Overview
Video 1
Video 1
Video 2

Product video
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.](https://www.f5.com/products/get-f5/perpetual-licensing-gbb)*
The BETTER 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.
BIG-IP DNS - Direct globally distributed users to the closest or best performing app servers with global server load balancing and high-performance DNS services.
BIG-IP AFM - Mitigate resource and network crippling attacks with multi-layered DDoS protection and network security.
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:
- *[F5 Automation Toolchain](https://www.f5.com/products/automation-and-orchestration)*
- *[CloudFormation Templates](https://github.com/F5Networks/f5-aws-cloudformation-v2)*
- *[Quick Start Guide]( https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart/architecture/f5-big-ip-ve/)*
For sales inquiries, contact our sales organization at *[here.](https://www.f5.com/products/get-f5#contact)* 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
Introducing multi-product solutions
You can now purchase comprehensive solutions tailored to use cases and industries.
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Pricing
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Dimension | Cost/hour |
|---|---|
m5.xlarge Recommended | $0.87 |
m6i.8xlarge | $0.87 |
m3.2xlarge | $0.87 |
r7i.xlarge | $0.87 |
m5n.2xlarge | $0.87 |
r7i.4xlarge | $0.87 |
m6i.large | $0.87 |
t3.large | $0.87 |
r5.4xlarge | $0.87 |
m7i.8xlarge | $0.87 |
Vendor refund policy
For the hourly licensed AMI, F5 does not offer refunds, you may cancel at any time.
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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](https://websupport.f5.com/)* , review additional F5 technical support documentation *[here](https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K25327565)* 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.
Standard contract
Customer reviews
Centralized policies have strengthened application security and streamline load balancing
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is application delivery and security, primarily for load balancing and Layer 7 (application-layer) protection of web applications.
We use it to distribute traffic across multiple backend servers to ensure high availability, performance optimization, and zero single point of failure. On the security side, we use it to protect applications from common web threats such as SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), CSRF, brute-force and credential-stuffing attacks, bot traffic, malicious scanners, and Layer 7 DDoS floods.
Additionally, we leverage BIG-IP VE for:
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SSL/TLS offloading and inspection to reduce server load
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Persistence/session management (cookie / source IP) for stable user sessions
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Health monitoring to automatically detect failures and route traffic to healthy nodes
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Traffic visibility and logging for troubleshooting, compliance, and faster incident response
Overall, it has been a reliable solution for improving application uptime, security posture, and user experience in production environments.
How has it helped my organization?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has had a very positive impact on our organization by improving application delivery, availability, and overall service stability. It has helped us ensure high uptime by distributing traffic across multiple servers and automatically routing users to healthy backend resources through effective health monitoring.
It also enhanced application performance through optimized load balancing and SSL offloading, which reduced server load and improved response times for end users. From an operational perspective, it has saved significant time for our team by providing better traffic visibility, faster troubleshooting, and centralized control, which reduced downtime and improved incident response.
Overall, BIG-IP VE has strengthened our application environment by delivering reliable performance, better availability, and faster service delivery with improved efficiency.
What is most valuable?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition’s best features are load balancing, high availability, and Layer 7 security. It keeps applications running smoothly by distributing traffic, provides failover to avoid downtime, and protects web apps from attacks like SQL injection, XSS, bots, and brute-force attempts. On top of that, the monitoring and visibility are very helpful. It makes troubleshooting faster and saves a lot of time for the operations team. Overall, it’s a reliable solution that improves performance, security, and availability at the same time.
What needs improvement?
I believe F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition could be improved in terms of pricing and licensing transparency.
However, customers who purchase through authorized partners may receive better pricing and licensing options, as it largely depends on the partner’s capability and commercial offering.
From a pricing perspective, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is somewhat high compared to others, and the licensing is provided as annual-based licenses rather than perpetual licenses.
There are some issue we are faced we are getting clear kb article
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working in my current field for the last 3.5 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Yes, it is very stable solution you can as so far on your own requirement
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is highly scalable. You can scale it by increasing CPU/RAM resources, adding more backend pool members, and deploying additional VE instances in HA or clustered designs. It works well for growing traffic demands as long as proper sizing and licensing are planned.
How are customer service and support?
yes we are supporting customer in deployment and providing technical services to all our customers
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we were using Citrix NetScaler .
How was the initial setup?
it's less complex from others
What about the implementation team?
Yes, we used a local reseller and system integrator for the deployment, and the overall experience was very good. They supported us with licensing, sizing recommendations, and end-to-end implementation, and ensured a smooth rollout with proper configuration and post-deployment support.
What was our ROI?
