FirePass and APM comparison

for one thing i believe FirePass is a dying product, so it will end eventually and faster then APM. APM is nicely intergrated with BIG-IP, so if they already have a BIG-IP is can be a pro. beyond this i lack the FirePass experience to say why APM is better, only that it is a nicely featurefull solution and being experienced in BIG-IP i can make a lot of things work in APM.

these are the things i know APM lacks and FirePass has, so be careful if the customer uses these:

• No web interface for file share access (come on F5, the request is known for ages, built this!)
• No static application tunnels (with the firepass you could control which loopback address to use, APM has something similar with App tunnels and DNS proxy relay, but it requires some extra software)
• IP lease (Network Access) from a DHCP server is not supported and won't be implemented on APM. There's a BUGID for that, if you want to try a RFE. Here: Bug 306860: Network Access DHCP Support

there used to be no local user database, but that is added in APM 11.4, though with limited fields.

if someone else knows any more things do let me know.

Shiraz,

Can you describe what they are currently using on the Firepass? This might help us give you a better idea if it can be done on APM today.

I agree with boneyard... Firepass is End of Sale and will be End of Support soon. I have already noticed that they aren't paying much attention to Firepass Development as we still don't have a fix for Windows 8.1 or IE 11 and APM had this fix over a month ago.

APM is the new SSL VPN/Portal/Application Access platform for F5. It is not an upgrade from Firepass as the system works completely different and has different functionality. The core concepts are the same just different on how they are implemented and the features supported.

Seth

Thanks a lot boneyard and seth.

We are still not aware of the features used by the customer in Firepass. We are going to have a session where we were looking for some added features and advantages of using APM over firepass to convince the customer for APM.

Regards, Shiraz