Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is network virtualization technology.
N/A
F5 BIG-IP
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
F5 BIG-IP software from Seattle-based F5 Networks is a load balancing and application protection solution suite available on cloud or via virtual editions, on a subscription or perpetual licensing basis.
I have worked with NX OS, with traditional deployment with leaf and spine architecture, and also worked with ACI deployed environment, the only difference I could say is traditional network has simple and widely known design while ACI offers the Centralised control and better …
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) allows much more customization than others. Its also fully on prem which some might like. Cloud vision is a close 2nd...its a solid product and works very well.
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) and Cisco Nexus dashboard is very easy to manage when compared to the Arista products. And trouble shooting is very easy via Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) and it is very hard to t/s via Arista command …
We have selected ACI because it’s the most powerful solution for network deployment and management. Cisco ESA, FortiGate, and Panorama are each the best solution in their respective fields, and they all fit perfectly with the Cisco ACI solution. It permits automating network …
I do not found any solution that has the same maturity of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) with other constructors. I tried Nexus Dashboard fabric controller to try similar usage with nx-os mode and evpn vxlan. NDFC is quiet near to Cisco Application Centric …
There are just a few contributors to Cisco ACI and as an engineer you usually dont have chance to work with all of them. But I can compare Cisco ACI to traditional VXLAN with EVPN deployments using Cisco NX-OS fabric and I can say it is totally different. In Cisco ACI there is …
In my experience, I believe F5 BIG-IP has the advantage in load balancing. While the competition may offer interesting options, I've personally identified problems with those tools that F5 BIG-IP resolves naturally. Once integrated into our internal applications, operation …
F5 BIG-IP have the ability not only protecting the application layer from attack, otherwise it also have the ability to load balance the network traffic. Also the setting configuration is easier since the load balance and web app firewall is on one. The other solution have …
I think the F5 BIG-IP UI is easier to work with and understand. However, the A10 CLI is a bit more comfortable due to its similarity to other products like Cisco and Arista
When comparing F5 BIG-IP to these products they do not offer half of the things F5 BIG-IP offers and in some situations I could not even get the app to work. With Azure App Gateway we needed to make specifics redirects to work but we never got it to work. With F5 BIG-IP we got …
it was used in my previous company. the challenge of operation is very overhead as it can't easily identify the blocking rule, but the function is very staple
This blows them out the water in every aspect including the ones they do not have. F5 BIG-IP has been my choice since day one it was recommended to my by friends that where involved but did not really start using it until I joined my most recent company and they are thrilled.
F5 outperformed them all and the level of documentation and support from F5 is the best that I have encountered out of all the areas that we have used as a application delivery platform. The F5 BIG-IP DNS system has been so helpful in load balancing other BIG-IP devices as well …
I feel that Cisco ACI is quite good at different architecture designs. You can have it as just a straight layer two network. You can have it like we have with a vast layer three network and I think just for the layer three network it has easen up the use. I think the use cases for layer three networking is better for ACI. If you just want to do the layer two, you can still use Cisco Nexus and so on and that should be almost simpler in some way.
LTM's scope of action goes beyond load balancing. Tools for control, governance, and application enhancement, as well as APIs like iRULE, are very important for day-to-day operations. Furthermore, the F5 BIG-IP WAF offers exceptional security. Advanced firewall and routing functionalities are helpful in more complex environments. O LTM possui um escopo de atuacao que vai alem do balanceamento. Ferramentas para controle, governanca e aprimoramento de aplicacoes e API como iRULE sao muito iportantes para o dia a dia a operacao. Alem disso o WAF do F5 BIG-IP tem uma qualidade de seguranca exceptional. As funcionalidades avancadas de firewall e roteamento ajudam em ambientes mais complexos. This review was originally written in Portuguese and has been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured.
So with the old one, we've had a secure zone, core zone, so we have special hardware specific for those zones, so security zones in our data center. This allows us to basically have the spine leaf and we could put any ports in any zone. So it allows a lot more, I'd say efficient use of equipment, being able to plug in things to whatever, and then program it to how you want it to work on.
