F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management vs. Symantec Ghost Solution Suite

F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management is a great interface to manage F5 gear for large enterprises, often simplifying the routine manual workflows which are time consuming.

Incentivized

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite is well suited to standard images of company approved software and standard configurations for all users. When every user has the same computer configuration, it is easily managed with a standard image across the board. It is less effective if you need to have multiple configurations for different groups. It becomes cumbersome to manage all the various images. When you add to the complexity by having to address the different drivers for the different hardware model computers, this only adds to the overall number of images you will have to manage, create and keep updated. I find Ghost most helpful with standard hardware model computers and one or two images company wide.

Incentivized

• It show us all F5s in one spot
• It is able to take backups
• It can help with upgrades
• Give central spot to make reports

Incentivized

• Pushing out scripts and jobs to computers
• Remote imaging and pushing out Windows OS Images
• Helping to track who pushed out what jobs

Incentivized

• To be able to schedule software updates at a later time/date to meet change management window so manual intervention is minimized. F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management should be able to send alert if upgrade process halts or fails for any reason.

Incentivized

• Initial install could be easier. Had to call support to assist.
• Joining domains had a few kinks that had to be figured out.

Incentivized

It may be due to how we deployed it or how we use it, but it adds time to doing small changes. I do like the deployment detail and change tracking though.

Incentivized

B/c We liked the other products even less

Incentivized

The Symantec Ghost Solutions Suite learning curve isn't that steep.

• In 2021 thanks to Big-IQ we drastically reduced the time we spend on software upgrades.
• BigIQ helped us to have visibility of our Big-IP environment in one place.

Incentivized

• A positive impact of Ghost would be time. To deploy computers form scratch is very time consuming and labor intensive for the IT Department. Ghost clearly saves the time of the IT departments staff to quickly get a new computer out to user so they can spend their time on addressing other issues and being more productive.
• Time is money. If the IT department is spending hours preparing computers and employees are out of a computer for an extended period of time waiting for one to be loaded, this is money lost to the company in paying employees to sit around and wait for a computer to be configured.

Incentivized