My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is to facilitate site-to-user communication and to enable access to site services. In my environment, we have an internal DMZ zone, which includes an HTTP server and Telnet services. When an external remote user wants to connect with our services, we need to use F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for the round-robin method to ensure that the services have 24/7 reachability without any interruption.
External reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Load balancing has ensured 24x7 site access and manages secure traffic with flexible iRules
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The best features that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers for me include many aspects of the load balancer, with iRules being one of the best features. Additionally, for SSL, we can utilize it for SSL clients or SSL users, and we can perform specific bridging, which is also a good feature.
iRules have helped me by providing a full proxy system for SSL. If we configure client-side SSL and server-side SSL, there will be separate communications, but it will function as a full proxy, which is a beneficial aspect for us.
I can smartly manage F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition to build everything according to our requirements, as there is nothing set by default, but we can add things. We can perform many tasks with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, including reachability and client separation, server health monitoring, and utilizing pre-templates that apply on behalf of iRules. We can modify or change our configurations as needed, and the load balancer method can be applied dynamically and statically. There are multiple functions we can utilize with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, which is very advantageous for us.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has positively impacted my organization mainly through our services' reachability for 24/7 operation without interruption, as well as load balancing, allowing us to manage our traffic for multiple servers using the same load balancer.
What needs improvement?
I hope future updates could include advanced routing and firewall concepts in F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, especially since SD-WAN technology exists; integrating it could significantly enhance the services. I believe integrating SD-WAN technology would be a beneficial improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have noticed improvements in performance, uptime, and management since using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. The round-robin method and health monitoring are beneficial, as performance is very good with the load being equally distributed to all servers. This results in fast movement, providing a service with quick access and no delays. It effectively monitors server health, ensuring if any servers go down, it promptly addresses that issue.
In my experience, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It can handle growth easily.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has been satisfactory. While getting a trial license, I communicated with the customer support team, and they responded in a timely manner. However, there was a wait time of two or three days, which could be improved.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, I used an old proxy server method, and F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has taken over for the proxy.
What was our ROI?
As of now, I have not seen a return on investment during my trial period.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not evaluate other options before choosing F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise others considering F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition that it is the best instrument for load balancing. If you desire scalability for your network and enhanced speed for accessing servers, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition provides a great user experience, yielding positive responses and access systems for services that will keep your customers satisfied. My experience indicates that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is doing a great job. I give this product a rating of 10.
Application delivery has unified public access and delivers secure, persistent web sessions
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is mostly for application hosting, load balancing, and reverse proxy.
A specific example of how I use F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for application hosting, load balancing, or as a reverse proxy is that we had limited sets of IP addresses for the public and multiple applications—around more than 100. We didn't have 100 public IPs for each application, so using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we used only one virtual server, and behind that, we were able to take all the 100 applications. Basically, using one public IP, we are hosting all of our 100 applications, which is a lot of cost saving and also less overhead on the administration side. This was one of the use cases for which we have used F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
I have a few other use cases for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition where there was a requirement for a persistent session to be implemented to have the proper load balancing and maintain the session with the back-end server, and we have a few applications that use this persistence feature. Apart from that, we are also using the WAF on top of our virtual edition of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition as a part of the security enhancement and application security requirements.
What is most valuable?
The best features that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers are all of them because we are using almost all of the features like load balancing, SSL offloading, and even the WAF, as I mentioned earlier. The most important thing is that whatever services or features we are using, it is very good in terms of performance, and it is a very stable platform for these applications without any issues. Overall, I am happy with its performance and stability across all the features that we are using.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has impacted my organization positively with cost savings, as I mentioned earlier, by saving public IP addresses, and its performance and stability, which give almost 100% uptime for the application because we have high availability. The security part is also helping us achieve that using the WAF module. Overall, the application stability and performance are all at par.
What needs improvement?
I feel that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition could be improved because overall, it is a pretty good product, but the licensing is rather costly. It would be great if the team can do something for their existing customers regarding the costing and the licensing because each module needs a separate license on top of the base LTM model, and that is one thing that I feel they should address for their customers.
