F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition - GOOD (PAYG, 200Mbps)
F5, Inc. | 16.1.5.1-0.13.7Linux/Unix, CentOS 7.3 - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
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It is the centerpiece of a lot of the solutions that we build
We use it for a number of solutions that we build, mostly for identity and access management control.
How has it helped my organization?
It is the centerpiece of a lot of the solutions that we build, and it has integrated with everything that we have needed it to.
It is the best value for our engineers and architects who know how to use it. It meets the government's requirements every time that we've used it. It is easy for us to keep integrating with our solutions.
What is most valuable?
We have found the consistency of the application always being the way it is supposed to be as its most valuable feature.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We put a lot of stress on the application. It is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is awesome. Our environment is thousands upon thousands of instances in AWS.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was very simple. The main reason that we went this way was the simplicity of buying it there. It is maintained and upgraded for us, and this makes it easy to stay current.
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Load balancing brings high availability and a bigger ability to scale out
When we migrate workloads into the cloud, we need the same functionality in the cloud, and low balancing is part of that. Being able to manage the platform on cloud, the same as on-premise, is the use case.
How has it helped my organization?
Load balancing generally brings high availability and a bigger ability to scale out. In some cases, it brings security, depending on how it is configured.
What is most valuable?
* Flexibility
* Capacity
* Reputation in the market.
What needs improvement?
I would like them to expand load balancing, being able to go across multiple regions to on-premise and into the cloud. This could use improvement, as it is sometimes a little cumbersome.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. It's a pretty solid product.
Our clients use it pretty heavily. Most all of them are production workloads and some of them are external facing workloads, so you can see seasonal peaks.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's very scalable. Probably the largest implementation I did was with hundreds of servers behind it.
How is customer service and technical support?
The technical support is very good.
What about the implementation team?
We haven't had any issues with the integration and configuration of AWS. It works just like it would on-premise. I have some questions around its scale in the cloud. We haven't done as much work in the cloud as we've done with on-premise. However, so far we haven't had any problems with it either.
What was our ROI?
My clients have seen ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It could be priced a little less, especially on the virtual side. It gets a bit expensive, but you get what you pay.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There is always the Cisco on-premise solution in play. There are also the AWS native functionalities.
The ease of management is the tie-breaker for F5, being able to manage the on-premise and cloud with the same tools.
It's fairly easy to integrate. If you compare it to Cisco products, Cisco is very regimented and works best with themselves. F5 has been forced to play nice with others, which is a bonus.
What other advice do I have?
The three key things to look at closely:
* Look at the flexibility of the products.
* The ability to work with it on-premise and in the cloud is a huge advantage.
* The ability to integrate it with other non-F5 products.
We use both the AWS and on-premise versions. They work about the same, which is what I like about the product: same management plane and configuration.
It integrates with AWS WAF, which makes it easy to deploy without changes to your infrastructure
We use it to deliver services on the cloud.
How has it helped my organization?
It improves the overall performance of applications by decreasing the burden on servers associated with managing and maintaining applications and network sessions, as well as by performing application-specific tasks.
What is most valuable?
* Application security
* Automation
* Orchestration
* It is a fast and available solution.
What needs improvement?
They have to scale, developing more products.
I would like them to have more flexible models.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is the perfect solution when you have high workloads in your IT environment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
They have the potential to scale in better way.
How was the initial setup?
I have integrated F5 rules for AWS with web exploits and OWASP Rules, and it is so easy to deploy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There are three relevant things about purchasing through the AWS Marketplace:
* It Increase protection against web attacks.
* It integrates with AWS WAF, which makes it easy to deploy without changes to your infrastructure.
* F5 manages your AWS WAF rules, so you don't have to.
We purchased through the AWS Marketplace because it was a popular way to go, and we were intrigued. The price of this product is not an issue. They have good pricing and licensing.
What other advice do I have?
It helps you to manage workloads in a better way on your cloud environment.
The integration and configuration into the AWS environment was pretty good. However, we are ending up with a whole bunch of ghosted IPs.
