F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition - GOOD (PAYG, 10Gbps)

My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  is load balancers, specifically LTM and GTM, which are the main two tasks.

In my daily work, I use LTM for application load balancing and GTM for external user traffic. For both tasks, we use LTM and GTM.

In our environment, we mostly use F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  for application load balancing and infrastructure load balancing. Most of the time, we use it for SQL database application load balancing, and in these situations, we rely on LTM and GTM.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers routing and health monitor, types of balancing options, and continuous availability, which are the best options I have observed so far.

When it comes to the multiple types of balancing options and continuous availability, I find SSL offloading to be the most valuable.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has positively impacted my organization through features such as the Local Traffic Manager, BIG-IP DNS, Advanced Web Application Firewall , SPM, iRules, and SSL/TLS offloading, which are really helpful.

The positive outcomes I noticed include improvements in performance metrics, which have been really good, and we have seen high availability most of the time.

To improve F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we need to integrate more AI features into the virtual environment and have live assistance in the tool itself because reaching support is really difficult, as we have to call or open a ticket that takes time. Enabling AI-enabled chat conversations over the tool would help us fix post-upgrading issues or any ongoing changes.

There are improvements needed for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition since we build a virtual VM and on the back-end, there are no clustering availability features because Google does not support it. Enabling load balancer as a service and GTM as a service would be helpful.

I have been working in my current field for 10 years.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is stable.

The customer support needs to be improved because we have to call them and it goes to support, who will call in their own free time. We have email support available.

I did not previously use a different solution.

I have seen a return on investment by saving time, as we used to have many resources but we only have one resource for LTM and GTM. Not much resource is required.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that I think it is expensive.

Before choosing F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, I did not evaluate other options.

My advice for others looking into using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is that it is a friendly tool that is not that complex and easy to use.

I chose a rating of 8 out of 10 for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition because I did not face any issues and it is flexible.

The governance and security aspect of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's AI capabilities is really good, making it easy to upgrade and disable application versions.

Regarding the accuracy and reliability of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's AI capabilities, I cannot provide feedback at the moment. Once they introduce these capabilities, I will be happy to provide feedback.

My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  is working with different types of technologies, currently including F5 BIG-IP  LTM, DNS, SSL Orchestrator, and AFM.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition 's primary use case is F5 LTM, which is used for load balancing. In many scenarios, I have a need for redirecting URLs according to client requests, and I accomplish this using iRules.

The best feature F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers is its user-friendly GUI that everyone can interact with and understand easily. The value of specific features depends on the particular use case, but F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's load balancing capabilities are well-known.

The GUI helps in my daily work by allowing me to check full status, virtual status, and iRules. I can also monitor connectivity issues, health, and routing. The GUI is easy to use because many users are not familiar with CLI mode, and it functions with simple click and select interactions. Compared to other solutions, this is the main advantage. Additionally, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has a help option, so if I need assistance with a particular section, I can click the right side icon and receive information on what that function does and how it works.

The value of features depends on the particular scenario, but SSL Orchestrator is also a main feature. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is currently introducing AI-based security, which will be a main feature that helps protect devices and environments using artificial intelligence.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is positive in that it works as a security solution, allowing customers to trust it easily and understand vulnerabilities. It performs reliably in particular scenarios and handles customer satisfaction.

Sometimes customers assume vulnerability points in F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition represent actual vulnerabilities, but they are false positives in that particular environment. In customer scans where multiple different types of applications are used, these points appear as positive findings. Because users have roles to access the CLI or GUI with certain permissions to access the underlying OS, these vulnerability points do not impact that particular environment. However, customers are unable to trust blindly in that particular scenario. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition should modify specific user roles for device scanning or update their reference articles so vulnerabilities are not shown as impacts in that particular environment.

I do not have particular knowledge in some areas because of my lack of knowledge or gaps in understanding certain scenarios. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition needs to improve user guidance so customers can easily understand F5 features in a more relatable way.