While licensing is a main area for me, I think there is also a need to improve the iRule functionalities within F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. Currently, with iRules, the customer or administrator needs to investigate and write them, and there is no kind of base support for writing them. It would be an advantage if F5 creates a user interface or dashboard within F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, so there would be ready, available iRules, or any support could be given on the platform itself instead of searching for it on outside websites.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition since my first job, so for around 10 years, I have been working on the different platforms and virtual editions of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The uptime improvements with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition are almost close to 100%, as it only goes down if a failover happens. We do the failover on the weekends during off-business hours or during upgrades when required. Mostly, only in these scenarios could we see a bit of fluctuation or a glitch for the application. Apart from that, I do not see any issues. We have not had any issues, and it rarely happens that if there is an issue, it might cause a problem for some of the applications, but apart from that, I do not see any major issues happening in my past experience with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. It was pretty much stable.
I can confidently say that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Overall, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a scalable product, and with the licensing for the additional modules, whenever we need, we can add it on top of the existing licensing without any major impact. It is pretty much scalable and advanced. We can even have multiple units in high availability based on the requirement, and based on that, we can have active-active or active-passive configurations.
How are customer service and support?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has pretty good customer support, and they also have pretty good documentation available on their community platform. Support is overall good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, and the most important metrics are the money and time saved because, as I mentioned earlier, there was less use of public IPs for each application, as well as less application overhead for the administrator to manage from the network point of view.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is that if you have any application or application delivery requirement where you need to host the application on the internet, and you need to fulfill different kinds of application requirements such as load balancing, persistence, security, SSL offloading, or WAF security for OWASP Top 10 signature attack mitigation, you should definitely explore F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. It is one of the best products that comes with a different feature set, and its performance is very good. Also, it is a pretty stable product on the platform. You should definitely explore this product for your use cases, and it is definitely going to fulfill your use cases.
Overall, I find F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition pretty good, and I always enjoy exploring it because it gives a variety of customizations that we can do as an administrator. I always look for new approaches or customizations for our use cases, and I enjoy experimenting with it. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.
Load balancing has supported SaaS customization and currently optimizes global application delivery
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is hosting a lot of SaaS-based applications. We host applications for multiple Fortune 500 companies, so there are many customers using the SaaS-based service. We apply application customization on every virtual server using iRules and compression. We utilize a lot of features on F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
A specific example of how I'm using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for one of our SaaS-based applications involves a lot of customization needed for a certain application. This includes rewriting the HTTP header and recording the source IP addresses, the original source IP address of the user. We log the traffic and implement many other settings to improve the application's performance. We have implemented many things on our F5 load balancer.
I also host our DNS on F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. We have a lot of wide IPs configured and use it for many things including DPO or Active Directory, DNS. There are many things that we utilize F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for.
What is most valuable?
The best features that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers are mainly the Local Traffic Manager and DNS and advanced WAF feature, such as ASM. It offers us many features including L4-L7 load balancing, SSL offloading, health monitoring, persistence, traffic steering, and iRules programmability. On the DNS side, it helps us with global load balancing, DNS security, geographical-based routing, and resilience.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has positively impacted my organization as it is a very stable device. We have not experienced any kind of issues with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition most of the time. F5 support has been great. Whenever we run into any kind of issues or any assistance is needed, we can easily reach out to F5 support and they are able to help us very promptly. It created more resilient applications for our infrastructure. It was a good offering that we could build up using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition load balancers.
I find myself relying on LTM, specifically virtual servers for hosting an application and load balancing across multiple backend servers. This is the major feature that we use. In case of high utilization of the application, or if there is huge traffic, we can add more servers and evenly distribute traffic, relying on F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition performance.
What needs improvement?
I think we should have some features for getting more metrics. If we can get more metrics in F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition GUI, I mean you have a BIG-IQ product, but if we can get some metrics and log metrics that show our utilization, performance, application response times in a more clear and more precise way, that would be great if that could be incorporated.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition in our company for approximately five to six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have rarely seen any kind of outages with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. The performance increased significantly and the response times of the application improved. We could offer a lot of customization based upon the application to our customers. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has really helped in faster response times. Using its bundled features, we could utilize it for many things including security. We do not need to worry about the security for utilizing the application firewall on F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Its scalability is that it can be scaled up and down easily. We just need to increase our vCPUs and we can easily increase the license-based limits or the VM cloud platform limits. We can scale it up both vertically and horizontally. It is very effective.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support has been very good. Whenever we run into any kind of issues or when any assistance is needed to dig deep into the logs, the customer support has been very helpful.
F5 support was excellent whenever it was needed during issues or when we needed assistance.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition from the very beginning and have not used any other solution.
I was brought into an environment where F5 BIG-IP was already deployed on physical infrastructure. As we progressed our journey towards the cloud, we made a move to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, which was a clear choice from the very start. We never explored other options.
What was our ROI?
