F5 Distributed Cloud Services

F5 Distributed Cloud Services  works as a Software as a Service based security, networking, and application management that can be deployed across multi-cloud, on-premises, or edge locations. It comes with an integrated package that includes Network Firewalls , Web Application Firewall , API security, and API Gateways into a single software. You don't have to buy four different vendors or four different bundles from other vendors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services  comes as a package or bundle which has the load balancer, network firewall, web application firewall, and API security all in a single software stack.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments. This unified console is the best thing because you don't have to hire multiple people to operate with different environments, so you can unify that. It has a strong integrated security stack, including Web Application Firewall  and bot defense. The defense system is very good, so you will hardly experience any attacks on the organization, and it really prevents them. Security is also very strong.

DDoS is a very common type of malware or attack in the market and can be easily injected into the network. F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a very good feature that completely protects the network from DDoS and similar attacks.

Real-time intelligence is timely and gets up to date. It has a super solid Kubernetes  and DevOps features that enhance the security because whenever there's a new update or patches, it delivers them on time. This keeps the network and the complete cloud services of the organization strong with unified security which keeps the edge environment very compelling.

Load balancing is an important feature to understand. A load balancer works so that if you have one server, the completely traffic moves to that server. Sometimes what happens is it gets overloaded and it increases the chances of a crash. What this feature does is it balances the load by allowing you to put additional servers in different geo-locations. For example, if China users want to access the service, China users, India users, or US users don't have to access that one device, but it gets divided into three different zones. China users access the APAC server, and US users access the US region servers. This is how it balances the load of the traffic. F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well. It also provides redundancy, so if one server goes down, for example if the China server is down, China users can now access the APAC or India server without downtime. That's how it helps.

There are some gaps between the implementation, expectation, and the reality. The main point is user integration with other parts, such as on-premises. One thing is on-prem and the other one is on the cloud. It is sometimes difficult to implement or execute and bring that onto the same page. This is one thing I would say requires improvement and definitely they can solve this. Basically, this is a critical concern.

For one thing, if the organization does not need the complete bundle, it comes with huge costing included if you're putting something in a bundle. For example, one organization needs only a simpler use case, for example a CDN  with very lightweight sort of security. I'm talking about very small organizations. For them, it is huge costing because they have to buy a complete bundle. They should have what CloudFlare provides, which is a simple CDN  feature and API security that is very cheap and affordable. F5 Distributed Cloud Services doesn't have something like that. That is the reason why CloudFlare remains a leader in that space for small customers and those who have just started or are startups. That is one thing that can definitely be worked on.

It is because there are other players in the market that provide very cheaper and simpler environments or infrastructures, CloudFlare and Akamai . Comparatively, F5 Distributed Cloud Services is relatively much more expensive.

I have been using F5 Distributed Cloud Services for probably six to eight months.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services is very stable. I won't face any issues with stability as a concern because it provides the load balancers and all redundancy, so it's very unlikely that we have any downtime.

Call services they need to work on because mostly whenever I had some issues with F5 support, I have to send an email. Email sometimes gets a delayed response and they cannot immediately respond to your questions. Sometimes it is urgent, so again, I have to rely on their email services. Email services are good, but they need to have a good human-based interaction with the call centers.

If the organization is pretty old and already established in the market, then F5 Distributed Cloud Services is good for their investment. But for small players, it is completely not worth it. There are other players which provide similar features in a very affordable price, so I would give them a low rating.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services is definitely good with what they do. They have so many other technologies including BIG-IPs, distributed cloud services, CDN, and WAF, and they are doing pretty much good in this segment. As I mentioned earlier, if an already established organization wants to buy a bundle, then F5 Distributed Cloud Services has a clear, outstanding reputation in the market. Some people who cannot go with that, the big organization, then there are other options available. Whatever they promise, if they are charging a higher amount, they are giving the network organization a secure environment for sure.

One thing they need to work on is support, and the other one is that instead of a bundle, they should also come up with small packages for smaller players and smaller organizations who want to buy only services such as CDN or security APIs or simple WAF. They have the features available, but still, they can work on it. If with the cloud services, somebody wants to customize it, they should have that ability.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services  is being used for web application firewall along with API security, bot protection, and DDoS protection.

There are two scenarios involving web applications and mobile applications with applications hosted across private clouds and public clouds. When switching from one cloud to another, there is no need to change anything on the backend servers on the cloud service provider. Only the DNS level on F5 itself requires changes.

