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F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. HAProxy Community Edition

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AF5 Networks offers the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager, a firewall software combining a number of features including DDoS, DNS security, and other protections.N/A

    HAProxy Community Edition

    Score9.3 out of 10
    N/AHAProxy Community Edition is a free, open source reverse-proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications. It is presented as suited for very high traffic web sites.

    $0

    Pricing
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)HAProxy Community Edition
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)HAProxy Community Edition
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)HAProxy Community Edition
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and HAProxy Community Edition
    Feature
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    5.6
    3 Ratings
    42% below category average
    HAProxy Community Edition
    -
    Ratings
    Identification Technologies2.73 Ratings00 Ratings
    Visualization Tools1.83 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Inspection5.53 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls6.43 Ratings00 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console2.73 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging6.43 Ratings00 Ratings
    VPN10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    High Availability3.63 Ratings00 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection2.73 Ratings00 Ratings
    Proxy Server10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)HAProxy Community Edition
    Small Businesses
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    F5 BIG-IP
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    F5 BIG-IP
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)HAProxy Community Edition
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (6 ratings)
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    Usability
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.7
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)HAProxy Community Edition
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    We were able to eliminate a firewall from our network architecture by integrating the module into our existing F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM). This allowed us to save on tech refresh costs, since the F5 was able to handle the module without much additional strain on the device. However, if a firewall had features that the AFM lacked, then using that firewall in tandem with an F5 would be preferable.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    It prevents a single server failure from being a downtime event by adding redundancy to every layer of your architecture. A load balancer facilitates redundancy for the backend layer (web/app servers), but for a true high availability setup, you need to have redundant load balancers as well. So it is well suited for all production related servers and less suited for individual servers that do not require redundancy.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    F5
    • Load balancing using pools
    • SSL offloading
    • iRules for threat handling
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • Low-Cost Load Balancer
    • Intelligent Request Routing based on URL and/or URI
    • Extremely flexible load balancing and healthchecks, can do almost anything including HTTP, HTTPS, PostgreSQL, etc.
    • SSL Termination
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    F5
    • The GUI icons are very small and Overall UI can use some refreshing
    • The training on the tool is not easily available and mostly involves a high cost
    • The support or third party implementation teams could use some improvement
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • A few, rare times each year, HAProxy CPU utilization spikes to 100% and server has to be rebooted - this may be related to HAProxy OR it could be an external factor causing this.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    F5
    While parent policies help simplify the deployment, the UI definitely could be more straight forward and simplified for troubleshooting and tuning
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    It is very easy to use. I was able to find a lot of documents for it on the internet. Very good community support. There are lots of examples available to try. We mostly use a command-line user interface to interact with it. The CLI is also super easy to use and very easy to interact with
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    F5
    F5 Advanced Firewall Manager has been a solid, strong solution to both keep our systems safe and being seamless for our end users. Most of the time, the end-user is not impacted and does not even know F5 Advanced Firewall Manager is running which is exactly what we are looking for.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    We haven't used customer support. We mostly used the community version. We build a multi-node HAProxy cluster with HA to the proxy itself using opensource plugins available. With the support available on the internet and the documents available we don't need to use much customer support.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is a bit easier to initially set up than F5 Advanced Firewall Manager but not as robust in its ability to manage different devices with different profiles. Different machines need different access and F5 Advanced Firewall Manager is better at allowing flexibility in identifying different devices and managing what they can access.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    We chose HA Proxy because it is cheaper than a hardware balancer, it is an open-source solution with a large community behind it and with constant updates. It also allows custom scripts according to needs.HA Proxy is a solution used in many internet sites like GitHub, Reddit, Twitter, and Tuenti.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    F5
    • When we had to decide on whether to buy different hardware our team were all in support of renewal for F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager]
    • F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager] requires proper training on tools and clear concepts of packets, headers, and content to create WAF policies
    • Overall, we are satisfied by the ROI provided by our F5 AFM and GTMs
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • Significantly lower investment vs competitors. In the case of F5s we have Virtual Editions so we're paying for the hardware to run it on top of the several thousand dollar licenses that are required for each pair and we currently have a pair of F5s per client so there's a huge potential for cost savings there.
    • Requires our network engineers to learn a new skill or our Systems engineers to take on the responsibility of managing the load balancers. It's not a huge difference either way, but it does impact the way we have done business in the past.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots