F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition - GOOD (PAYG, 10Gbps)

My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  is for LTM and GTM. For LTM, I use it for load balancing, and GTM is for global load balancing, which functions as intelligent DNS.

Let's suppose we have one application abc.com. We create an alias on abc.gslb.com and forward that traffic to a CNAME, which in turn forwards the traffic to the GTM. The GTM does the load balancing between the data centers. Sometimes it is active-active, and sometimes it is an active-standby setup similar to DCDR, depending on the requirement and application team requests. After that, if there is a disaster at some data center, such as power issues, the standby data center will serve that purpose. This really increases our availability and performance of the application, and we are receiving fewer complaints, almost none.

My use case is known mainly for the GTM and LTM.

The best feature of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  is SSL offloading. There are different methods to deploy an application at Layer 2 and Layer 3 setup. Based on the requirement, we do that, so it is a complete ADC  application delivery control, providing all the solutions that the application team needs.

A particular feature I need in F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is iRule redirection. If they need SSL offloading or pass-through, or bridging, all kinds of solutions are available. Based on the requirement, we can fulfill those needs, even with GTM topology, which can be active-active or active-standby. In load balancing, there are different methods, so ratios and all can be easily configured as per the requirement. It works as a full proxy architecture, so it has the full capability to understand the request and response.

Another feature of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition that stands out to me is that it is template-based. For rapid deployment, if we need to create hundreds or thousands of VIPs at the same time, we can use iApp and scripting to do that easily. These are the major features, and for automation, we can easily manage that through F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has positively impacted my organization. Without LTM, there is a single point of failure. Since we have LTM, we are protecting our application. Previously we faced DoS attacks, and through iRule, we blocked those IPs. This iRule is a great feature, and now with our LTM, we are not exposing our actual server on the internet. Instead, we are exposing our VIP IP, providing security and scalability. We have the flexibility to add or remove servers as needed.

Regarding specific metrics or outcomes, earlier if one of the servers went down, there was a significant impact. Since F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a smart device, it can monitor the services and applications irrespective of the port, checking whether the application is available or not. It is significantly reducing downtime. If any server is causing an issue, such as if the service is running but the internal application has crashed, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition will mark that server as down and will not send traffic to it. This increases performance and availability, building trust with clients, which directly translates into revenue. If there is reputational loss, we can lose money as well for the organization. We send our solutions to other vendors and recommend F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition as a great product that everyone should need.

Improvements for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition should include training for newcomers. If they are not aware, it can be beneficial for them to learn. In authentication, there is currently a single method to add a single IP. Adding a fallback IP would also help. I am not sure if that feature will be included in the upcoming version, but I am still using an older version where that feature is not available.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for approximately five years, and I have been working on F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition LTM virtual editions.

My advice to others looking into using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is to definitely go with the full potential of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition LTM. It is a great product that will make your life easier and reduce costs. They provide great support, and the TAC team is there whenever needed. You can log a case and they will help.

I am currently using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  for LTM and GTM purposes across two data centers. For load balancing between the data centers, I use GTM, and within a data center, load balancing is handled by LTM.

For a critical application, we have created an active standby setup using GTM. If something happens with DC1, traffic will automatically be transferred to DC2. For the LTM use case, we have an application such as abc.com with 50 servers behind it, and we perform load balancing between those servers.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  offers exceptional features, primarily SSL Offloading and redirection, which I use on most of the VIPs.

SSL Offloading helps when I need to perform content inspection, and redirection allows me to redirect traffic since we do not accept traffic on port 80 and want to direct it to port 443. In scenarios where we need to redirect to a maintenance page, redirection is invaluable. When the team requires client IPs in a layer two setup, I create an iRule, which serves as another use case for logging purposes. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition does not provide client IP by default, so I enable logging through iRule to address this need, making these truly awesome features.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has positively impacted my organization by ensuring application availability and reliability while avoiding a single point of failure through LTM and GTM. If anything goes wrong, traffic is simply redirected to a different data center. When one server goes down, LTM does not send traffic to that server, and it also helps me increase server capacity. If I need to patch and do not want to send traffic to a particular server, I can simply remove it from the pool.

Using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, specifically the LTM, has significantly reduced downtime. Previously, if any server went down, there was an outage, but now with load balancing, I can check the application status irrespective of services through health monitoring. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is very stable with no issues regarding reliability or downtime.