F5 provided a cloud security platform called a SaaS platform, which is a distributed cloud platform where CNAME and DNS changes can be added, and then the application load balancer can be deployed straight away.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services  has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention.

Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users.

For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that.

The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability  is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues.

Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard.

Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.

Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed. Since 30 minutes of downtime is huge for applications, maintenance, it impacted RPO, RTO, and all. The F5 CTO and their senior management team addressed that issue.

For availability, they have added additional clusters across all the regional edges in the Kubernetes  clusters to enhance availability. However, this improvement needs to be monitored since it was a past incident.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for more than two years.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services is stable, and they are improving also.

There is no issue on the scalability part of F5 Distributed Cloud Services. The only thing is the initial phase is a challenge; scalability is not a concern. On the initial stage regarding pricing, the moment of committing is the only concern. On the scalability part, there have not been much issues.

Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP. This support is very good. F5 provides remote support also. I would provide 9.5 for support.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services has an easy implementation across all the service providers including AWS , GCP, and Azure . F5 DXE has been implemented everywhere, and it is very easy to integrate.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services was deployed with a partner. Initially, the partner did not support it, but the team manages other solutions, so the people know the technology and have easily adopted it.

There is definitely a return on investment in F5 Distributed Cloud Services.

Compared to other providers, F5 Distributed Cloud Services is a little expensive. However, on the performance side, it is a robust solution. If comparing Check Point and F5 Distributed Cloud Services, F5 is a little expensive. The only difference is in price; technically, they are pretty much the same.

Whenever feedback is given, whether positive or negative, F5 takes it as a serious note and then fixes it. A lack of functionalities is not an issue. At the earlier stage when F5 Distributed Cloud Services was purchased two years ago, there was a lot of technology that was not able to be deployed.

For example, there were three to four different applications from different companies, and they could not be seen in a single dashboard. It was necessary to go to each and every dashboard and collect the centralized access management part. Now F5 has fixed it, and it is working fine. Overall, I would give F5 Distributed Cloud Services a rating of 8 out of 10.

There are two main use cases for Distributed Call Services: DDoS or Distributed attacks protection and WAF  web application security or firewall.

All features are valuable. In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation. This is a comprehensive package for web application security. The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation.

It's a long way to be perfect, of course, as with all solutions. The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF . There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality.

I worked for an F5 partner, not as a customer. We used the Services line for DDoS protection. It was the main use case for Silver Line for about one and a half years.

There are compliance issues, mainly if a customer wants something that isn't possible, yet not with the functionality.

I have had no problem with scalability yet, so it's good.

From my point of view, support is responsible and okay.

Distributed code is easy to set up. If rated on a scale from one to ten, where ten means very easy, I would probably rate it a nine.

For those who want to use Azure  Cloud Services, consider implementing it. It's pretty good. From my point of view, it's easy to set up and offers strong functionalities.

The overall product rating is nine out of ten.

A common use case is multi-cloud networking. If a global customer has applications on different clouds that come together as one application, F5 can be a good entry point for that application with additional security.

Using F5 Distributed Cloud Services  eliminates the need for hardware in your data center, resulting in cost savings.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services  is valued for multi-cloud networking and easy integration with DevOps tools and Kubernetes . It offers comprehensive security, including DDoS protection, API protection, and application protection through a unified console. Multi-cloud networking and API Protection  and Discovery are unique features.

F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware.

The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive.

I estimate F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been available for no more than two years.

I rate the overall solution as highly stable, scoring it a ten out of ten.

I rate the scalability of the solution at a ten out of ten, indicating that it should work flawlessly.

I have worked with their support for over ten years and rate it a ten out of ten since the quality is among the best.

I work with other vendors, such as Broadcom, BeyondTrust, and Qualys.

The cloud version is quick to implement, typically taking a few hours.

From my company, one person is usually enough for implementation. For maintenance, there are four engineers who handle duties between teams.

The solution provides a return on investment by eliminating the need for hardware in the data center.

I am not involved in sales, so I do not deal with the pricing aspect directly. I give the cost of the solution a four out of ten since it is not a cheap product.

I recommend the solution for its features like multi-cloud networking and easy integration with DevOps tools. However, cost comparisons with other services show a significant difference.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.