Apps drive your business, and a cloud solution needs to properly support your apps. F5 ensures that apps are secured and always available, anytime, anywhere, in any infrastructure. And because F5 services are at the app level, businesses can move their applications to whichever cloud model works best, avoiding vendor lock-in.
Many cloud vendors offer app services, but they’re limited. By deploying F5 services with your cloud-based applications, you can apply the same enterprise-grade load balancing, DNS services, web application firewalls, access control, application-level security, and policies found in on-premises environments. And as your cloud needs evolve, you can change your architecture without having to rebuild your entire ecosystem.
For some, choosing between public and private cloud is an easy choice. But for most, it’s not even a question of one or the other. Multi-cloud solutions are becoming increasingly common, with 89% of businesses seeing application sprawl across multiple cloud environments.
F5 app services can help. By standardizing and automating how you deploy and manage your app services, you can measure time-to-market in days, rather than months. Support your development, network, and IT teams’ evolving needs without sacrificing the performance or security of your applications.
Get application security, availability, and performance while maintaining control over your cloud environment.
Get the app services you need with cloud on-demand—without significant upfront expenses.
Choose the best cloud for your app and maintain consistent application services.
Build a direct line from data center to cloud services.
Private Cloud:
Deploy and secure your applications in the private cloud faster
While most private clouds can handle basic load balancing natively, they do lack vital application delivery services, which can put the availability and security of applications at risk. Once you choose a private cloud platform, you must deliver the application security, availability, and performance your users expect. F5 provides specific solution packages that include the required app delivery and security services, integration into the cloud management and orchestration system, consulting, and enterprise support.
Bring F5 to your private cloud
With F5 application services, you can maintain the vital four in your cloud environment:
- Security
Secure your applications and ensure data privacy with identity and access management, web application firewall (WAF), distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation, and SSL services.
- Availability
Use advanced algorithms to distribute traffic to the best-performing servers and take advantage of a multiple-step monitor to enable application and non-HTTP health checks.
- Performance
Optimize a configurable TCP stack to deliver across WAN and cellular networks, as well as an HTTP/2 gateway that provides additional compression and request multiplexing, without altering back-end infrastructure.
- Visibility
Deliver apps faster by using application-related data to proactively monitor and troubleshoot deployments.
Best practices: Application delivery services in the private cloud
A multi-tier architecture improves the capacity, scalability, and flexibility of your applications. In the provider tier, high-capacity, multi-tenant hardware deals with L4 load balancing, network firewalling, SSL decryption, access control, and network optimization at the edge of the network, where it has the greatest impact.
In the app or tenant tier, app specific tasks such as web-application firewalling, advanced application monitoring, traffic management, and content routing can be fulfilled by a software-only platform close to a single or small number of applications (tenants) tied to an organizational unit.
Once in place, developers can focus on deploying critical applications. Service templates save time, ensure consistent deployments, and reduce operational risk of manual deployments by codifying standard configuration elements for a particular service. And when the team wants to spin up a server or try something out, end-to-end integration with the private cloud platform allows them to deploy an instance with a few clicks on a GUI.
Private cloud platform and SDN partner solutions
Speed up deployments by integrating F5 application services with private cloud platforms and software-defined networking (SDN) environments. Learn how private cloud solution packages provide tested, validated, and certified solutions that integrate F5 application and security services into cloud and container environments.
- By using the OpenStack LBaaS plug-in, Heat orchestration templates, and the Red Hat OpenStack Platform, you can provide both multi- and single-tenant services next to your apps in a Red Hat OpenStack cloud.
- Our solutions integrate with the VMware vRealize Suite and VMware NSX, so you can more easily provision, configure, deploy, monitor, and automate F5 devices in private cloud deployments.
- Improve time-to-market and reduce risk with an app-centric approach.
Public Cloud:
Deploy faster in the cloud
When it comes to application deployment, agility is king. Businesses need to move quickly, and public cloud infrastructure gives them the flexibility and scalability they need to stay competitive.
However, the same security and compliance issues affecting traditional data centers are still very real concerns with cloud deployments. Public cloud providers guarantee the security of the infrastructure, but application owners are responsible for the security of their applications and data.
F5 reduces the risk of moving applications to the cloud
Bringing F5 application delivery services to the public cloud allows you to leverage the people, skills, and tools you rely on in your data center to ensure the security, availability, and performance of your applications. F5 accelerates the move to cloud, while minimizing risk and business impact.
Automate deployment in the public cloud
F5’s extensive range of open-source cloud solution templates helps you quickly and consistently deploy and configure F5 services across multiple public cloud environments. The templates can be integrated with 3rd party automation tools such as Chef, Puppet, and Ansible, to simplify the creation and operation of autonomous cloud architectures.
All templates are available from the F5 GitHub Repository free of charge, while a selection have also been fully integrated into their respective cloud marketplaces where they can be deployed directly into virtual networks in minutes, further reducing deployment times. Some of the solutions available include F5’s Auto Scale WAF Solution for Amazon AWS and an Office365 Federated Access Solution for Microsoft Azure.