To improve F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, specifically LTM, I believe that when creating an LDAP server, there is only one option to add an LDAP. If there were a secondary option to add two LDAP server IPs, that would be extremely helpful.

The primary needed improvement for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is the addition of the LDAP option.

I have already evaluated F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's scalability by defining the CPU and size accordingly.

I have worked on other solutions before F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition during my time in a service-based company.

I have seen a return on investment from using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition as it is saving our time and money. In business terms, we are not losing business, and customers are relying on and trusting our services, which is why they are paying us. We are saving money by providing availability at all times.

I do not have visibility into the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, as this part is handled by management. However, I have worked on support costs, and I believe that the support costs are reasonable compared to other vendors.

Before choosing F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we evaluated other options such as Radware. However, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is more cost-effective and better in every aspect, plus it is user-friendly.

I would definitely recommend F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition to others so they can opt for this option.

My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  is as an LTM, which means load balancer, and also as an APM , which means Access Policy Manager, to distribute traffic to endpoints and provide security features including authentications with SAML features that provide authentication using SSL certificates.

A specific example of how I use F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  as a load balancer is by hosting it on a virtual server with multiple services, where I can place the LTM load balancer before or after a router or firewall to distribute traffic equally among servers handling the same service.

I have only one year of experience and need to grow in my understanding of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

The best feature F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers is the APM  providing authentication with certificates, ensuring that every user or tenant needs to be registered on F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's APM to access the service.

The certificate matching process works in practice by making the environment secure as unknown users cannot access the service unless their certification keys match with the service certification.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has helped me complete tasks faster with fewer errors, and it makes onboarding easier for new users because its well-designed graphical user interface that freshers can easily adopt.

I believe F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition could be improved, but I do not have specific improvements to share due to my limited experience with the product. There is no need for improvements in F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition as it already has an adequate interface to work on.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition since last year.

In my experience, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is stable, and I have not faced any downtime because our setup is active-passive.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is highly scalable; there is no downtime regarding reliability and scalability since we can set it up as an HA pair, where if the active goes down, the passive takes over seamlessly.

The customer support for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is very good; they quickly resolve any difficulties I face, and I appreciate their support.

My advice for others looking into using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is that it handles traffic well and provides centralized management for certificates, efficiently managing L4 and Layer 7 load distribution and reducing CPU load on backend servers. I would rate this product 9.5 out of 10.

Most of my experience with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  has been around deploying it in virtualized setups for application load balancing, traffic management, and security use cases, supporting critical systems rather than just testing or labs. I have primarily used it in production and virtual environments.

We have a lot of internally hosted applications for our internal team members across the board, and F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  has helped us with that. All of these are very big infrastructure, very big environments. We have deployed it as the primary load balancer in front of multiple application servers to distribute traffic evenly, handle SSL offloading to reduce server load, and also to monitor application health and automatically fail over unhealthy instances.

In our environment, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is deployed as a virtual appliance within our virtualization platform. It sat in front of our core web applications and backend services, acting as the primary load balancer and traffic management, especially in the traffic management layer. We have configured it in a HA setup to avoid single points of failure. It handled SSL termination and distributed traffic. From a network perspective, it was placed in a segmented zone between the external facing layer and the internal servers, ensuring controlled and secure traffic flow.

We are using VMware supporting our internal and customer-facing applications for the deployment of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

There are a few features within F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition that really did stand out in day-to-day production use. SSL offloading has been a big one for us, followed by application health monitoring. Adding to that, overall traffic management features such as intelligent load balancing and session persistence helped keep performance consistent even during peak usage. Together, those features are what really made the platform reliable and production ready for us. SSL offloading, health monitoring, and intelligent traffic management are the most valuable features I have considered. There could be some that have slipped through the cracks, but these are the primary ones which our main focus goes towards.

Before F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we had occasional slowdowns and single points of failure. After putting F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition in place, we saw much better performance and consistency and close to zero downtime.

We have used F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition in production as a virtual load balancer in front of core web applications for SSL offload, which eliminated downtime and improved performance.

