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Does F5 do any special secret sauce that can't be replicated with an equally powerful set of hardware and a good HAProxy config? Not unless you think "extract
by mdekkers 10y ago
Does F5 do any special secret sauce that can't be replicated with an equally powerful set of hardware and a good HAProxy config?
Not unless you think "extract a lot of money from clueless execs" is secret sauce. That, and support contracts - you know, throats to choke when it all goes wrong.
- otterley 10y agoBigIP's iRules (Tcl) are pretty nice. (https://devcentral.f5.com/irules https://devcentral.f5.com/irules). I hear HAproxy has Lua support now, but I don't know how comprehensive it is compared to iRules. Also, F5 load balancers have real hardware failover capability, and can even synchronize TCP session state across instances. That's a pretty nice feature.
- mdekkers 10y agoI worked with BigIP for a few years, and I believe that the real value is in the support contracts, and the peace of mind that gives to enterprise execs. failover (local or global) as well as state sync is all do-able with linux or bsd, but that will take time and work. BigIP is more or less plug and play. This is the case for many "enterprisey" products. Personally, I prefer to go the linux/bsd route, since it forces you and your team to have a deeper understanding of what you are building, which is really handy for when things break.