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Reviews from AWS customer

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4-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    Abdul Azim

Centralized policies have strengthened application security and streamline load balancing

  • January 16, 2026
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

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:

  • SSL/TLS offloading and inspection to reduce server load

  • Persistence/session management (cookie / source IP) for stable user sessions

  • Health monitoring to automatically detect failures and route traffic to healthy nodes

  • 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

  • Very strong LTM load balancing and traffic management

  • Mature Layer 7 security and policy control (especially with iRules and security profiles)

  • Excellent stability and performance in enterprise environments

  • Strong monitoring, logging, and troubleshooting visibility

  • Better flexibility for advanced customization and complex use cases

❌ F5 BIG-IP VE – Cons

  • Licensing and pricing can be higher compared to alternatives

  • Requires skilled resources for advanced configurations (iRules, policies, security tuning)

✅ Citrix ADC – Pros

  • Good load balancing and application optimization

  • Often seen as cost-effective depending on licensing and bundles

  • Works well in environments heavily based on Citrix virtualization / VDI

  • Strong GUI-based configuration for standard use cases

❌ Citrix ADC – Cons

  • Advanced customization and troubleshooting can be less flexible compared to F5

  • Some enterprises find F5 more stable for high-complexity deployments

  • 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?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?


    reviewer2716224

Focuses on securing application access with dependable integration

  • June 05, 2025
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

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.


    Kodanda Ramji C.S

Offers easy-to-use integration capabilities

  • April 15, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

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.


    Nikolay Dimitrov

Used for for web application firewalls and it has DoS layer 7 protection

  • February 20, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution for web application firewalls and VPNs. It could be your VPN concentrator, intelligent DNS, and load balancing.

What is most valuable?

For public clouds like AWS in Azure, the solution can use AutoDiscovery to discover the members of the virtual machines in AWS and Azure based on their tagging mechanism. This way, when you add a new virtual machine, it will automatically be added to the Virtual Edition's post.

It has a web application firewall (WAF) module. It has to get web application security. It has DoS layer 7 protection, which not many vendors have. The solution also automatically builds the thresholds for DoS attacks so that you don't have to configure the DoS manually. You enable it with basic settings, and it's using machine learning to learn the baseline and detect DoS attacks.

What needs improvement?

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a heavy system that needs a lot of CPU, memory, and hard disk. Also, the solution's center management is not very well managed.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for seven to eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution has been much more stable over the last few years because it's an old product, and its bugs were fixed.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good for a complex product like F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

How was the initial setup?

The solution's initial setup is easy because most bugs are fixed.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is an expensive solution, but it's worth the price.

What other advice do I have?

We have deployed the solution on VMware, private cloud, and public cloud. F5 is going to release a new product, BIG-IP Next, which will be a new implementation of BIG-IP with many more features. BIG-IP Next is going to be more cloud-friendly because it's going to be based on containers.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has a scripting module. If something is not in the default functionality, you could always make a script that will solve your issue. Even if it's something that would take a week, you'll still be able to write a script to solve your custom use case. Most vendors don't have such scripting functionality.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is worth it, but it's a complex solution that has many functions. Users may have to do some learning instead of using it straight away. The learning material is publicly available to learn, but it will take time.

The solution's integration is straightforward because it integrates well with others like Splunk. The solution's security functionality is one of the best for the on-premises device. Nowadays, the solution has integration with shared security.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.


    Sushil Gaund

Handles traffic spikes effectively and allows configuration of policy profiles across multiple layers for enhanced security

  • February 15, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use it for two applications.

I've also used the Virtual Edition in the network core alongside the hardware appliances. I don't think there's any issue with either. Both seem to be working well simultaneously.

How has it helped my organization?

It's easy to integrate with others. I've integrated it with McAfee Solutions, Aruba NAC, and the EMS tool from Micro Focus.

It's easily manageable with various solutions.

What is most valuable?

I like the virtualization aspect, similar to what you get with cloud services or VMware.

What needs improvement?

I have a specific issue with the network interface connector, the NIC.

We're limited to a maximum of two NICs in a virtualized environment. It's a limitation of the tool.

So, Network Interface Connectors (NICs) need to be improved. More NICs would be helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for three months. I use the latest version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability. Virtual Edition handles traffic spikes.

The main difference between the Virtual Edition and the hardware is that you run the F5 image on VMware or any other cloud platform. In my experience, I haven't faced any issues with scalability or manageability due to virtualization. It's been good.

In our IT department, no one uses the Virtual Edition for F5. However, our customers use the Virtual Edition.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using the hardware initially because it was too expensive for our client. That's why they wanted to go with the BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

How was the initial setup?

There weren't any major issues with the deployment, but it wasn't completely seamless.

Virtual Edition required some additional work compared to hardware, like provisioning and sizing tasks.

However, once configured, it's easy to scale by increasing the VM size.

VM size adjustments weren't difficult, but it's not as straightforward as hardware deployment.

The deployment time depends on the configuration. It might take one day or one hour, depending on the number of applications that need to be configured.

What about the implementation team?

My company is a system integrator.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is a yearly-based license. I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being expensive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We had Redware and Palo Alto.

We had limitations in Redware with the number of virtual servers and tools. F5 doesn't have those limitations.

Plus, for security, we can configure policy profiles across layers 3, 4, 7, and even 2. F5 also has persistence and separate mechanisms for things like server acceleration.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend using this solution. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.


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