While I cannot discuss return on investment because I am not involved in that part of the business, I can discuss the ease of deployment and ease of operations. It is considerably easy to learn and get documentation on how to do things on the internet and F5 site. The knowledge available and free knowledge across the internet is very good. It is very easy to learn technologies if you are trying to explore more on the features. Support is very well available.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We use the best license, wherein we are using a subscription-based licensing for a one to two-year subscription, which can be scalable up and down during the entire term. In respect to the features that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers, the licensing, the cost and everything seem appropriate and at par with the competition.
What other advice do I have?
My advice is that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a very stable product. We need to understand that we need to choose the appropriate licensing before sizing the VM and how we design our application and use F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. It is designed to scale out and scale up. We need to select an appropriate solution based upon our requirement. We need to evaluate it properly before we go for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition load balancers. I would rate this product a ten out of ten.
Cloud deployment has simplified traffic distribution and now supports flexible multi-zone DR
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is to load balance the incoming traffic in our environment. When users want to access our internal infrastructure or web applications located in our internal infrastructure or DMZ environment, their traffic is load balanced into the internal environment. Users arrive from the internet and either land into our DMZ web application, from which we redirect the same application via F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition to our internal environment. We are using the LTM edition in our environment for this purpose.
Apart from that, we are also using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition as BIG-IP DNS, which was previously known as GTM. We use F5 products for DNS traffic as well. We have two data centers, one on the west side and one on the east side in the Azure environment. BIG-IP DNS edition load balances the traffic into different data centers. In some cases, for disaster recovery scenarios, we use this virtual IP DNS capability. Additionally, we are also using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition with ASM tools and WAF, which provides Web Application Layer 7 firewall capabilities.
What is most valuable?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers several best features. It is very easy to deploy within fifteen to twenty minutes. We can deploy F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition anywhere, either in an on-premises environment or in the Azure environment. If we want to discard a virtual IP, we can do that easily. We can span as many virtual IPs in a very fast time. If an F5 virtual edition becomes corrupted, we can easily redeploy the same snapshot of that virtual machine into the environment very quickly. It is very scalable and easy to use compared to hardware applications. In comparison with hardware applications, if a failure happens with hardware, we need to replace the hardware, which takes considerable time. However, with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we can redeploy very quickly, within ten minutes.
Scalability with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is excellent in terms of current usage where we have one thousand to two thousand users landing into the DMZ zone who want to access DMZ applications. Sometimes on weekends, holidays, or during peak seasons, if ten thousand, fifty thousand, or even a million people want to access the application simultaneously, we have configured auto-scalability. Automatically, additional F5 virtual machines will deploy, and the increased virtual load will be served by F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. This auto-scalability feature is very useful. If we want to use F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for other purposes, such as internal deployment, we can also redeploy the same F5 instance internally.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has positively impacted my organization with an excellent dashboard that has been very much revamped. The features are refreshed compared to earlier versions, such as version thirteen. Version sixteen has a very clean and easy-to-use dashboard that is very fast compared to our physical F5. The ordering and registration processes are very easy to navigate. We can choose the F5 version very easily. Another very scalable and user-friendly feature is that we can add as many interfaces as needed. In physical F5 systems, the hardcoded interfaces are typically eight or sixteen, and we cannot increase those interfaces. However, with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we can span as many virtual interfaces as required. As per the use case, if it increases, we can increase the interfaces very easily. These capabilities are very useful for our company.
What needs improvement?
Regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's improvement areas, the current dashboard is very useful, but I believe the registration process should be simplified in the virtual edition. Especially in the Azure environment, many features are not currently aligned and working with Azure. We need to make efforts to ensure it is well integrated with Azure. Currently, if we want to integrate route tables with the virtual F5 edition, we need to deploy scripting inside the virtual F5 instances, and then that script performs the virtual IP route table changes in the Azure environment. This feature should be auto-configured, and efforts are needed to ensure the virtual edition is very much aligned with the Azure environment. I am expecting this improvement in the next edition.
The failover capability is also not as good as it should be. We have tested the failover functionality, and sometimes we have observed that failover fails. F5 does not successfully fail over to other instances perfectly, so that also needs to be improved. Security should also be enhanced, as in the past I have seen some security loopholes. Tightening of security should be included in the new software. These improvements should be present in near future editions.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition specifically for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is very much stable. The stability rating is one hundred percent.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is excellent. Within ten minutes of time, we can scale and boot as many virtual machines as needed in the environment. It is very fast.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is very fast. Within logging the ticket, we get the invitation link within fifteen minutes, and support personnel are in the room to help us. The service is very fast and very useful.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Negative
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use any other load balancing solution. The only thing is that earlier we were using physical F5, but currently we are using the virtual edition. I can also remember that earlier we were using NetScaler. Currently, we are not using it because it is not as much improved.