Multiple application environments, one consistent experience
F5 solutions are built on the same platform across all implementations. That cohesion allows you to deliver consistent application experiences across public, private, and interconnection cloud services, as well as your existing data center.
Deploying BIG-IP Virtual Editions in the cloud >
F5 in the Public Cloud
Manage and scale your applications in the cloud without sacrificing security, performance or availability. Choose your partner:
Amazon Web Services
AWS Marketplace is an online store that helps customers find, buy, and immediately start using the software and services they need to build products and run their business. Available via Bring your own license (BYOL), Pay as You Go (PAYG) – Hourly & Annual, Annual Subscription, and Enterprise Licensing Agreement (ELA).
Microsoft Azure
Azure is a growing collection of integrated services—analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage, and web—for moving faster, achieving more, and saving money. Available via Bring Your Own License (BYOL), Pay as You Go (PAYG) – Hourly, Annual Subscription, and Enterprise Licensing Agreement (ELA). Azure Security Center: One-click access to the power of F5’s industry-proven ISCA Labs-certified WAF to protect your applications in Azure.
Google Cloud Platform
Google Cloud Platform lets you build and host applications and store and analyze data on Google’s highly scalable architecture. BIG-IP Virtual Edition images can be deployed directly from Google Cloud Launcher for use in your cloud architecture. Available via Bring Your Own License (BYOL), Pay as You Go (PAYG) Hourly, Annual Subscription, and Enterprise Licensing Agreement (ELA).
Multi-Cloud:
Multi-cloud services give you more freedom without adding complexity
Cloud decisions are often driven by what’s best for the application, even when different apps require different cloud services. With 76% of businesses deploying in two or more cloud environments,* multi-cloud solutions aren’t just another option, they’re often a best practice.
But more cloud environments also mean more complexity. To help simplify your multi-cloud strategy, F5 offers a comprehensive set of application services and management tools that remain consistent across multiple clouds.
Multiple clouds. Consistent application services
F5 solutions are highly programmable, API-accessible, and can be integrated with your existing automation and delivery systems. This results in:
Faster deployments so you can scale with greater agility.
- Turnkey solutions validated and tested in multiple clouds
- A library of automation and DevOps toolsets
- Super-NetOps training
Efficient operations to reduce complexity across multiple clouds.
- Service abstraction
- Portable multi-cloud app services
- Application ecosystem integration
Consistent security to decrease risk without sacrificing compliance or control.
- Consistent security policies
- Simplified policy deployment and compliance
- Advanced app protection
- Centralized visibility
Manage multiple solutions, simply
Even when deployment environments and solution stacks change, F5 enables consistent services to ensure the availability and security of your applications. F5 solutions are highly programmable and API-accessible, and can be integrated with your existing automation and delivery systems, allowing you to support fast development and delivery without compromising security or reliability.
F5 products and technologies give you the freedom to deploy any application, anywhere with consistent services and security in any environment. That includes public clouds, cloud interconnect, container environments and IoT, as well as private clouds. So, what does that mean for you?
- The ability to deploy faster and in more clouds, like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, VMware, and OpenStack.
- The assurance of consistent services without having to manage each individual instance in each individual environment.
- Enterprise-grade services for container environments and the IoT.
Get the services you need, anywhere.
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Deploy however you want.
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Cloud Interconnection:
A faster, more secure road to the cloud
More and more businesses are adopting cloud interconnection at colocation facilities—and with good reason. Get the flexibility and scale of public cloud while managing security, traffic, and policy programs in a physical environment. Pushing applications, content, and processing closer to the edge of the Internet creates measurable improvement in performance with lower costs.
Bring it together with the BIG-IP platform
Cloud providers take infrastructure security very seriously. However, it’s up to you to ensure the security of the applications and data you put in the cloud. By running cloud gateway services through a BIG-IP platform in a cloud interconnection environment, you insert security controls at the most effective point: the digital edge, where traffic enters and exits your cloud application. You can also use purpose-built hardware for intensive tasks like rapid SSL encryption/decryption. In fact, you can recreate your security stack in a colocation facility or consolidate more of your security controls with BIG-IP solutions.
Freedom of choice
With the BIG-IP platform, you can control access and apply common policy across cloud providers. Your application remains cloud-vendor agnostic, making it easier to implement a multi-cloud strategy or move your applications between cloud vendors as your needs change and technology advances.
Key benefits of the BIG-IP platform in a cloud interconnection environment.
- Protect and control traffic to and from the public cloud.
- Apply access and security policies to applications running in the public cloud.
- Manage your solutions from a common interface across all your infrastructures.
Use cases: BIG-IP solutions in a cloud interconnection environment.
- Single sign on (SSO) and cloud federation—Get simplified, secure access to applications, regardless of location.
- Web application firewall (bi-directional)—Protect your applications (and the data behind them) from application layer attacks.
- SSL termination and content inspection—Decrypt, inspect, and re-encrypt all SSL traffic to and from your cloud applications.
- DDoS protection—Shield your mission-critical applications from volumetric attacks.
F5 solutions for cloud interconnection
Running F5 in a cloud interconnection environment
Combining the BIG-IP platform with colocation and interconnection services enables you to host physical and virtual appliances directly, delivering applications exactly where they need to be.