My company is kind of like it's a safe thing if you log in and you provide another second login to get the code to log in, confirm that it's a correct that you are logged into the account and it just provides more for the company
I think something I've just went to a session with hyper fabric and the ideas that hyper fabric has. Keep it really simple because Cisco ACI is a complex system and adopt some of the ideas behind hyper fabric, bring it to ACI that will be really beneficial. So as I said, automation is a great thing, but it's still, you need to have the background and the really complex stuff that happens behind the scenes to leverage the value of that solution. And by adding more simplicity to it, I think that will be a great thing. And also integrating with other applications in terms of the automation.
I think a couple of challenges. One, I mean the cost, it's not an inexpensive product, but I think it's probably parity with value, maybe a little on the pricey side of things.
As far as features and what we'd like to see more cloud native type experiences like where NGINX and F5 kind of come together, we're moving more of the cloud just like everybody else, and it's a little clunky right now.
Cisco ACI is doing exactly what was intended for it to do, that is support our next generation data centre, improve security, and increase resiliency. Migrating to another platform would be a waste of time, resource and energy, which could be better spent migrating more legacy applications into the Cisco ACI fabric.
Stability of product and easy way to have account manager contact. F5 support team is also always available to help with major issues. Last year during the major OS upgrade F5 team and F5 leadership always shared clear information and F5 team was dedicated to help us to have it closed in record time
Cisco ACI has changed the traditional data center model into a new era of automation and agility. The product was considerably easy to deploy met all the expectations. In terms of usability, ACI provides a unified interface for managing the whole infrastructure in one place which is the main benefit for users (admins)
It actually satisfies the use cases, but I would like to know what it can do more than just the use cases, which is what I'm looking for, to talk at some point with somebody and figure out what to do next. We probably maybe could be able to do more that we don't know yet.
It allways works. If there are problems with links going down by accident (say someone accidentally unpatches something they shouldn't have), we rarely miss more then one packet over the link. Also, using VPCs we are able to upgrade the software on the switches without the attached EPs ever noticing.
I do not give it 10 because the platform evolves more and more every day in the data traffic of the datacenter. But the implementations that they carry out for different clients of the platform are very happy with the result of the same over time. Another point that you notice about the platform, despite its good performance, is the low use of energy used by this 24x7 on, it is a good fact to take into account for our environment.
Cisco provides users and partners with a multitude of data for you to consume. I think that the stuff in the public domain goes a long way to assisting you find any answers you may need, plus insights and information from areas such as DevNet provide you with access to more than just the traditional release notes and the like
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.
The Cisco ACI training provided by Cisco was in depth, covered all of our requirements, and allowed us to implement and maintain the platform without issues.
Being involved in the implmentation gives you more overview on how things are supposed to be working and communicating, you can easily performce troubleshooting and understanding the troubleshooting scenario
We have selected ACI because it’s the most powerful solution for network deployment and management. Cisco ESA, FortiGate, and Panorama are each the best solution in their respective fields, and they all fit perfectly with the Cisco ACI solution. It permits automating network tasks for both virtual and physical environments. Cisco ACI is perfect with Fortinet, Palo Alto, and, of course, Cisco devices.
When comparing F5 BIG-IP to these products they do not offer half of the things F5 BIG-IP offers and in some situations I could not even get the app to work. With Azure App Gateway we needed to make specifics redirects to work but we never got it to work. With F5 BIG-IP we got it to work within the hour.
Cisco ACI scales well and is suited in scenarios such as multi-cloud or large data centre implementations. It is not suited to smaller deployments as the efficiencies that it provides are not fully realised. It is well suited in large environments that contain both virtual and bare-metal machines allowing a great deal of flexibility. It is also perfect to support multi-tenancy platforms.
The positive one, I mean because before the Catalyst 9800 wireless hand controller, there was another version, I can't remember the name. It was quite, the web UI was very not up to date, but with the 9800, it was a pretty web view user interface. Nothing there was also integrated some API where you could make API calls to the 9800 to configure it. That was a positive negative. I can't think of anything really negative about it.
The F5 BIG-IP has improved all our load balancing needs, we have over 400 LTM VIPs in our environment this all use to be done with DNS round Robin configurations.
we have created unique APM solutions to support our external customer base
