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.
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Focuses on securing application access with dependable integration
What is our primary use case?
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Omit
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Offers easy-to-use integration capabilities
What is our primary use case?
I use the solution in my company to meet the virtualization needs of our customers. In the case of a payment gateway, according to the application, every VirtualBox gets segregated. Every VirtualBox will have multiple banks connected to one particular vCMP for a specific application.
What is most valuable?
The solution's most valuable feature is its good virtualization concepts. My company is very happy with all the basic features of the product.
What needs improvement?
On-the-go upgrades are an option that the tool currently lacks, making it an area where improvements are required. If you have an instance where you have a specific configuration of CPU memory when you want to increase it, you have to parallelly create a new instance, and you have to export and import the configurations. On the go, if you could give any option to shut down VirtualBox, increase CPUs, and start it again, that would be a good option.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition for more than four to five years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution.
In F5 BIG-IP i5800, if you have assigned a single CPU and memory for a virtual instance and if it increases, you can just add a CPU and memory to the existing vCMP. What you have to do is spin one more virtual instance with the two CPUs and double the memory, like eight GB memory, for example. You can't just increase the existing VirtualBox. You have to create another VirtualBox parallel, download the configurations, and import it.
My company provides one banking application to around ten customers. My company has around seven virtual instances and seven applications, each application having around 70 customers running on one F5 BIG-IP i5800. My company has created seven VirtualBox.
How are customer service and support?
The solution's technical support was good. Whenever my company reached out to the product's support team, we got solutions to our issue. In case an issue doesn't get solved, then it gets escalated, and the product's support team provides our company with an engineer to deal with the problem.
How was the initial setup?
The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model and the cloud model. For the on-premises version, my company deployed it on something like F5 BIG-IP i5800, and for the cloud deployment, we have installed the virtualizations on Cisco CSP kind of tools. My company ensures that VirtualBox is deployed on CSP. In both the aforementioned scenarios, we have tested the tool, after which we started to use the product in the past two to three years.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My company's customers need to make payments for the licensing charges attached to the product. It is an expensive product. As per the requirements of our company's customers, we opt for it if it is the only hosting option available. My company also needs to see which box from F5 matches the requirements of our customers.
What other advice do I have?
Speaking about the impact of the tool on the application delivery process, I can say that static routes are limited. For every vCMP, there are some limitations of VLAN IDs and static routes, like the number of routes that can be added. There are some limitations in the product that are likely to impact our company's applications.
In terms of performance and scalability features, according to the application limit, my company can add a single CPU per vCMP or two CPUs per vCMP, which is dependent on the load requirements that we plan. The company also needs to plan according to the application requirements. My company didn't face any issues following the aforementioned process.
My company provisions vCMPs based on the concurrent session support and SSL support criteria. Based on the data sheets, my company checks the total concurrent connections, SSL connections, and throughput limit. Even when my company plans to do segregations, we plan to do them according to the specifications described in the data sheets.
You need ten pieces of the tool for load balancing. If my company's customers' requirements only consist of a product that offers five features, then they can adopt a basic OEM tool. If some customers need more features in a product, my company recommends F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. Mostly our company's customers do accept our suggestions and choose F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
I recommend the product to others who plan to use it since it is a user-friendly and not-so-complex tool.
The integration capabilities of the product are easy to use, and there is no complexity involved in it.
I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Used for for web application firewalls and it has DoS layer 7 protection
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for web application firewalls and VPNs. It could be your VPN concentrator, intelligent DNS, and load balancing.
What is most valuable?
For public clouds like AWS in Azure, the solution can use AutoDiscovery to discover the members of the virtual machines in AWS and Azure based on their tagging mechanism. This way, when you add a new virtual machine, it will automatically be added to the Virtual Edition's post.
It has a web application firewall (WAF) module. It has to get web application security. It has DoS layer 7 protection, which not many vendors have. The solution also automatically builds the thresholds for DoS attacks so that you don't have to configure the DoS manually. You enable it with basic settings, and it's using machine learning to learn the baseline and detect DoS attacks.
What needs improvement?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a heavy system that needs a lot of CPU, memory, and hard disk. Also, the solution's center management is not very well managed.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for seven to eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution has been much more stable over the last few years because it's an old product, and its bugs were fixed.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is good for a complex product like F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
How was the initial setup?
The solution's initial setup is easy because most bugs are fixed.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is an expensive solution, but it's worth the price.
What other advice do I have?
We have deployed the solution on VMware, private cloud, and public cloud. F5 is going to release a new product, BIG-IP Next, which will be a new implementation of BIG-IP with many more features. BIG-IP Next is going to be more cloud-friendly because it's going to be based on containers.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has a scripting module. If something is not in the default functionality, you could always make a script that will solve your issue. Even if it's something that would take a week, you'll still be able to write a script to solve your custom use case. Most vendors don't have such scripting functionality.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is worth it, but it's a complex solution that has many functions. Users may have to do some learning instead of using it straight away. The learning material is publicly available to learn, but it will take time.
