[f-nsp] Foundry vs F5

[Lee Pedder]

F5 appliances can give you lots of flexibility at the application
level. The iRules featureset allows you to re-write web content on the
fly, which can be useful to work around temporary problems. This
feature can make turning a CDN on/off at short notice a breeze.
Another possible use for this is for compliance (example: you can
define a regex to obscure credit card numbers being sent to the
client, in case your app doesn't). There is some performance penalty
for these features.

Also, the BigIP platform is basically Linux under the hood, with
special ASIC-based switching hardware. You get root access, and can
troubleshoot using tcpdump, grep logfiles, run cron jobs etc, and edit
config files for the application modules within the system. If you
need to integrate it into an automated provisioning system this makes
things pretty simple. Also if you're delegating responsibility for
pools / vips to another team the GUI is friendly enough to get on
with.

One thing to check is the pricing. Various application modules have
different licenses and the pricing depends on the specification of
unit you run it on.

If you're going for pure performance, and don't need the additional
features or management flexibility the F5 can offer, then you may find
the Foundry equipment offers better value.

On 09/02/2008, Paul Raj Khangure <foundry-nsp at digitaljunkie.net> wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone had any F5 experience and could give a rough
> overview of comparitive advantages / disadvantages, or point me in a
> general direction of where to concentrate on evaluation.
>
> prk
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