Yes, we have seen a positive ROI with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. It improved application uptime and availability through load balancing and health monitoring, which reduced service outages. It also saved operational time by enabling faster troubleshooting and centralized traffic control, and reduced backend server load through SSL offloading, resulting in better performance with fewer escalations and less downtime.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Pricing and licensing for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition are generally on the higher side compared to other ADC solutions. Setup cost mainly depends on the required modules and sizing. Licensing is mostly subscription-based (annual/term), and if the evaluation license expires, some LTM features can be disabled, so license monitoring is important.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Citrix ADC (NetScaler) before choosing F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. Both are strong ADC solutions for load balancing and application delivery, but we found some key differences.
F5 BIG-IP VE vs Citrix ADC (NetScaler) – Pros & Cons
✅ F5 BIG-IP VE – Pros
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Very strong LTM load balancing and traffic management
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Mature Layer 7 security and policy control (especially with iRules and security profiles)
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Excellent stability and performance in enterprise environments
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Strong monitoring, logging, and troubleshooting visibility
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Better flexibility for advanced customization and complex use cases
❌ F5 BIG-IP VE – Cons
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Licensing and pricing can be higher compared to alternatives
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Requires skilled resources for advanced configurations (iRules, policies, security tuning)
✅ Citrix ADC – Pros
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Good load balancing and application optimization
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Often seen as cost-effective depending on licensing and bundles
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Works well in environments heavily based on Citrix virtualization / VDI
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Strong GUI-based configuration for standard use cases
❌ Citrix ADC – Cons
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Advanced customization and troubleshooting can be less flexible compared to F5
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Some enterprises find F5 more stable for high-complexity deployments
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Security/policy tuning may require more effort depending on the environment
Summary
Overall, we selected F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition because it provided better application availability, stronger traffic control, and more reliable performance for our production requirements.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition 9/10 overall.
Advice: Plan the sizing and licensing properly, deploy it in HA (Active/Standby) for high availability, and monitor license validity (especially EV licenses) to avoid any service impact. If configured correctly, it delivers excellent load balancing, application availability, and Layer 7 security.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Load balancing has increased web availability and improves performance for critical applications
What is our primary use case?
Recently, we had a requirement from a customer who hosts a web application on a web server and needed to increase the availability of the website. We suggested and implemented a solution where we placed F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition in front of the server and deployed three servers behind it, all hosting the same application. Using this approach, we have increased both the performance and availability of the application.
What is most valuable?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has a positive impact on our customers. As I shared in the example scenario, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition helped our customers increase the high availability and performance of their applications, specifically their web applications.
What needs improvement?
Another area for improvement is that training for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is not widely available. While there is paid training available on the F5.com website, there is generally no free training available for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
For how long have I used the solution?
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
How are customer service and support?
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
How was the initial setup?
What about the implementation team?
What was our ROI?
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
I gave it a 10 out of 10 because F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition truly solves a significant problem of high availability and traffic and performance improvement in web applications.
The metrics showing performance and availability improvement with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition include less downtime. Since we have increased redundancy on the web servers by placing three web servers behind F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, if one of the servers fails, the other two will serve the traffic. Additionally, faster response time is achieved because we have more compute power with three servers serving the same purpose and hosting the same website.
I would highly recommend F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition to everyone because we have had a phenomenal experience using this device. It is a very capable solution. We have used the Local Traffic Manager and we are in the process of implementing the Advanced Security Module, Application Security Module, or Advanced WAF .
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a very good solution that solves many of the problems faced by small to medium-sized businesses.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Focuses on securing application access with dependable integration
What is our primary use case?
My main use cases for using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition are mainly WAF . That's the main purpose.
We use F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition mostly for the login functionality with our Salesforce and for security login purposes.
What is most valuable?
The features I appreciate the most about F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition are the WAF capabilities.
The advanced web application firewall protection and SSL offloading capabilities of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition have been utilized in my organization. These features are contributing to our application security and compliance posture.
What needs improvement?
I find it too complex to assess the impact of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's automated deployment and integration with container orchestration platforms, such as Kubernetes and OpenShift, on my applications delivery speed and reliability.
I don't use F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's automated deployment and integration with container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes and OpenShift.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for about five to six years, possibly longer.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is stable and reliable. I have not experienced any stability or reliability issues with the solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition scales with us as we are continuously expanding the deals of the product.
The solution is performing well and keeping up with our needs as we continue to increase our usage.
How are customer service and support?
I do not use customer service and technical support directly with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. We have an integrator called Spider. They are satisfactory and whenever they encounter issues, they open a case with F5 and assist us.
I would rate the customer success and technical support for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition an eight out of ten.
What was our ROI?
I have no idea about the ROI from using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. We use the technology on the technical side, not on the financial aspects.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't have information about the pricing, setup costs, or licensing for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
What other advice do I have?