There is always scope for improvement. Overall, it is a very strong and reliable platform. Looking at the scope for improvement, the platform is extremely powerful. However, for new engineers, it can take some time to fully understand and use all the features efficiently, especially around advanced traffic policies and customization. New engineers tend to struggle and find their way through it. The licensing and pricing model could also be simpler and more flexible, particularly in virtual and cloud environments where scaling up and down is pretty common. A flexible model could put us in a much better shape. While the interface is functional, some parts of the UI could be more modern and intuitive to make day-to-day management faster. Apart from that, I do not think there is something beyond that which needs to be changed or kept under observation to be improved.

From a documentation standpoint, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is pretty clear on that. Sometimes it can be very dense, but oftentimes it gets the job done. In terms of support, overall it is solid, but response time can vary depending on severity, licensing, and during peak times of the day. That being said, there are more refinement areas rather than major gaps. The core functionality is very strong and versatile.

I have used F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for close to a couple of years now.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is stable in my experience.

Before migrating to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, the organization was using different solutions that caused instability issues in our current environment. After moving to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we have seen significantly fewer outages, smoother maintenance, and noticeable performance improvements.

After migrating to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we have had fewer outages, very little downtime, and easy maintenance windows. From an availability standpoint, outages dropped very significantly after moving to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. The combination of reliable load balancing, health checks, and failover meant applications stayed online even when individual servers had issues. Overall, as somebody who manages network and servers, I personally had very few friction instances where I had to deal with applications and software services teams. Although they are part of internal operations, I have had a much better experience after migrating to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition during maintenance and outage windows. There have been pretty significant benefits for us when we migrated from the previous solution to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has been a very solid experience regarding scalability. Because it is a virtual edition, we were able to scale resources such as CPU, memory, and throughput based on our demand without major architectural changes. As application traffic increased, we could adjust capacity or deploy additional instances relatively easily. It has been a pretty good experience so far.

Customer support for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition changes from licensing based and other factors. When we have engaged support for critical issues, engineers were knowledgeable and helpful. At times it took us a pretty decent amount of time for us to get hold of an engineer. That being said, everything has its pros and cons.

Previously, we were using Citrix NetScaler , and we have had a pretty rough experience with it. That is why we explored options and changed from Citrix NetScaler  to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

The advice I would give to somebody else looking into using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is to invest time upfront in proper design and learning the platform before rolling it into production. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is extremely powerful, but it is not a plug-and-play tool. Understanding the platform before deploying it into production is essential.

I have personally not dealt with pricing and licensing setup for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. The other team took care of it. I was solely responsible for deploying and maintaining it internally in the environment. Management took care of the pricing and licensing part.

We have seen enough uptime with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. For us, uptime is what makes us revenue. We have seen less revenue loss or, potentially, we are in a much better shape in front of our customers. That means a lot, and we have gotten enough return on investment so far.

We have done extensive research and gotten some personal opinions from industry professionals before choosing F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. Some lighter or more basic platforms were easier to set up initially, but then they lacked the stability and the core functionality that we were expecting. They failed our tests. Over time, these limitations showed up as outages, performance bottlenecks, and operational risk. What stood with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is that it passed all our tests with flying colors and that is ultimately why we have standardized on F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

We have a lot of internally hosted applications for our internal team members across the board, and F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has helped us with that. All of these are very big infrastructure, very big environments. We have deployed it as the primary load balancer in front of multiple application servers to distribute traffic evenly, handle SSL offloading to reduce server load, and also to monitor application health and automatically fail over unhealthy instances. Before F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we had occasional slowdowns and single points of failure. After putting F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition in place, we saw much better performance and consistency and close to zero downtime.

After migrating to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we have had fewer outages, very little downtime, and easy maintenance windows. From an availability standpoint, outages dropped very significantly after moving to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. The combination of reliable load balancing, health checks, and failover meant applications stayed online even when individual servers had issues. Overall, as somebody who manages network and servers, I personally had very few friction instances where I had to deal with applications and software services teams. Although they are part of internal operations, I have had a much better experience after migrating to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition during maintenance and outage windows.

We did not track it down to an exact percentage, but from an operational standpoint, the difference is crystal clear with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. Even to date, we still tend to notice the difference. Before F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we were dealing with recurring service interruptions. The list is endless with recurring service interruptions, sometimes multiple incidents in a month, in a week. After moving to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, those dropped to very rare occurrences. What a new normal used to be, it changed drastically for us and outages are happening once in a blue moon. I would rate this review a seven.