LoadMaster

Kommentare: We improved outlook performance and stability for the end users, during daily business but also reduce service interruptions during maintenance windows. The load master is built as a virtual appliance and we set it up in a cluster, so that it is fully redundant. We are looking into using it also to balance other applications, which Kemp can do as well.

Vorteile: KEMP have a partnership with Microsoft in order to load balance Exchange which was a great plus for us while selecting the right product since we wanted mainly to loadbalance Exchange for the Outlook client in order to minimize interruptions during maintenance windows or simply to balance connections. The great thing is also that the virtual appliance allows you to load balance your application but without the need of adding hardware to your datacenter. this is a great approach and the technology has proven to work as expected without issues.

Nachteile: There is a well written administration guide which needs to read extensively before setting up services. This is not a product where complexity is taking away from the administrator. Lots of options, sometimes a matter of try and retry before all works. UI could be improved.

Kommentare: I started using the LoadMaster to replace a Microsoft WAP solution that was publishing Exchange OWA and Lync to the Internet clients. Soon it was replacing other load balancer solutions we were using internally. We also have a lot of network devices using static IP configuration and when we changed our domain controllers, we had to re-configure them all manually, one by one. With LoadMaster, the solution was as simple as creating new virtual DNS services pointing to the new DCs.

Vorteile: The software is quite easy to setup and configure, thanks to the large number of available templates to download. For more complex situations, Kemp Support Team is there and they're really fast and good at what they do. The free version runs almost all the features of the product and it can be used permanently in a test environment or even in production if there is no need for a large bandwidth. It's also possible to have several interfaces in different networks, so one box can be used in different network segments, keeping the traffic isolated. Working with the LoadMaster is pretty much set it and forget it: once configured, it just runs with no problems.

Nachteile: It doesn't run well in Hyper-V or at least it didn't when I bought it last year. I really don't like the way logs are presented in the software. A lot of the information in the logs is only meaningful to Kemp Support Team.