Radware Alteon VA ADC Secure - 200Mbps

We primarily use Radware Alteon  for load balancing our servers to ensure there are no bottlenecks and to have resiliency in place.

The most valuable features include the availability with an optional high-availability mode ensuring service continuity because of the resiliency. The interface is really good and easy to navigate, which makes configuring and managing settings quick. The support from Radware is consistently excellent and always available. It has helped reduce troubleshooting time by fifty percent, given everything is in the interface.

Integration with cloud services could be improved. Every  now and then, we need engagement to address challenges with cloud integrations.

I have used the solution for two years.

I would rate its stability as nine point five out of ten. There is minimal downtime, and the solution is quite stable.

Alteon  is a scalable solution. We have it deployed across multiple geographic locations, benefiting from load balancing resiliency.

The customer service and support are excellent. Radware always goes a step beyond to make their products stand out.

Neutral

I have had previous experience with other products, and Radware's support stands out as always available and willing to make products superior.

The time taken to troubleshoot issues has improved by fifty percent.

The implementation and running costs are quite high.

I would rate Alteon nine out of ten. The main reason I would recommend it is Radware's excellent support. I rate the overall solution nine out of ten.

We use the product for our web services across multiple web farms. It manages SSL load balancing and SSL offload, meaning SSL management is handled at the load balancing level. Additionally, we use it for SSL renewal and management, which simplifies the process rather than managing each individual server or farm.

The most valuable feature is the support from the engineering team. They quickly resolved a VLAN issue that other vendors could not. The product allows us to manage multiple networks and VLANs into a single box and add numerous web services and farms efficiently. The SSL management and integration capabilities are also standout features.

I would like to see more educational and training sessions. Other OEMs offer free courses and hands-on labs on new technologies and features, which we find useful. The WAF  solution requires more training. 

Additional educational components like videos would be beneficial.

I have been using it since 2016.

The solution is 100% stable. We've never faced downtime, even during peak transaction hours. It manages SSL offloading and compressions efficiently, without over-utilization.

The solution is highly scalable. It handles peak loads and thousands of concurrent connections without exceeding 10% utilization. It's robust and ensures efficient compression.

The customer service and support are excellent. I would rate them ten out of ten. We never face support issues, and their team resolves any critical issues quickly once they are involved.

Positive

We previously used F5 and Array solutions. However, we switched to Radware based on market research, Gartner reports, and cost-effectiveness. Radware offered optimal performance at a better price point.

The initial setup took approximately fifteen days. We conducted POCs, unit testing, and created farms for UAT testing before going live. Radware personnel were on-site, which facilitated face-to-face communication and training during deployment.

The deployment involved two people from our side and one from Radware, making it a three-person team.

The product offers great return on investment. Since 2016, we have already gone through a lifecycle and are procuring another product, suggesting that our investments are well justified.

The cost of the Radware solution is reasonable and stable. I don't have detailed pricing information, but it is considered optimal for the performance provided.

We evaluated F5 and Array before opting for Radware.

I recommend having support directly from Radware, not through SI channels, as they handle multiple OEMs and might lack in-depth knowledge about each. Additionally, having available knowledge bases or resources for troubleshooting would be beneficial. 

I would rate the overall solution ten out of ten.

Its use case involves protecting our external services in the business.

It is a necessity because of the different security standards that our company has to comply with.

Our services are protected, and I have not seen any breaches that would impact our systems. The systems are stable, and I can very clearly see all of the malicious actors outside trying to access our systems.

It helps with troubleshooting immensely because the solution protects not only from threat actors outside of our business but also from internal actors or partner clients accessing our systems. Those requests are also validated inside Radware Alteon. I can see client partners or users accessing some systems in the wrong way or any misconfiguration inside our systems. Radware Alteon prevents our systems from breaking down because of those wrong requests. It has saved at least 40% to 50% time.

The integrated application protection on the other side of the load balancer is great. There is the caveat that it is not easily pre-configurable on that side, but everything after that is easy. When the services are up and running, the feedback, the insight, and the forensics of the happenings inside are very easy to understand and work with. The system automatically suggests what needs to be configured and what can be mitigated or refined in configuration. All of those are making my day easier.

Its implementation time took about half a year, and it took us about a year and a half to realize its benefits.

I find the best features to be the flexibility and ease of use. The configuration is very straightforward. 

In my experience, Alteon  is very dynamic software. They keep integrating new features that sometimes break our production, but we use clustered systems, so we can test those software releases. However, sometimes they take a while to reach us. We have had to work with Radware to remedy issues on their side that they have verified. On the other hand, they have been very proactive in remedying those problems. We have solved some critical issues within a month, but the release verification channel requires some updates. 

The support channel is also an issue. Moving through tiered support can be challenging at times. Even when I go through the authenticated portal where I have registered my devices with their serial numbers and all known details, they ask to verify the specified device. I have already included that in the ticket support system.

I have been using Alteon since around 2018. It has probably been five years.

We have experienced some issues. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

It is hard to tell, but I have had some performance issues. I cannot say whether they were because of Radware. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

We have a hybrid environment. It is very spread out. In terms of its users, we have tiered access. We have solution appliance administrators, and then there are users who monitor their services inside the clients. So, we have a couple of administrators and the rest are application admins. Overall, we have less than ten people.

In general, I would rate their support a nine out of ten because the first level of support sometimes requires re-verification. We have to escalate a bit to have some momentum. However, local third-party support is reachable for us at any moment. There is a dedicated expert answering even the toughest questions. If needed, he re-routes us to the Radware support, and he takes care of the support communication for us.

Positive

In the current scope of systems, I have not used any other solution. I have used different systems in different projects but not in this context.

The setup is local, not cloud-based. The deployment time to fully implement was half a year. 

In terms of implementation strategy, we are very step-based when it comes to infrastructure. We evaluate and point out our needs. We rely heavily on third-party support. Radware is not directly supporting us in Latvia. We have third-party support locally, and they help us very much in this regard. 

Radware provides free training on their site, but we heavily rely on third-party support. They do not hide anything from us. For every task and request, they freely advise us on how to perform better. The online portal also supports that motion.

After we established our requirements such as what we wanted to protect and where we wanted to deploy it, moving services to the solution took up to half a year.

Our implementation is not very advanced. There is an option to include very heavily scripted environments, but our use case is very straightforward. We have some customizations, but new team members require a month or maybe two to get onboarded. This is generally the time a user requires to get familiar with any system.

In our field of work, maintenance is almost a must. We do quarterly updates and health checks to verify that systems are working as intended. Maintenance is very fast, but the preparation work is the worst. We have to read all the changes and what is affecting us or not. Sometimes these releases or software updates break something, but in general, the maintenance tasks are very easy. They take about 15 minutes.

Our team consisted of two people. I was not the one who did the deployment.

It is not the priciest and it is not the cheapest. For our solution, it was right in the middle of price performance. 

We have reviewed others. We actually have a solution with support from another vendor, but we are not utilizing them or paying for another solution.

We are using Alteon's Integrated WAF. We are in the process of evaluating moving to the cloud for more distributed protection from DDoS attacks and other threat actors.

I would definitely recommend it. It is very understandable. The interfaces and descriptions of various settings are straightforward. There are some misunderstandings here and there, but the basics to get it working are great. Overall, I would rate Alteon a nine out of ten.

I am using Radware Alteon  as a load balancer. It's used to simplify balancing connections between servers for a larger application in my organization. This allows me to manipulate many applications to better serve my organization.

It provides us with logs about all of our application's transactions, enabling us to trace problems. The analytics help us pinpoint the root cause of issues like TLS problems and trace previously unanswered requests, enabling solutions with given analytics abilities.

The simplicity of the GUI is what I like the most about Radware Alteon . It provides logs about all of our application's transactions, which allows us to trace problems and identify issues such as TLS problems. The analytics help us pinpoint the root cause of various issues, enabling solutions with given analytics abilities.

I know they are working on it, however, I would like to see an improved community presence, similar to the one for their main competitor, F5. There are forums with questions and answers from customers, which is currently lacking for Alteon. More materials are difficult to find in the network, so increasing community and documentation would be beneficial.

