App Migration and Portability with Equinix Fabric and F5 Distributed Cloud CE

The Challenge: Application Migration and Portability

Modern enterprises are under pressure to modernize legacy applications, adopt hybrid multi cloud strategies, and meet evolving compliance and performance demands. Yet, IT teams face significant challenges:

Fragmented Environments: Applications are often distributed across on-prem data centers, colocation facilities, and multiple public clouds.
Complex Connectivity: Ensuring secure, performant, and policy-compliant communication between these environments is non-trivial.
Operational Overhead: Traditional networking and security stacks require manual provisioning, siloed management, and site-specific configurations.
Data Gravity and Latency: Applications like SQL databases often remain in legacy environments due to data residency or performance constraints, complicating integration with cloud-native services.

Migration and portability are no longer optional—they are essential for agility, cost optimization, and innovation. Enterprises need a way to move and connect applications seamlessly across environments without re-architecting or compromising security and performance.

What: The Joint Solution from F5 and Equinix

This solution combines the strengths of Equinix Fabric, Equinix Network Edge, and F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge (CE) to create a unified, cloud-adjacent application delivery and security platform.

Key Capabilities

Equinix Fabric: A global software-defined interconnection platform enabling private, low-latency connectivity between data centers, clouds, and partners.
Equinix Network Edge: A virtual network function (VNF) marketplace that hosts CE devices without physical infrastructure.
F5 Distributed Cloud CE: A software-defined application delivery and security stack deployed as a VNF on Equinix Network Edge, providing:
- L3–L7 networking
- Global load balancing
- Web app and API protection
- Centralized policy and traffic orchestration via SaaS console

Together, these components form a multi-cloud hub that simplifies application migration and enables seamless communication between legacy and modern environments.

How: Architecture and Deployment

Core Components

CE Deployment: F5 CE is instantiated on Equinix Network Edge in strategic metros.
Fabric Interconnects: Private connections are established via Equinix Fabric to:
- On-premises data centers (e.g., VMWare workloads)
- Public clouds (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP)
- SaaS providers and partners
Service Mesh Overlay: F5’s App Delivery Fabric creates a distributed load balancer that spans environments, enabling:
- App-to-app communication across clouds and data centers
- Centralized security and observability
- Declarative policy enforcement

Key Tenets of the Solution

Cloud-Adjacent Control - Deploy CE at Equinix POPs to gain strategic control points without owning physical infrastructure.
Unified Management - Use F5 Distributed Cloud Console for centralized policy, visibility, and automation across environments.
Security Built-In - Integrated WAF, DDoS, and API protection services ensure consistent security posture.
Performance Optimization - Deliver apps closer to users and reduce cloud egress costs with Equinix’s global footprint.
Simplified Operations - Eliminate the need to manage per-site firewalls, VPNs, and load balancers—CE abstracts and automates it.
Portability & Agility - Enable lift-and-shift, hybrid, and multi-cloud deployments without re-architecting apps.