Case Study: Golf Digest Online (GDO) achieves high application security and a seamless AWS migration with F5 Networks' BIG-IP

GDO Achieves Security with F5 During Transition to AWS

GDO, Golf Digest Online, needed to move a large on‑premises environment (300+ VMs on nearly 100 servers) to AWS without losing the high level of application security it had on-premises or causing service disruption. To meet those requirements it relied on F5 Networks virtual editions—BIG-IP LTM, BIG-IP ASM and BIG-IP DNS—building on prior F5 deployments and partner recommendations to preserve traffic steering and web application firewall capabilities during the cloud migration.

F5 Networks’ solution used BIG-IP ASM to screen all incoming traffic, BIG-IP LTM with existing iRules to direct requests, and BIG-IP DNS to bypass AWS ELB and enable active/active redundancy. The deployment (with partner support) enabled an incident‑free, two‑month transition, moved several hundred services using a single BIG-IP instance, maintained on‑prem security levels on AWS, and improved operational agility—GDO can provision VMs 3–5× faster and shift infrastructure costs from fixed assets to operating expenses.

GDO

Ryo Shirao

Manager, Infrastructure Management Office