I do not use the load balancing and traffic management features of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
I use other container orchestration platforms, but they are not relevant to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
I have utilized F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's ability to integrate with cloud platforms including AWS , Azure , GCP, and Salesforce .
I have no idea how this integration has helped my organization manage hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
The seamless integration of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition with existing F5 technologies is not important to me as I do not use other technologies from F5.
Financially, we require F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition because we need the product. We don't have anything else that performs the same functions, so we use it without trying alternatives.
I just use and manage F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, though I didn't handle its deployment.
I would recommend F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition as a solution to others.
I would rate F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition an eight out of ten overall.
Virtual deployment boosts efficiency and support is quick
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
It's easy to use, and they have good support. When we open tickets, they are answered quickly, and they help us solve any issues. When our environment starts to grow, it is better to have the virtual solution because we have more virtual VJPs on fewer machines.
What needs improvement?
It's expensive and could be cheaper. At the moment, I can't think of anything to improve.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very stable. We use a cluster in our environment. We use the cluster more when we need to update some of our machines to ensure no downtime. It is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is satisfactory based on our needs.
How are customer service and support?
They have good support. When we open tickets, they are answered quickly, and they help us solve any issues.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
One day is enough to set up. Today, we deploy a machine by ourselves. When we started to implement the environment, we had support from F5. Today, for example, if it's necessary to deploy a new machine, I can do this by myself.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's like FortiWeb. It's expensive and could be cheaper.
What other advice do I have?
The solution is very good. I would rate the solution maybe ten out of ten.
Offers easy-to-use integration capabilities
What is our primary use case?
I use the solution in my company to meet the virtualization needs of our customers. In the case of a payment gateway, according to the application, every VirtualBox gets segregated. Every VirtualBox will have multiple banks connected to one particular vCMP for a specific application.
What is most valuable?
The solution's most valuable feature is its good virtualization concepts. My company is very happy with all the basic features of the product.
What needs improvement?
On-the-go upgrades are an option that the tool currently lacks, making it an area where improvements are required. If you have an instance where you have a specific configuration of CPU memory when you want to increase it, you have to parallelly create a new instance, and you have to export and import the configurations. On the go, if you could give any option to shut down VirtualBox, increase CPUs, and start it again, that would be a good option.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for more than four to five years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution.
In F5 BIG-IP i5800, if you have assigned a single CPU and memory for a virtual instance and if it increases, you can just add a CPU and memory to the existing vCMP. What you have to do is spin one more virtual instance with the two CPUs and double the memory, like eight GB memory, for example. You can't just increase the existing VirtualBox. You have to create another VirtualBox parallel, download the configurations, and import it.
My company provides one banking application to around ten customers. My company has around seven virtual instances and seven applications, each application having around 70 customers running on one F5 BIG-IP i5800. My company has created seven VirtualBox.
How are customer service and support?
The solution's technical support was good. Whenever my company reached out to the product's support team, we got solutions to our issue. In case an issue doesn't get solved, then it gets escalated, and the product's support team provides our company with an engineer to deal with the problem.
How was the initial setup?
The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model and the cloud model. For the on-premises version, my company deployed it on something like F5 BIG-IP i5800, and for the cloud deployment, we have installed the virtualizations on Cisco CSP kind of tools. My company ensures that VirtualBox is deployed on CSP. In both the aforementioned scenarios, we have tested the tool, after which we started to use the product in the past two to three years.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My company's customers need to make payments for the licensing charges attached to the product. It is an expensive product. As per the requirements of our company's customers, we opt for it if it is the only hosting option available. My company also needs to see which box from F5 matches the requirements of our customers.
What other advice do I have?
Speaking about the impact of the tool on the application delivery process, I can say that static routes are limited. For every vCMP, there are some limitations of VLAN IDs and static routes, like the number of routes that can be added. There are some limitations in the product that are likely to impact our company's applications.
In terms of performance and scalability features, according to the application limit, my company can add a single CPU per vCMP or two CPUs per vCMP, which is dependent on the load requirements that we plan. The company also needs to plan according to the application requirements. My company didn't face any issues following the aforementioned process.
My company provisions vCMPs based on the concurrent session support and SSL support criteria. Based on the data sheets, my company checks the total concurrent connections, SSL connections, and throughput limit. Even when my company plans to do segregations, we plan to do them according to the specifications described in the data sheets.
You need ten pieces of the tool for load balancing. If my company's customers' requirements only consist of a product that offers five features, then they can adopt a basic OEM tool. If some customers need more features in a product, my company recommends F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. Mostly our company's customers do accept our suggestions and choose F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
I recommend the product to others who plan to use it since it is a user-friendly and not-so-complex tool.
The integration capabilities of the product are easy to use, and there is no complexity involved in it.
I rate the tool an eight out of ten.