What was our ROI?
Compared to our physical environment, with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition we have saved approximately one hundred thousand dollars. In terms of employees, earlier we were using ten applications, so we had a team of five people. Currently, we are only a team of two people. We also saved expenses in this area. Overall, I can say the ROI includes a twenty-five to thirty percent cost reduction, with some areas achieving forty percent cost reduction in our expenses.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is that the setup cost is not very high, but licensing is very substantial. The licensing is very heavy, and prices are very costly for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. I have observed that the real pricing is not fully visible to me because it is handled by my sales team, but the pricing is very high for licensing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we evaluated F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition with NetScaler and Azure's native solution.
What other advice do I have?
With F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, I find it easy to configure interfaces and span multiple interfaces, which has saved our time. It also reduces cost because in the physical environment, we need to spend considerable money for sixteen interfaces even if we are using only four interfaces and need to pay the price for all sixteen interfaces. However, with the virtual solution, if we want to use interfaces, we can span four interfaces and need only a very small amount of money. It is time-saving because configuring interfaces requires human interaction. The user experience has also improved as we can configure as many virtual environments as needed, such as DMZ environment, internal environment, and other environments per our use case.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition a nine out of ten. I cannot give a ten out of ten because there should always be improvements needed in the software domain. I cannot rate it as ten out of ten because improvements are always necessary in the software and IT domains. I reduced the number by one for this reason, as there are no other reasons for this rating.
I can advise other organizations or colleagues that if they want to use any scalable, faster, or better stable solution, I usually recommend F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. It is cost-effective compared to other solutions, such as Azure native solutions. Compared to those alternatives, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a very cost-effective solution, and they can easily redeploy and deploy with significant cost savings. The easy-to-use dashboard and all features make it an excellent choice.
Centralized load balancing and VPN management have improved efficiency and reduced errors
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition at the State of Oregon involved migrating from Cisco ACS to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, specifically using their LTM module. Day to day, I handled a lot of services, including load balancing and certificate management. I onboarded customers looking to balance loads between servers using their LTM module, and I also worked extensively with the AFM module, which is a firewall, and the APM module, which is their VPN.
What is most valuable?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is especially useful for its load balancing capabilities. They excel in round-robin load balancing methods and offer persistence methods that can be beneficial for hosting websites where customers navigate multiple times to fill out forms. For instance, in an application hosted on a server, I could implement a persistence method to maintain session continuity, combined with round-robin methods that optimize performance on the application side.
I also utilized F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for their APM module, which provides a solid VPN solution. They have a user-friendly flow where, for example, I could add a one-time password easily. The remote access VPN capabilities are notable, and I appreciate their AFM module for firewall functionalities. The GUI is very user-friendly, allowing me to create rules and NAT policies with ease.
The best features F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers, in my experience, include their flow method and APM module. I have used Palo Alto and Cisco products, but I find F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's APM module exceptional for its visual representation of authentication processes. Additionally, I appreciate how clearly F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition handles certificate management, all accessible from one dashboard for easy renewal or creation.
The flow method in F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition stands out for its GUI, as I can visually compare different customers without digging into details the way I would have to do in Cisco or Palo Alto. For example, if I want to see differences between customers, in F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, I can visualize it all in a flow diagram while seeing the features associated with each customer, which simplifies the comparison process significantly.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has positively impacted my organization at the State of Oregon by streamlining operations. The load balancing module, in particular, was very effective, as it simplified the user experience compared to Cisco's extensive tab system, which made it hard to correlate user authentication. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's customer-centric approach allows me to see individual client configurations without confusion.
I have noticed specific positive outcomes with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, such as significant time savings and a reduction in errors. I have a clearer overview of which features each customer has, which minimizes mistakes during operations and enhances our overall efficiency.
What needs improvement?
In terms of improvements for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, I encountered issues with load management when multiple modules such as AFM, APM, LTM, and GTM are handled together. If one customer has all modules in use, I found that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition struggles with load capacity, leading to problems, particularly with high traffic volumes.
The primary concern I noted regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is its scalability during high-load situations. While their iRules and LTM modules perform well, handling large traffic volumes remains a challenge, necessitating improvements in their load handling capabilities.
