Load Balancer Enterprise ADC

My main use for LoadBalancer Enterprise is to provide high availability for the application and to provide WAF services for the inbound traffic that is coming from the internet. Beyond this, we are performing SSL and TLS offloading on the load balancer, layer seven intelligent traffic steering, and applying OWASP Top 10 security policies for application security. We are also using it for global server load balancing. It is basically used to increase the application performance and to perform caching, compression, TCP optimization, and connection multiplexing.

LoadBalancer Enterprise provides its strongest features through its dual layer four and layer seven engine in a single box. It provides high availability for the applications and application security features for WAF as a web service. The support level is outstanding, and the WAF features and the GSLB features, which are DNS-based, are very good and provide high availability without any downtime.

LoadBalancer Enterprise has positively impacted our organization because it includes everything, such as licensing cuts and total cost of ownership, which makes budgeting predictable. There are no per-module surprises when scaling, and application-specific deployment guides in a simple interface allow correctly tuned load balancers to go live in under an hour. Both senior engineers and junior engineers can work on it. The clustered HA and health-aware steering and GSLB help significantly for mission-critical applications that are online through server and site failures. This helps us to protect the SLAs. The bundled WAF security module provides high security for the application. The consistently responsive support reduces operational risk and builds lasting internal confidence in the platform.

LoadBalancer Enterprise can be improved because the layer seven programmability is not as powerful as it could be. We cannot write code and programming on it. Additionally, access management and identity options are not available here like they are in F5 VPN. The WAF depth and analytics, such as in-depth logs and the WAF learning option that we have in other load balancers, are much easier to configure and to harden the policies and polish them. That option is not here. Fine-tuning is a bit difficult compared to other solutions.

The automation and API maturity does not appear to be at the level of other load balancers. The main limitation is that there is nothing here with regards to F5 APM. There is no iRules option or policy option to manipulate the traffic according to requirements, which is a bit difficult. If an organization is basic and does not want very advanced features, then it is acceptable. However, if advanced features such as iRules are required, and complete detailed WAF monitoring is desired along with policies that can be learned and then implemented afterwards as you have in F5, then LoadBalancer Enterprise lacks these capabilities.

I have been using LoadBalancer Enterprise for seven to eight years.

LoadBalancer Enterprise is stable. For normal enterprise, mid-level to small environments, it is fine. I have not used it in very large environments yet, so I cannot comment on that.

LoadBalancer Enterprise's scalability works fine in small and mid-level enterprise environments. In a large environment, I have not used it yet, so I cannot comment on it. However, I do not see that it would have any issues, but I cannot comment on very large environments.

Customer support for LoadBalancer Enterprise is very good. I would rate LoadBalancer Enterprise's customer support at nine out of ten.

We have used multiple load balancers, including F5, Citrix, and Avi. We are now using LoadBalancer Enterprise as an additional option. We have not switched from our previous solutions; this is one option that we have added.

LoadBalancer Enterprise was provided to us by the sales team.

The cost of LoadBalancer Enterprise is better and a bit cheaper compared to other products. The support level is also very good, and the maintenance cost is less than other products. The deployment flexibility is also quite better than other load balancers we have seen in the market. The cost spent on licensing and renewal for other products is significantly different from this one. Time is saved because junior engineers can also configure it, and the uptime with the cluster HA and with automatic failover configured with GSLB is 99.9% to 99%. The SLAs are in our control.

If you are looking for a load balancer for your applications and you do not have any specific advanced requirements and you want a cost-effective load balancer with a good support level and easy deployment, then you can consider LoadBalancer Enterprise. If you have very advanced requirements and your environment is very large, then I would recommend other products at this time. However, if the improvements that I have suggested are added in the future, then LoadBalancer Enterprise can be reconsidered.

If you have a mid to normal or small enterprise, you can consider this option. You should compare other load balancers in the market, such as F5, Avi, Citrix, and Kemp, and then make a final decision. If you are a normal enterprise with fewer than 50 virtual server requirements, then LoadBalancer Enterprise can be suitable for you. However, if you are in a large environment where you have very advanced load balancing requirements along with web application security features, and you want very granular visibility and detailed WAF monitoring, then I think other mature products would be better.

I have not had any experience with the accuracy and reliability of AI output on LoadBalancer Enterprise. I do not have any experience with AI on ADCs in general, not on this load balancer and not on other load balancers, so I cannot comment on that. However, I think for normal use, it would be good, and you would not face any issues. I would rate this review a seven out of ten overall.

