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.
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Infoblox DDI (BloxOne)
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Infoblox DDI consolidate DNS, DHCP and IP address management into a single platform, deployed on-site and managed from a common console.
F5 BIG-IP is my first F5 product that I have stared to work, and it brings me more experience doing a lot of migration upgrades from old code version to new code. The way F5 has all configuration help us to develop scrips to improve our process.
F5 BIG-IP Vs Netscaler Traffic Manager by Citrix I would say there is no comparison. Netscaler was difficult to use and no one easily understood the configurations. It led to many times where our engineers would need to reverse engineer the configuration before they could …
XC is great but the price was well beyond what we could do. Our security team really wanted to utilize this and loved what they saw until the quote. It's a great product but I do feel the UI could use some intuitive work.
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.
We have been using Infoblox DDI for 10+ years at Pitney Bowes. The experience has improved gradually. As far as DNS and DHCP go, they are amongst the top ones offering this service. The support is great and downtime is minimal. The IPAM is always scanning the network to update the IP database. The caching servers reduce the lookups towards the internet. All in all, this is a must-have in every data center.
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.
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.
Reporting is an add-on feature, which requires another system. The basics are free.
Network systems management and reporting is another add-on. However, this is significantly expensive.
The pricing structure is somewhat ridiculous. It's the least expensive system for a duel site. It has 10s of thousands (for a full feature IP tool), but in our case is crazy expensive.
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.
It's generally easy to navigate through all of the menus. It's also very powerful in that there are many options available for configuration, allowing one to take advantage of IP address management tools. This tool is definitely a leader in the space, and provided you have the budget, is a very good investment. The team that uses it will appreciate the tool.
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.
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.
Between Solarwinds IPAM and Infoblox, I'd still choose Infoblox even if Solarwinds is prettier to look at. Infoblox does a fantastic job at managing IP space and really doesn't have much competition in this space. Ease of use, being able to queue changes and having all this done via a web interface that just works is very convenient.