Regarding documentation, I have found that particular documentation is sometimes unavailable. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has limited resources for SSL Orchestrator and other technologies. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition also introduced new technology called F5XC, but particular user classes are not available. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition needs to improve documentation and support regarding new technologies so users are aware of them.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition must improve regarding new technologies according to the changing environment. Two main points are that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition must improve its technologies and user base as well as F5 support training. This is why I gave it a rating of eight out of ten.

Regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's AI technology, I do not have knowledge, but I understand F5 API and shadow API. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition should arrange new security, compliance, and government training as well as government and client interaction programs so they understand AI security and how impactful it is in their environment or area.

I have been working in my current organization for the last year, but I have more than four years of experience with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

I am currently working on different types of projects. I am handling SSL Orchestrator in a bank project and mainly handling load balancing in telecom projects. The value of my experience depends on the particular criteria, and I am working on different types of projects with different technologies. I am also currently working on an NSC project with load balancing and AFM. I cannot comment specifically because I am currently handling four to five projects with different technologies, and each day brings new tasks, which makes it great work with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

Currently I do not have knowledge about AI capability and security, so I cannot comment on that.

Users need training and more guidance regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

Others should use F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a leading marketplace solution with a good opportunity to improve. The company is improving day by day and showing updates and fixing patches to keep devices and maintain customer security appliances in a positive state in the environment.

I gave F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition a rating of eight out of ten.

I have multiple use cases for  F5 BIG-IP  Virtual Edition. One use case involves using it purely as a load balancer. I have multiple back-end pools that need to be exposed to the internet with the help of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition . Another use case involves F5 VPN, which uses Access Policy Manager on the BIG-IP side so customers can dial into their VPN profile to access the intranet where the company operates.

Within APM , we have different use cases. Some users want to connect with Active Directory credentials, some want to connect with single sign-on authentication, and some want to connect with multi-factor authentication. For authentication, users have to provide their RADIUS token as well as their Active Directory passwords. Beyond normal VPN users, we have use cases to use APM  as a portal access, which means instead of network access, we customize whatever application needs to be accessed by the end users. We can customize that application through the browser and users can access it as a portal. Additionally, I use F5 ASM , which is the advanced WAF , to mitigate vulnerabilities based on the applications we are using.

My favorite features of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition are SSL offloading and iRule. SSL offloading can also be seen in other competitors such as Radware and Citrix. However, iRule is something that allows us to control the traffic very granularly. We are able to customize how we want to control the traffic. I see a big advantage in F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's iRules.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition provides granular control. F5 also provides a free license for one month. Even for an intern or an engineer who does not have lab resources in their environment, they can use this one-month free trial license. They can set up a lab and learn extensively. This helps us to upskill ourselves. Moreover, all solution documents are easily available on the F5 official site. It is very hard to find this information in other products such as Cloudflare  or Radware. They provide only the outline of what we are looking for, but they do not give detailed information on what it does and how it does. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition provides this information for free.

A downside of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is that to capture TCP dump, in Palo Alto, we can do it within the UI itself. However, here, to capture the TCP dump, we need to log in into the CLI and be familiar with the commands. Sometimes the commands that we keep handy work, and sometimes they do not work. We have to look for the command again and prepare with the correct commands. Another issue is logs. Logs can sometimes be pretty hard to analyze to determine what causes the issue. For example, in some use cases, if we try to find out if the pool member is flapping, I would say the active pool member is also showing that it flaps for every second for some milliseconds. That is a significant downside.

I have been working with the solution for almost 10 years.

I have used Radware as an alternative. I used Radware WAF  as well as Radware load balancer. Comparatively, I find F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition more effective in both the WAF as well as the LTMs.

If I were to choose one solution, I would really go for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. I would rate this solution an 8.5 out of 10.

My main use case for  F5 BIG-IP  Virtual Edition is that I used it for LTM, ASM, and GTM modules. I used F5 LTM to load balance customer application traffic, and I used ASM to protect and safeguard customer applications from various cyber threats, attacks, and day-to-day emerging vulnerabilities. We also had DNS and Global Traffic Manager services for multiple client applications, so I have hands-on experience with all these technologies of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition  including LTM, GTM, and ASM.

