DCJPBIGIPFront DCJPBIGIPBack

Here's another post on Japanese Marketing, F5 Style.  I've talked about iRules, TMOS, and FirePass and for today I've got our very own BIG-IP.  As I mentioned in my previous posts, since I don't speak Japanese, the only way I can interpret this marketing sheet is by the graphics on it.  So, again, I'll give you my view on what the message is:

  1. The guy in this photo is not really a guy at all, he's a puppet since there is no bottom half to his body.
  2. The left picture shows him with a blue forehead - not sure what to infer from that.
  3. The puppet has the added "Spock from Star Trek Eyebrow Lift" that was made famous by Leonard Nimoy in the original Star Trek series.
  4. BIG-IP works like 4 stars in a data center with three racks of servers, but it gets a 5th star when you increase the number of racks to twelve.  Plus you get an added blue glow out of your data center!
  5. Four points are presented around this 5 star blue glow (you'll notice there are four points on each star!).  The first one being BIG-IP and iRules, the second being L3 and ICMP, the 3rd is PVA, and the 4th is HTTP.
  6. If the four points aren't good enough for you, I bet you didn't know there was a built-in matchmaking service available.  There is a nifty flowchart guiding you to your ideal product match.  I ran through the flowchart and here's where I ended up:
    • Do you like lots of ports to stick your wires? : Yes - Move to the right
    • Are you looking for a partner in the with a healthy 2U figure? : Yes - Move to the right.
    • Do you need 1Gbps? : Yes - Move down.
    • Are you sure you want a 2U figure? : Yes - Move down.
    • Do you need 10Gbps? : Yes - Move down.
    • That leads me to the 8400 as my ideal match.

So, there it is.  While BIG-IP didn't have as many unexpected features as FirePass did, it sure did make up for it in sheer muscle.  So, I'm an 8400, which one are you?

-Joe