For how long have I used the solution?
I am not currently using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition in my role, but I used to work for the State of Oregon, and I migrated to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, which is how I know about this product, having worked on it for approximately five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has proven to be stable, although it faced challenges handling high traffic volumes. At times, we experienced difficulties that required close monitoring, especially with traffic loads, but the load balancing module still performed admirably.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition was quite impressive, as it allowed us to onboard many customers efficiently. I particularly appreciated the APM and LTM modules, which facilitated an easier onboarding process for additional customers. However, the primary concern I noted regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is its scalability during high-load situations.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has been excellent. We received quality assistance for our inquiries, and I appreciated their forums, which provided comprehensive answers to many questions and architectural queries.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before adopting F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we were using Cisco solutions. We transitioned to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition after reviewing budgetary concerns and architectural advantages, prompting our move to incorporate load balancing, VPN, and AFM modules into our infrastructure.
What was our ROI?
We have seen a return on investment with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. By using multiple integrated modules such as AFM, APM, and LTM in one platform, we avoided the need for separate components, which saved considerable money and space.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has been very favorable, especially compared to competitors, as F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's pricing structure was significantly more advantageous and aligned with our budgetary considerations.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
In our evaluation process, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition really stood out among competitors. Although we considered other options, we ultimately decided to pursue F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. For firewall solutions, however, we also looked at Palo Alto for potential improvements.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others considering F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is to focus on the LTM and APM modules. As for the AFM module, I would recommend checking if there have been significant improvements over the last five years since I last worked with it. I believe I have provided all the insights and feedback regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition that I can. I have rated this product an eight out of ten.
Cloud traffic management has become unified and application security has improved for OWASP risks
What is our primary use case?
In F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we are using the LTM and ASM module. We use F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for L7 load balancing and SSL offloading.
In our case, we are totally working on a cloud environment, and we are using different cloud-native solutions across AWS, GCP, and Azure. Behind that, we are using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's LTM and ASM module, so any traffic that lands on our cloud-native will first load balance from our cloud-native load balancers. Apart from this, we are using firewalls as well. Layer 4 traffic inspection is done on that. Post that, for Layer 7 traffic inspection and application-level load balancing, we are using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's LTM and ASM module. LTM is especially used to load balance the application traffic to the real-time application servers or application load balancers. We have applied some profiles, policies, pools, and nodes. Apart from that, we are also applying an ASM policy on that virtual server so that Layer 7, which means OWASP Top 10 inspection, could be done for that application.
With the help of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we can deploy that virtual edition in any kind of virtual machine. We can use cloud-native virtual VMs, or we can also deploy that on VMs. Those are the main use cases of that.
What is most valuable?
For load balancing, we are using ASM solutions, which protects our applications from the OWASP Top 10, which is very critical for any applications. Our applications are protected against that, and there is no unwanted or unauthorized entry for any application due to the enforcement of ASM policy. This is also providing some learning suggestions, and many things are available. They can also provide signature-based detection. We can also do things including URL-based blocking or URL-based allowing, URI-based, or parameter-based filtering. There are multiple things on ASM policy. It is a huge combination of many policies.
It is always helpful because it always helps us in every case. Since we work in network security, it always helps with our monitoring and applying policies for our application security from a load balancing and application point of view.
What needs improvement?
As per my understanding, there is a need to improve support. Sometimes it is very critical to get support for that. Apart from that, the licensing part needs to be considered as well. If support is increased more than this, that will be more useful for the user.
If we could have a more stable subscription model and a smoother V-licensing workflow, especially in a cloud environment, that should be more flexible. Sometimes we face issues, and as I mentioned earlier, we need more support. If support is increased for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, that will be more helpful for us because it is very critical sometimes to call support.
In my experience, especially the last three times, I get less support on weekends, and that is very critical for us because we have to perform critical activities on weekends only. They need to increase support on weekends.
For how long have I used the solution?
It has been around three years that I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is stable. It is a very stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is very good. It is the most scalable and reliable system. Its accuracy is also very high. From a scalability point of view, it is very good.
How are customer service and support?
F5 support is knowledgeable and helpful for complex LTM and ASM issues. Resolution time can vary based on case-to-case and is dependent on priority.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Negative
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have never used any dedicated solution for OWASP Top 10 or load balancing. I was using native AWS, not a dedicated solution.
How was the initial setup?
With the help of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, whenever we want to deploy a new machine or if we have any new application or any new environment, it is very easy for us to deploy those things. That will save our time as well as resources because it will not take time. It is very easy to deploy a virtual edition in any virtual environment.
