Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs. F5 BIG-IP

Barracuda is an inexpensive solution for load balancing web traffic of all kinds and works as a reverse proxy if you need one. It is efficient and has been a very stable solution. If you need extremely granular configuration for your load balancing traffic, then you may need to go with one of the bigger brands. Barracuda will more than handle regular small and medium business use and do so at a greatly reduced price point.

Incentivized

Definitely in larger environments, more mature organizations that obviously have the budget to spend and want best in class. Where it struggles is those organizations that don't have the funding and money to spend on it and need more basic functionality. So I'd say that's smaller customers we've worked with and kind of mid-market. They tend to get scared when they get the quotes. Also we've had some struggles with account team consistency. So for the sales team, just a lot of turnover and a lot of missteps on customer calls.

Incentivized

• Excellent Load Balancing.
• Flexible configuration - It's very simple to configure and powerful enough to handle many more websites than just our exchange site.
• Continuously updated - Barracuda makes fairly frequent updates to address issues and improve features.

Incentivized

• I mean from a basic level, it actually satisfies all the use cases we have, which is basically to have multiple web servers for the front end and then you want that to be equally split across. The traffic comes in from all over the world. We use DRA protection and everything, but then we also internally want to make sure all the servers are being utilized and we provide much more availability across all servers. We just make sure BIG-IP sits in between and handles the traffic accordingly. And it's pretty basic and it comes to drawing traffic. It's pretty easy to configure and set it up and then forget.

Incentivized

• Overall, there are no issues. It just runs.

Incentivized

• Recently we have been deploying F5 web application firewall and we have started the deployment. We have already moved applications out there, but we are not yet to the point wherein I could comment any positive feedback or any negative feedback because we are still going through it, right. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't see any drawbacks or any shortcomings on the F5 product lineup.

Incentivized

It is a product we plan on continuing to use.

Incentivized

So far experience with F5 BIG-IP has been good, but we are only 6 months into the deployment and will depend on how things run over time.

Incentivized

It is fairly easy to learn after support helps you set it up and shows you how things work. Which they will do.

Incentivized

It's not difficult to understand the parts of application configurations and features. Setting up new virtual servers with multiple profiles, certificates, and nodes is easy for new users through the web interface, which also translates to programability in scripts, DevOps, or other configuration management use-cases. Users from different backgrounds such as networking and infrastructure can use F5 BIG-IP, while users who are familiar with API calls can easily configure objects without needing to understand the platform at all.

Incentivized

It did well for basic needs but would not deliver for all our services.

Incentivized

On the occasions when we've had to engage f5 support, they have been great. They have always resolved our issues quickly and been easy to work with and professional. The reason I give them a 10 out of 10, however, is because when we've had issues that have crossed over between the f5 BIG-IP, our Cisco switches, and our Microsoft IIS server the f5 support representatives have been extremely knowledgeable about every product and device involved and have been able to troubleshoot end-to-end without having to engage other vendors.

Incentivized

Practical cases and hands on , many hours of training with tipical cases

Incentivized

implementation is fine

Incentivized

We also had looked at Kemp and F5. The Kemp and F5 had a lot of horsepower and advanced configuration and functionality. When we looked at our workload and how we were planning on using the load balancers, we really didn't need all those extra bells and whistles. Barracuda provided all the standard functionality we needed and were looking for and did so at a greatly reduced price point.

Incentivized

That's the one thing that really stood out. It was a lot easier to use from an administrator standpoint, so I think that's the one thing that really made our team decide to go with this product versus another competitor. Just ease of use.

Incentivized

• It has allowed us to maintain a very high level of uptime.
• It has allowed us to perform server updates without the downtime of services.
• It has provided a consistent user experience by properly balancing service loads across servers.

Incentivized

• F5 BIG-IP has a highly positive impact on the customers. The main impact is on the security of the web applications.
• F5 BIG-IP provides an easy and safe way to connect employees to assets and applications that reside in an on-premises environment.

Incentivized