Azure Traffic Manager vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Traffic Manager
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure Traffic Manager operates at the DNS layer to quickly and efficiently direct incoming DNS requests based on the routing method of your choice.N/A
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
F5 states that the "brain" of the BIG-IP platform, Local Traffic Manager (LTM) intelligently manages network traffic so applications are always fast, available, and secure.N/A
Pricing
Azure Traffic ManagerF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Traffic ManagerF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Traffic ManagerF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
Azure Traffic ManagerF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
BIG-IP
BIG-IP
Score 8.8 out of 10
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
BIG-IP
BIG-IP
Score 8.8 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Traffic ManagerF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.2
(20 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Traffic ManagerF5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
Azure Traffic Manager is a great product, if you have multiple sites hosting similar services (Primary and DR), and you want to ensure that users are directed to the DR in case of a primary datacenter failure, [Azure] Traffic Manager does this very nicely. If you have a service hosted across multiple regions/datacenters and you want to balance the inbound load between the regions, [Azure] Traffic Manager does this very well, of course such scenario would require a database replication or something like Cosmos-DB in the backend [Azure Traffic Manager] is also well suited for inbound traffic with multiple IPs, you can fail-over traffic from one inbound IP to another based on its availability, or if you have multiple internet connections that you want to balance the load across, it does this pretty nicely too.
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F5
There was a need to have the DR environment to be available actively but not to send the traffic unless the production is down The F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) priority feature helped achieving it. It was well suited in handling the HTTP headers using polices and iRules. It was less appropriate from the application security perspective in the current version. But after attending the AppWorld 2024, I see a lot of ways to protect the network and the application with several features.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Performance DNS Load Balancing for Lowest Latency Endpoint to Clients
  • Priority-Based DNS Load Balancing to ensure maximum up time for a service
  • Geographic-based DNS Load Balancing to force certain clients in certain regions to connect to specific endpoints
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F5
  • Does web traffic management very well.
  • To allow API's to work with our in house services
  • To make intelligent load balancing decisions.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Traffic View is a great feature, but doesn't work very well, sometimes it gets stuck and stops loading traffic view data
  • Automatic probing for endpoints sometimes gets stuck too, I would recommend a technique to test the endpoint in real time from Azure Portal
  • Traffic View heatmap is buggy and doesn't point correctly to locations
  • Traffic View portal doesn't show source countries (Shows coordinates) it would be much more helpful to have coordinates auto-translated to geolocations/countries
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F5
  • Time investment in creating Virtual Servers across many LTMs
  • Ability to change object names after creation
  • Support ability to troublshoot iRUles
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Amazon Route 53 Traffic Flow does what [Azure] Traffic Manager does, however, in Azure Configuration is separated between Azure DNS Zones (For DNS Zone Management) and [Azure] Traffic Manager for DNS Traffic Management and Load Balancing, Route 53 in a unified product for DNS Traffic Management using Traffic Flow and DNS Zone Management. Route 53 does a great job, however, we found it to be a little bit more complex to setup than [Azure] Traffic Manager, Setting up traffic manager is pretty easy even for the first time, and getting the best out of it is relatively simple.
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F5
As far as I know, F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) from F5 is the best and the number of features is unmatched compared to its competitors. The first-time setup is also quick and easy and the product behaves as a full proxy which is rarely seen. The support is good and also the help articles are numerous.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Service cost is exceptionally low
  • Overall, this product saves a lot of money for the value it provides and it isn't expensive
  • It's around half a dollar per million queries, which is truly peanuts, extras may be required if you do advanced configuration
  • I can't see any reason why any business wouldn't be using this product, very low investment for a very high return and savings
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F5
  • Negative impact in that it makes it very easy for applications to be spun up but cleanup of old/ unused deployments do not happen causing resources to be consumed unnecessarily
  • When used in a multiblade viprion guest, issues with backplane and blade replication causing impact
  • Ability to deploy multiple instances helped with network segmentation
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ScreenShots