What about the implementation team?
Not yet, because when I onboarded here, it was already in place. We expanded its use and are working with it.
What was our ROI?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is stable. It is a very stable solution.
There is no doubt that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition saves resources. It also saves money, but in very few cases. Whenever, if we want to scale up or scale down our VMs per requirements, this will save our money because if we purchase hardware, it will cost every time, but due to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we are saving money. It also saves our resources because with fewer resources, we can do many things.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
To be honest, the cost of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is not low, but since it provides enterprise-level security and everything, it should have that price.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is very easy for our team because sometimes we know that there is peak traffic, such as when any festival comes and many users come to visit the site. At that time, as we are using the virtual edition, we have the feasibility to scale up. It is automatically scaled up with the help of our cloud-native solutions. That is the best practice, and we can scale up or scale down as per our requirement. I very much appreciate that virtual edition because we have this feasibility that we can scale up or scale down as per our requirement.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have never used any dedicated solution for OWASP Top 10 or load balancing. I was using native AWS, not a dedicated solution.
What other advice do I have?
Organizations, if you are using or if you want an enterprise-level solution, you definitely have to go with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. It is a little costly, but it is value for money. As I am working with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition with LTM and ASM, it is well-suited for enterprises that require advanced traffic management and strong web application security in a multi-cloud environment.
Overall, it is a good experience with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition because I never worked with hardware, so it is very good for me. My rating for this solution reflects my satisfaction with the product and its capabilities.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Centralized traffic management has improved security monitoring and simplified service publishing
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is that we are in the process of publishing services, observing the traffic of the published services publicly, and any backend servers. We assign the virtual IPs and then check the traffic and bypass the traffic which is blocked according to the requirements of the customer.
A specific example of how I have used F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a recent troubleshooting scenario where we had to whitelist one of the API calls that was passing through the WAF of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. We went onto the physical servers, checked the log traffic, added the text file, and whitelisted the text file and applied the configuration. This is how the traffic was exempted from passing through the WAF.
What is most valuable?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers extensive documentation available for any help required and the capability for multiple licenses within a single platform.
The documentation has helped me significantly by allowing me to avoid having to install new hardware or separate appliances for WAF, BIG-IP, load balancers, and different ADCs, as I can manage everything in one big box and purchase the licenses. The ease of use of the documentation makes it straightforward for many users here, so it is easy to find use cases on the internet.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has positively impacted my organization by providing separate candidates for managing F5 traffic, leading to more effective publishing of services publicly, assigning public IP addresses, and then assigning the virtual IPs, nodes, pools, pool members, and all of that. It definitely provides a granular approach to the device.
I truly appreciate the power of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition compared to any other vendor we have used, and we have seen more use cases coming in, proving it to be better than other products.
What needs improvement?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition could be improved by enhancing the GUI, as I think it should be more user-friendly.
Aside from the GUI improvements, I find that with other products, everything appears more organized. For instance, with FortiWeb, we have a dashboard where I can check the policy status with just one click, and everything is easily accessible. In F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, it tends to require navigating through menus and sub-menus.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition in different roles, specifically in banking, where I used BIG-IP LTM in one infrastructure. Currently, I am working in an environment where we are using the ASM module as a WAF.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
When my organization needs to handle more traffic or add more applications, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition scales up easily without running into any issues, and it is very smooth.
How are customer service and support?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition provides very good customer support. I would rate the customer support on a scale of one to ten as a perfect ten based on all of the experience I have had so far.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we were using a different solution, specifically FortiADC for Application Delivery Controller and FortiWeb for ASM.
How was the initial setup?
It was relatively easy to deploy F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition initially due to my team receiving support from F5. We were there for them, and it was pretty much taken care of by the F5 support team.
I would describe the learning curve for my team adopting F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition as definitely present. We learned a lot from it, especially from the provided documentation and many use cases available over the internet.
What about the implementation team?
Integration with other solutions or platforms in my environment through F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has not posed any challenges. It is pretty straightforward with the appliances that we currently have.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition as compared to other appliances we have used. With F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we have not faced any RMAs, which has made a positive operational impact.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition would emphasize its scalability, the power of the appliance, and its reliability, which are big pluses for the product.
I have a positive response on F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. However, I strongly feel that the GUI needs to be a bit more user-friendly, as I find FortiWeb's GUI more accessible, even though the product is not as powerful as F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. My overall rating for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is eight out of ten.
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.