | Product cost/hour | EC2 cost/hour | Total/hour |
|---|---|---|---|
t2.medium | $0.83 | $0.046 | $0.876 |
t2.large | $0.83 | $0.093 | $0.923 |
t3.medium | $0.83 | $0.042 | $0.872 |
t3.large | $0.83 | $0.083 | $0.913 |
m3.medium | $0.83 | $0.067 | $0.897 |
m3.large | $0.83 | $0.133 | $0.963 |
m3.xlarge | $0.83 | $0.266 | $1.096 |
m3.2xlarge | $0.83 | $0.532 | $1.362 |
m4.large | $0.83 | $0.10 | $0.93 |
m4.xlarge | $0.83 | $0.20 | $1.03 |
Additional AWS infrastructure costs
Type | Cost |
|---|---|
EBS General Purpose SSD (gp2) volumes | $0.10/per GB/month of provisioned storage |
Vendor refund policy
For the hourly licensed AMI, F5 does not offer refunds, you may cancel at any time.
Custom pricing options
Find a fit for enterprise or unique needs with a private offer.
Legal
Vendor terms and conditions
Upon subscribing to this product, you must acknowledge and agree to the terms and conditions outlined in the vendor's End User License Agreement (EULA) .
Content disclaimer
Vendors are responsible for their product descriptions and other product content. AWS does not warrant that vendors' product descriptions or other product content are accurate, complete, reliable, current, or error-free.
Delivery details
64-bit (x86) Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
An AMI is a virtual image that provides the information required to launch an instance. Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances are virtual servers on which you can run your applications and workloads, offering varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources. You can launch as many instances from as many different AMIs as you need.
Additional details
Usage instructions
Before deploy: Create a key pair and VPC (if none exists).
After deploy: Wait approximately 6 minutes before logging in. SSH (login w/ your ssh key as username 'admin') to the instance and run these tmsh commands to set the admin password (GUI User, not SSH): modify auth user admin password save sys config.
Log into the Config utility web page: If only one NIC was present during deploy, use https://[eth0-IP]:8443. If more than one NIC was present during deploy, use https://[eth0-IP]:443. Ensure your security groups allow access to the required port.
For details, see: http://clouddocs.f5.com/cloud/public/v1/aws_index.html https://support.f5.com/csp/knowledge-center/cloud/Public%20Cloud/Amazon%20Web%20Services
Resources
Support
Vendor support
You can open a support case in the F5 WebSupport Portal , review additional F5 technical support documentation here or contact F5 support directly (24x7x365):
- North America: 1-888-882-7535
- Outside North America: +800 11 ASK 4 F5 (800 1127 5435)
F5 support centers are strategically located for partners and customers in APAC, Japan, EMEA and North America. Regionally located support centers enable F5 to provide support in a number of languages through native-speaking engineers who are available when you are.
AWS infrastructure support
AWS Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel that is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced and technical support engineers. The service helps customers of all sizes and technical abilities to successfully utilize the products and features provided by Amazon Web Services.
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The BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) is the industry's most trusted and comprehensive app delivery and security solution. Providing everything from intelligent traffic management and visibility, to app security, access, and optimization, BIG-IP VE ensures all of your apps are fast, available, and secure.
Customer reviews
Thomas H.
It could be hard to scale because we will be encrypting and decrypting. The connection through the API Gateway worked in no time, which was fantastic.
Reviewed on Jan 13, 2019
Purchase verified by AWS
We use it primarily for WAF.
How has it helped my organization?
The ability to quickly set up. I understood it very quickly. I had some URLs which pointed to my load balancers, and inside there, I had to send an action to the API Gateway. I thought it was going to be a very complex thing for me to do, but that one rule that I had to create, it solved everything for me.
The connection through the API Gateway worked in no time, which was fantastic. From the perspective of us building it, once you have that one rule you can stamp it out. Also, it was easy for me to show operations, "Look how easy it is. There's nothing complex about it."
What is most valuable?
* iRules
* Simplicity
I was able to simply and quickly set up the WAF rules and security, and also set up easily complex policies and rules which gave me some great features to redirect. So, I had to integrate API Gateway into our WAF, because we're a healthcare company, and we have to maintain security. Therefore, they didn't want to have public endpoints that had not been inspected. The policy features inside the WAF rules were really easy for me to set up. What I thought was going to take me two months, I had done in about two weeks. Between Googling and F5 having great information, so instead of using traditional iRules, I used a policy thing that they recommended. It was much simpler and cleaner, and seemed to execute faster. It was a great feature.
The configuration and implementation of what I thought I was going to have to do was a lot simpler than I expected it to be. That was a plus.
What needs improvement?
People love them in security, but their costs are completely out of bounds. However, I'm not a security guy, so I don't necessarily know all the ins and outs of why our security team may have chosen this product versus other ones.
I am disappointed with the additional cost. 25 megabytes is low. If we get to a thousand, a gig, It is like three dollars an hour. While you can get a reduction in price, when I price them against anyone else, they are wildly overpriced.