We use it for low balancing.
It has been in our environment for four to five years, but I have only been using it for a little over a year.
What is most valuable?
* The detail that you have available when setting up iRules.
* How the traffic routing works in F5.
What needs improvement?
The management process seems a bit difficult.
The management interface is unclear, complex, and not concise. I would like a better user interface.
For integration with other AWS environments, we do some tie-ins with some autoscaling groups. This has been challenging for us. We have had issues, where when autoscaling groups scale up, there are some instances which are not showing up in the proper size. Then, those IPs would get registered with F5, but never get released. Therefore, we are ending up with a whole bunch of ghosted IPs. However, this is more an implementation detail than an F5 detail.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. I have no concerns regarding stability for F5.
We are seasonal, so we go from low to high volumes. F5 has never been a concern of ours for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We run an Active-Active version of two instances, so scalability between the on-premise and AWS versions hasn't been a huge issue for us. Where we are finding the AWS version helpful is when we are trying to scale up new environments. AWS Marketplace helps here a lot.
How is customer service and technical support?
We have support agreements in place, but they are managed by the infrastructure team. I do not contact the technical support, they do.
How was the initial setup?
The integration and configuration into the AWS environment was pretty good.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The product was already in place when I came onboard.
My preference is to use AWS natively, but there are some issues around session management and so on, which have prevented us from using it. While a lot of these issues have been solved, a lot of our applications are tied to the F5 infrastructure.
What other advice do I have?
Always use the Automatic Synching between F5. Don't try to use the API to do the synching. This is where we went wrong. We were trying to push the nodes to F5 individually instead of letting F5 handle the synchronization process, and it doesn't work.
A power application to manage network, firewall
What do you like best about the product?
There are a lot of function which meet my expectation, like setup fire wall, do a load balancing, easy to config redirect website...
What do you dislike about the product?
The price is little higher. At this time I don't have any.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We have a big webserver, dxt system, to managed it separately is very consume time so this tool help us to centralization, configure firewall for my client website...
Recommendations to others considering the product:
For large business I would recomend they used F% big ip.
f5 Works Great!
What do you like best about the product?
Connect securely to VPN quickly and effortlessly. Connection times are fast and reliable.
What do you dislike about the product?
No complaints thus far in using the software.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Connect securely to VPN quickly and effortlessly.
Amazing Load Balancing Hardware and Interface
What do you like best about the product?
We use the F5 to load balance all of our web properties. It is versatile and quite intuitive to use.
What do you dislike about the product?
Would just like the learning curve to be a bit easier but hands on training has helped a lot.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We have enabled our web properties to be load balanced and thus offered in high availability.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
If you to use the F5 for load balancing of for firewall, you have picked a great versatile product.
Easy and Straigthforward
What do you like best about the product?
Very easy to use, I've never had a problem with my RSA remote login device.
What do you dislike about the product?
The device itself is a bit clunky, and I'm told fairly susceptible to water damage.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
This software and corresponding device allows me to access the department's servers remotely.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Assuming it isn't more expensive that competitors, I have no complaints about the F5 advanced firewall manager.
F5 AFM
What do you like best about the product?
The ability to be granular in where and how to apply access rules.
What do you dislike about the product?
The cli configuration for AFM is overly complicated and difficult to manage.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The ability to use the f5 as a state full firewall instead of having a traditional firewall load balancer configuratuon.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
None
f5 is one of the best products in its class
What do you like best about the product?
I like the fact that in f5 I can create and assign custom "Access Profiles" to any "Virtual Server". I also like that I can run a report on the "Access Policy" to get information on all the sessions in real time.
What do you dislike about the product?
I dislike that the development/test licensing expires after about 3 months and then it needs to be renewed.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We solved an issue with different applications using different authentication methods. We realized that implementing SSO (Single Sing On) is quite beneficial since it makes it easier for our users to use our applications.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
I recommend performing a total assessment of your network environment before engaging with f5; that way you'll be able to answer any questions they have in regards to the architecture.
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