In my previous organization, we had a data center virtualized environment using VMware ESXi  hosts. We had bare metal ESXi hosts where we installed VMware vSphere  and NSX virtualization software. To perform customer application load balancing and enable application security, we installed F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition VMs, which can protect the application from various cyber attacks and perform seamless application load balancing for traffic sharing between application nodes. We purchased licenses for VMs based on the requirement of LTM, GTM, and various security features and deployed the VMs on VMware vSphere  and the VMware NSX  environment. I also had work experience deploying F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition in public clouds such as GCP  and OCI  from the marketplace images, enabling seamless network connectivity and performance for customer applications via F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition VMs.

With the specific use case of load balancing and protecting against various threats, I use F5 LTM to perform load balancing for major production applications. One of our customers had only a single application server serving all application traffic of the entire production application and reported a performance issue. Following the management architecture review of the application, they identified the need for enabling load sharing for the application. We suggested implementing F5 LTM load balancer, which could provide load sharing between multiple application nodes. We recommended hosting the application on multiple servers instead of a single server, configured it via F5 LTM, and ultimately load balanced the application traffic for three additional nodes. The client achieved seamless traffic load balancing between the multiple application nodes, and the application performance increased, eliminating the slowness issue. In terms of LTM features, we can offload SSL certificates on LTM, conduct SSL encryption and decryption, and implement numerous traffic redirection rules, multiple LTM policies, and iRules that affect application traffic. Regarding ASM, we have used it to protect client applications from DDoS attacks, major OWASP Top 10 attacks, SQL injection attacks, script injection attacks, and many botnet attacks. For instance, one of our clients experienced a DDoS attack on a major live application, and we enabled ASM policies with DDoS protection, setting TPS count values based on geolocation IPs. Using those DDoS protection policies, we prevented many DDoS attacks. The WAF  ASM signature has helped us mitigate various cyber threats for clients, utilizing automated policy learning and traffic learning to avoid manual intervention in creating and hardening security rules.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition includes strong application delivery and load balancing without needing to purchase separate devices for LTM, ASM, and GTM, as all modules are available on a single device. The solution is reliable for hosting applications and performing load balancing and acts as a reverse proxy, providing unified public access for multiple applications. Additionally, the cost advantages compared to physical appliances are notable since pricing for physical appliances is significantly higher than for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. Therefore, for enterprise clients, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is much more cost-effective and provides cost savings.

Moreover, F5 LTM has many reliable security features, including DDoS capabilities, DDoS protection, bot protection, IP reputation, and threat intelligence. These are key features available in F5 ASM  to protect customer applications. F5 LTM, GTM, and F5 products enhance customer application experiences and F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition supports deployment across various platforms in public clouds including AWS , Azure , VMware, KVM , and other hypervisors. These are major positive features of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

Since we implemented F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we have experienced better application performance and lower costs compared to hardware appliances, along with flexibility in deploying F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition across multiple hybrid clouds. The solution provides a stronger security posture, operational efficiency, and automation facilitating deployment in automated modes. It integrates with various orchestration tools and SIEM  tools, offering centralized management via BIG-IQ, and reduces server load and application load by cutting down on SSL encryption, decryption, and security analyses performed by different security tools and servers. This has led to a reduction in server count by up to 60 percent for improved application performance and SSL offloading.

The improvement points I can suggest are that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition tends to be highly resource-intensive, as we often encounter issues with high CPU, RAM, and storage utilization, particularly with ASM and LTM modules. Moreover, the licensing and pricing can be complex, and the pricing seems higher compared to other products. Certain virtual editions come with NIC limitations, permitting only two NICs for some VMs, and there are performance concerns when compared to hardware appliances, especially with high loads running on multiple modules simultaneously. Additionally, the device's GUI is not user-friendly, requiring admins to undergo significant training to begin administering F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, as it appears outdated. I would suggest considering pricing reductions, improving performance and resource consumption, and making the GUI more user-friendly.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for nearly six years.