I've been using Radware Alteon for several years.

The stability of the solution is good. There have been no notable issues related to downtime or bugs.

I rate the scalability of the product at a seven.

The technical support deserves an eight out of ten. Their customer service is quite reliable.

Positive

The initial setup was easy and not so complex. It took a couple of days with three people involved.

The implementation was handled by our internal team with three individuals involved.

I would recommend Radware Alteon. If someone wants an effective product with good capabilities, they should consider this solution. 

I rate the product eight out of ten.

We use Alteon to secure our main web applications against web-based attacks such as SQL injections and DDoS attacks. We have around 36 VIPs on Radware, and we protect all our published sites, including those for FNU.

Alteon’s analytics has helped us save time when troubleshooting. It has given us greater visibility for troubleshooting the issues that cropped up in our environment.

Alteon has definitely helped reduce our maintenance overhead.

The best thing about Alteon  is its automated threat detection and blocking. The university has resource limitations. I am the only one working for the security section, looking after seven products, including Alteon. The automatic blocking of threats and detections is crucial for us. Because there are a lot of things going on, we sometimes miss or do not see the detections on time. So, the most useful thing for us is to have a WAF that automatically blocks anything unusual or suspicious.

It is efficient and low maintenance. Once you set it up, you do not have to go back and look into it. It gives us peace of mind that if something comes up, it will block that.

There is room for improvement in reducing the number of false positives I receive. We could benefit from more configuration options to avoid these false positives, which can be overwhelming for a security analyst. It can be a bit difficult for a security analyst to go back and understand why a particular service was stopped. The false positives that I received can be a bit complex in nature.

We have been using Alteon for our web applications for four years.

We have not seen many issues with lagging or crashing. The box works well, and it either denies or allows traffic as expected. We have been using the same box since 2020. The boxes are quite robust.

I interacted with their support while applying our security policies. I was finding it challenging because we had false positives and some of the genuine university services were getting blocked. We have some legacy services. They were showing up as a threat. With the help of their support, we whitelisted those services.

The support is quite helpful. We do remote sessions and address issues timely. I would rate their support an eight out of ten considering the time difference challenges.

Positive

This is the second WAF that our organization is using. We used Barracuda WAF from 2018 to 2020. From a security perspective, Alteon has aggressive measures for security. At the end of the day, it gives you peace of mind.

Alteon has a better way of managing misconfigurations from the administrator's point of view. If I am creating a security policy, a VIP, or a new service and doing something wrong or misconfiguring something, it does not allow me to do that. That is one of the greatest advantages of Alteon, whereas Barracuda does not verify if your configuration is correct.

Price was the main reason for switching to Alteon. Barracuda charged us triple for the renewal, prompting the shift.

It was a bit difficult for us because Radware is quite aggressive in terms of configuration. We did not have the resources and training at the time. We were trying to implement a new product, and we found it to be a bit difficult.

The initial setup took about a month, but fully integrating services that were in Barracuda took us until last year. It took us a while to migrate all the services that were there.

It took us some time to realize its benefits. When we set up Alteon, we had a separate team of people looking after it. I was not the main person at that time. We had the initial setup done in 2020, and after that, the responsibility was shifted to me. I could see that there were certain things that we could do for better security of our web applications. We did have to do some fine-tuning to get the complete benefits of Alteon.

The trainings were purchased early last year, and I am now trained in using Radware Alteon services. The training did not take long. It took about five to seven days, but these days were not fully dedicated to the training. I was doing my work, and whenever I had free time, I would start the video and get trained. The training videos that are provided are quite straightforward and easy to understand.

The Radware team we work with always gives us the best price. As a university, our budget is limited. We need something that is the best solution but with a low or economical pricing. We are getting a better price than competitors. The shift from Barracuda to Alteon was primarily due to cost efficiency.

It is very economical, and the price fits our business needs.

I would recommend switching to Alteon but ensure training is completed before migration. This will ease the learning curve.

I would rate Alteon a nine out of ten.