F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Score9.7 out of 10

92 Reviews and Ratings

What is F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

F5 states that the "brain" of the BIG-IP platform, Local Traffic Manager (LTM) intelligently manages network traffic so applications are always fast, available, and secure.

Categories & Use Cases

#1 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

20.7%

117 installations of 566

#2 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

20.1%

114 installations of 566

#3 most frequent

Information

14.3%

81 installations of 566

Jonathan Mongeau View profile

Network Infrastructure Engineer in Information Technology at PNC Bank (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is the backbone of our organization’s traffic management system and delivers phenomenal performance for the multitude of services we rely upon internally and globally. As a financial services company, we require solutions that provide reliable performance and quality and F5 has been able to deliver. The other end of this is when things go badly; the ability to address problems within the BIG-IP ecosystem is considerably easier because the experience is catered towards engineers like myself where we need the telemetry and data to quickly diagnose problems.

Pros

Performance
Reliability
Quality support

Cons

The user experience within the WEBUI

Return on Investment

I’m not in a position to say anything on this matter

Usability

Rob Sutherlin View profile

Sr. Network Engineer in Information Technology at Xcel Energy (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) or all of our applications across multiple environments - some of which require strict regulation and cannot openly communicate between the two environments. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) allows us to create application resiliency, security and reporting.

Pros

Load balancing
traffic processing through irules
SNAT configurations

Cons

renaming VIPS if they are incorrectly made. You have to delete the VIP and start over from the beginning
Logging can get very chatty

Return on Investment

It has allowed us to let application developers know that the issues are with their application and not due to the network, because of where it sits. This has been invaluable when troubleshooting issues when they arise. Knowing whether or not traffic is even hitting the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), either ingress or outgoing. If the Dev's information is not even making it to the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), we can quickly tell them and let them figure the issue out on their own, saving the rest of the Network Team from getting that 2am call.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

NetScaler and Citrix Gateway

Other Software Used

F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall), F5 BIG-IP, F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator

Thiago Cardoso

Network engineer in Information Technology at GE (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use F5 Big-IP LTM in my organization to load balance Apps with onPrem and Cloud pool members.

Pros

Exceptional Performance
Very good handling SSL
Security

Cons

It would be nice if I could just rename an object such as VIP. It is not cool when I need to delete and re-create an object just because I want to change its name.
I would like to be able to see orphans objects directly from GUI, not just from ihealth.
I would like to be able to delete VIPs and associated objects in a single shot from GUI.
GUI could have a `make a wish` button

Return on Investment

Not able to provide numbers but LTM had improved tremendously the Apps availbility

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Azure Load Balancer

Other Software Used

F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management

Sameer Sutikshan

Network Engineer in Information Technology at Canadian Tire (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using this product as a matter of LTM, application delivery, and it addresses problems like SSL, offloading, bridging, and it gives more control on the client side, on the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager, not on the servers.

Pros

So this product does the certification, the client, SSL, the TCP, the STTP profile, the search and keys and all of that stuff.

Cons

We can improve this product in OCSP, stapling, CRL revocation list, cipher controls, and that's about it.

Return on Investment

It has a lot of positive impact. It made application deployment pretty simple and easy

Hrishi Pachlag

Cloud Arch in Engineering at NICE System Ltd (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We extensively utilize LTM to handle the majority of our web and API customer traffic, distributing requests across our web and API server pools for load balancing and high availability. SSL inspection and validation are performed on incoming traffic to ensure secure communications.

Pros

Extensive SSL Check
Path redirect
multiple load balancing options

Cons

LTM fail over
Cloud deployments Active standby deployments

Return on Investment

cloud costing is more, with Cloud base LBs we can save a lot compare to F5

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Brocade VDX (discontinued) and Azure Application Gateway

HAProxy Community Edition

A10 Thunder ADC

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

What is F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

Categories & Use Cases

Most Frequent Users

Finance and Insurance

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Information