Apart from issues with high CPU and memory utilization and resource consumption, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is stable.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition scalability is satisfactory as we can add necessary CPU and memory resources when needed, purchase new licenses, and add required features to scale the devices deployed on F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

We receive prompt customer support from the technical assistance center. However, we have experienced delays in support during non-business hours on weekends. For business hours and critical cases, prompt support is consistently provided.

Previously, we utilized VMware NSX  cloud-native AVI load balancers and Array load balancers, but both of those had limited features compared to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition load balancer and ASM. The existing solutions did not meet our feature requirements or customer demands, which is why we switched to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

In terms of return on investment, we have seen significant improvement in application performance after deploying F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. This enhancement has led to better user experiences and attracted more business or application traffic, contributing to organizational growth.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been generally good, although it is managed by an account manager. While I encountered scenarios where the pricing was higher compared to other products, the overall experience was satisfactory, with proper support from the account and sales team during the procurement of new VMs.

We evaluated VMware AVI load balancer, WAF , and FortiWeb WAF before choosing F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.

I would advise others looking into using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition to consider it based on their application architecture. If an application requires better performance, security postures, and reliable delivery, I would recommend using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. I am satisfied with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition and have no further additional thoughts on it. I would rate this product a 6 out of 10.

My main use case for  F5 BIG-IP  Virtual Edition is typically using F5 LTM and GTM, where LTM is for local traffic management and GTM handles different data load balancing. We have two data centers in two different locations, and through BIG-IP GTM, we perform cross-data-center load balancing. In each data center, we have to do unit management, and in total, we have over 100 units, with 60 being virtual editions.

For day-to-day tasks, whatever is operationally needed,  F5 BIG-IP  Virtual Edition is definitely helping us a lot to keep applications available at all times.

The best features F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers include iRule, which is the most important feature of F5 LTM. If a feature is directly not available in F5, we can achieve that using iRule, such as logging, redirection, HTTP to HTTPS blocking, and redirection at URI level or content level. These features are exceptional and even persistence-related features help us a lot in day-to-day tasks.

I find the customization feature of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition particularly useful, along with many other features such as Health Monitor, which we can use to monitor health. If something is not allowed and the application team wants us to blacklist some IPs, we can set up policy region-based controls and achieve that. These are great features of F5.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has positively impacted my organization by simplifying management, as we previously had to manage hardware boxes. Now with the virtual edition, it is easy to use and reliable. We do not find any issues; we have been working with it for the last three to four years and not a single issue has been reported, making it a very reliable and stable product.

I do not wish for any improvements in F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition; everything looks good for me. If anything is needed, we raise a ticket, and they take our feedback seriously.

I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for three years, and I am using F5 LTM virtual edition, which is a great product.

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is indeed very stable.

The customer support for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is good; we get immediate responses based on priority.

In this organization, from the beginning, we have been using F5 LTM, but in my previous organization, I used Radware, and I found that F5 LTM edition is a more stable product.

Since moving to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we are getting a license directly from F5 and have deployed it over our VM, resulting in cost and time savings. Earlier, if hardware was faulty, we had to replace it, but now we simply run our OS over the VM, making it a great product.

My experience with pricing and setup costs for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition was mixed, as they do not have an option for 10 gig licensing, which was costly for us. If they could also provide 5 gig and 6 gig licenses, that would be better.

Before choosing F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, I did not evaluate other options, as the decision completely came from the sales team. They asked for feedback, and since the feedback was great, I am not completely aware of the commercial part, but for us, it is serving our purpose with no issues.

A specific scenario where F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition helped solve a challenge for me is its ability to achieve high availability and make applications always available. It provides application-level availability, monitoring the health of applications. We even have the option to check the content and actual application status, allowing us to monitor the response code, which are great features of F5 LTM, making my work easier.

My advice to others looking into using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is that it is a reliable and stable product; they can definitely go for F5 LTM.