I used GitHub for autoscaling CloudFormation, and I found two bugs and I submitted them. Their implementation in GitHub could be cleaner and allow for a bit more customization. We always end up customizing these things, so I found two bugs and I thought they were big bugs so I was surprised. This wasn't necessarily relative to product. It was more about the support role of GitHub and the way it was launching. However, the features that they said would work, did not.
For how long have I used the solution?
Less than one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It seems very stable. I've had no problems with stability at all. It's been rock solid, from the perspective of staying in line and working as expected.
I did individual testing. We were doing very small tests to start, 25 megabits. So, I was driving close to 25 megabits through it. Memory and CPU, I thought might be a bit of a concern, but overall it seemed good. It was doing what I needed it to do, and doing it well, so I didn't notice anything in my traffic.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I haven't thought of production workloads on it yet. I don't know how the performance is going to be in terms of CPU memory, but I was told by other people because of what we're doing on it, it could be hard to scale. So, we may have to end up buying more because we will be encrypting and decrypting. We have to inspect that traffic, so that will be CPU intensive. Therefore, one instance may not be enough for us, as we may be spinning up multiples across Multi-AZs.
We will be just stacking our costs. Granted, it is virtualization, and you can only get so much out of it. However, I haven't put true production workloads through it. I have only done my testing, and I am concerned a bit about these factors and how they may drive our costs even more, because I will have to spin up more WAFs to accommodate for high CPU and memory loads.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
From a cost perspective, I agreed to analyze the standards in terms of load balancing. However, the cost that they have with AWS are almost prohibitive. I'm being forced to use F5 WAF. I would not simply use it based on cost. I agree that they have some great features, but for me, cost is key in terms of AWS.
This applies to buying in the AWS Marketplace. If you go to a simple WAF doing 25 megabits, and I'm paying for the instance cost as well, it is over a dollar an hour. You can add that up and ask for some discounts, but relative to other players, they are significantly more expensive.
We will need a lot of these, and it can be a real negative driver in terms of spend and how we will be able to move forward.
Purchasing though the AWS Marketplace was easy; it was a piece of cake. You go right in, and the options are there. It was nice you can pick the different kind of group you wanted and what type of security you wanted. It did put in a lot of information that would build a lot of the initial infrastructure for me in terms of supporting my load balancer and creating security. Granted, I destroyed it all, but it was nice and it was there. It gave me the ability to level set what I should create versus what they put in place. I could see what they're doing here and I can match it to my own criteria. What they put in the AWS Marketplace and came through with the license, it worked well.
We chose to go through the AWS Marketplace because you can do almost anything you are going to launch there. The first time you launch, you always grab from the market, particularly for PoCs, as it's just easier. There's no reason why I wouldn't go through the AWS Marketplace, because they've already have F5 WAF. It's exactly what I want and it's exactly what I needed, so I can go from there.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
What other advice do I have?
The product works.
We have F5 all across our environment. We use them for both VPNs and for traditional load balancers. So, we have VIPRIONs and several different versions of on-premise F5 hardware, as well. From an operations team perspective, everything is easy to learn; seamless. The ability to get teams to focus on AWS F5 is easy because they already know everything there. From an operational perspective, it is a win-win because they already know how to work with the F5.
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Guojun J.
Using the product, applications are jittery. Initial setup is easy and pretty standard.
Reviewed on Jan 11, 2019
Purchase verified by AWS
This is for remote access to an internal network of the organization to do all types of work. The requirement for VPN is secure with high performance.
How has it helped my organization?
Two issues found in using BIG-IP VPN compared with Cisco VPN:
* Performance: Two applications are being used: remote desktop (RDP or rdesktop) and VNC viewer. Comparisons are done on the same client machines (Windows 10 and Linux 16.04) over the same network. When using Cisco VPN, applications are working smoothly while occasionally jittery. When using F5 VPN, applications are quite jittery. Sometimes applications are useless (too slow to refresh the screen).
* Client support: Cisco VPN has more Clients supported than BIG-IP, e.g., BSD.
What is most valuable?
Still not clear why our IT decided to switch to F5 BIG-IP after two years experience. It appears as if there may be some advantage (possibly) related to security concerns (more secure?).
What needs improvement?
Performance is the first thing and most critical issue that needs improvement.
Supporting more Clients would be nice, but without improving performance, F5 will not widely be used for critical work. It killed an international meeting the first time that we used BIG-IP VPN.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Performance: Using the product, applications are jittery.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues.
Which solutions did we use previously?
We used Cisco VPN. I am not sure why our IT forced us to switch to F5 without our feedback.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup is easy and pretty standard. Setup is not much different from all other VPNs.
What about the implementation team?
In-house.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Unless the price difference is large, this is not the primary concern for the product. The performance and product-related issues (secure for VPN, multi-function for network device, etc.) are the keys.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
ipmplspr538920
Along with load balancing, we perform a lot of packet inspections, URL rewriting, and SSL interceptions via iRule
Reviewed on Jan 10, 2019
Purchase verified by AWS
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?
Technicab017
Improves our program performance and security
Reviewed on Jan 06, 2019
Purchase verified by AWS
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.
ChiefSecd99d
It is a central point of entry for our user base providing user authentication
Reviewed on Dec 30, 2018
Purchase verified by AWS
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.