The solution's integration is straightforward because it integrates well with others like Splunk. The solution's security functionality is one of the best for the on-premises device. Nowadays, the solution has integration with shared security.
Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Handles traffic spikes effectively and allows configuration of policy profiles across multiple layers for enhanced security
What is our primary use case?
We use it for two applications.
I've also used the Virtual Edition in the network core alongside the hardware appliances. I don't think there's any issue with either. Both seem to be working well simultaneously.
How has it helped my organization?
It's easy to integrate with others. I've integrated it with McAfee Solutions, Aruba NAC, and the EMS tool from Micro Focus.
It's easily manageable with various solutions.
What is most valuable?
I like the virtualization aspect, similar to what you get with cloud services or VMware.
What needs improvement?
I have a specific issue with the network interface connector, the NIC.
We're limited to a maximum of two NICs in a virtualized environment. It's a limitation of the tool.
So, Network Interface Connectors (NICs) need to be improved. More NICs would be helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for three months. I use the latest version.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability a seven out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues with scalability. Virtual Edition handles traffic spikes.
The main difference between the Virtual Edition and the hardware is that you run the F5 image on VMware or any other cloud platform. In my experience, I haven't faced any issues with scalability or manageability due to virtualization. It's been good.
In our IT department, no one uses the Virtual Edition for F5. However, our customers use the Virtual Edition.
I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were using the hardware initially because it was too expensive for our client. That's why they wanted to go with the BIG-IP Virtual Edition.
How was the initial setup?
There weren't any major issues with the deployment, but it wasn't completely seamless.
Virtual Edition required some additional work compared to hardware, like provisioning and sizing tasks.
However, once configured, it's easy to scale by increasing the VM size.
VM size adjustments weren't difficult, but it's not as straightforward as hardware deployment.
The deployment time depends on the configuration. It might take one day or one hour, depending on the number of applications that need to be configured.
What about the implementation team?
My company is a system integrator.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is a yearly-based license. I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being expensive.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We had Redware and Palo Alto.
We had limitations in Redware with the number of virtual servers and tools. F5 doesn't have those limitations.
Plus, for security, we can configure policy profiles across layers 3, 4, 7, and even 2. F5 also has persistence and separate mechanisms for things like server acceleration.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend using this solution. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Secure and reliable
What do you like best about the product?
It's stable, quality solution for a secure connection to your business network. The user interface is intuitive and not so complicated. But most of the time you'll need the integrator's help to set the policy as required
What do you dislike about the product?
The policy is a bit complex to understand at first you'll need guidance in your first steps but once you practiced a few times it'll be simpler
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Secure virtual connection for remote business users, secure external connection for vendors and costumers
ADC by F5
What do you like best about the product?
It is compatible with almost all platforms like VMware, Hyper-V, KVM etc. It is also compatible with cloud environments - AWS, Azure, and Google. At first glance it may seem difficult to implement, integrate and further use, but it has a fairly intuitive interface and after a little training, it is quite easy to implement and further use. Due to the fact that the system is modular, it is possible to use its capabilities and adapt it to specific requirements.
What do you dislike about the product?
The price of licenses and continuous maintenance is not pleasing to the heart. While this product is an important cybersecurity tool for businesses of any size, it may not be affordable for small and medium-sized organizations.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Load Balancing and Traffic Management is the main future for me which solves the issue of distribution network traffic across multiple servers
Maximizing Network Efficiency and Security
What do you like best about the product?
It excels in its robust load balancing capabilities and comprehensive security features, ensuring efficient traffic management and protection against web-based threats. It has many features to highlight. Traffic Management,Security, Access and Authorization, Performance Optimization,Programmability, and Cloud-Ready are some it's key features.
What do you dislike about the product?
It is complex and challenging to set up, and its higher cost may be a significant barrier for smaller organizations or those with limited IT budgets. However, organizations with specialized IT personnel or access to F5 support and training, implementation can be managed effectively
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It addresses critical network challenges like uneven traffic distribution and security vulnerabilities, providing efficient load balancing and robust security measures. This benefits users by enhancing network performance and reliability, while also safeguarding against potential cyber threats.
TRUE POLICY MANAGER IN WAF INDUSTRY
What do you like best about the product?
We can easily integrate with existing F5 device
What do you dislike about the product?
Reporting functionalities are very limited
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Policy pushing across F5 ASM Devices
Indeed it was good experience to deploy F5 VE in Cloud, great flexibility!
What do you like best about the product?
F5 VE in Azure deployment experience illustrated Flexibility and scalability!
What do you dislike about the product?
different approaches for HA and failover configuration in the cloud
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
F5 VE is used to solve problems wherein application hardcoding to route via LBs, no direct server to server communications. cascading flows via LB
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