Since I started as a network engineer, I have worked on LoadBalancer Enterprise. Whether it is F5 or HAProxy, I have worked more with F5 recently since joining Swisscom.

LoadBalancer Enterprise is used to host critical applications for several of our customers. We manage the network infrastructures of several clients, and for quite a few of them, those infrastructures have load balancers.

We typically find all kinds of services that can be exposed on the internet via LoadBalancer Enterprise. This can include Exchange messaging and websites that need to be exposed and are placed behind the load balancer.

LoadBalancer Enterprise has had a positive impact on my organization by allowing me, on a personal level, to train myself further on solutions related to load balancers. I see all the different uses that companies can have, which is an opportunity I have working in a B2B environment where I can work on multiple infrastructures and multiple different clients.

In my opinion, the best features offered by LoadBalancer Enterprise are high availability, performance, and resilience.

High availability, performance, and resilience concretely show up in my daily work with LoadBalancer Enterprise as it operates in a cluster, allowing us to have high availability in case of an outage on one of the two load balancers. It is important for critical services to always be available, and for performance, they are better able to handle a high volume of simultaneous connections on the servers in question.

For example, in the event of an issue on one of the servers hosting a critical application, thanks to LoadBalancer Enterprise, that server was able to be removed from the server pool and the other servers that were in this pool were able to take over, allowing us to significantly reduce the impact.

LoadBalancer Enterprise could be improved by increasing performance and always being able to handle more simultaneous connections. Demand today is only growing, as any company that uses a load balancer has more and more services that are hosted on it, and many more clients that query these services.

I have been working in my current field for more than six years, seven years as a network engineer. I joined Swisscom about one and a half to two years ago.

LoadBalancer Enterprise is very stable in my experience.

I rate the scalability of LoadBalancer Enterprise as excellent since it adapts perfectly to increased traffic volume or the addition of new applications. We can always increase the instances and add more load balancers if there is a need.

Customer support for LoadBalancer Enterprise is fairly responsive depending on how critical the issue is and what we need. They can respond more or less effectively to our requests depending on these factors.

Before using LoadBalancer Enterprise, I used HAProxy at the start when I began working as a network engineer.

I decided to move from HAProxy to LoadBalancer Enterprise because HAProxy is available on Linux and it is not necessarily the easiest solution to get to grips with. It can be effective but much less effective than the best-known load-balancing solutions.

LoadBalancer Enterprise is quite easy to deploy. You must of course follow the best recommendations from the vendor. You should have a cluster and size the equipment according to the needs of the services.

As the large group that we are, we have a business relationship with this vendor as partners.

I think there is definitely a benefit that can be provided with LoadBalancer Enterprise. However, I do not work on the financial aspect and the results expressed in figures.

Since I am not pre-sales or sales, I do not handle the financial side related to LoadBalancer Enterprise, including pricing, installation cost, and license management.

I do not evaluate other options before choosing LoadBalancer Enterprise as we take over the infrastructures and solutions that are already in place at the clients and we manage them.

I found this interview good and have no suggestions for improvement for the future. I rate this review as an eight out of ten.

My main use case for LoadBalancer Enterprise is application load sharing, which involves onboarding applications in the load balancer and distributing traffic while manipulating user requests and responses.

For example, with google.com accessed by multiple people, I may have three to four servers running the google.com service. To achieve traffic load sharing and prevent application performance issues, I implement a load balancer that works as a reverse proxy. This approach ensures I do not reveal my original servers to the client. The load balancer shares the load across all devices based on algorithms that identify which server has the least connections or resources, forwarding traffic accordingly. If one of my application servers goes down, the load balancer detects the service failure and reroutes traffic to available servers, helping us achieve effective load sharing.

Additionally, if users want to access a specific URI path in the application, I can apply restrictions and route traffic from specific sources to a particular server. If users access via HTTP, I can redirect from HTTP to HTTPS. I can also implement host-level redirection where customers only know the URL google.com but can be redirected to gmail.com. This is what I call manipulation of a request.

Regarding SSL offloading, the certificate and key exchange between the user machine and the load balancer can be handled, avoiding this load on the backend server. When I type google.com in the browser, it starts with a TCP handshake followed by an SSL handshake. I do not want to place this load on the backend application server, so the load balancer handles SSL offloading. The SSL transaction is completed at the load balancer, and clear text information is sent to the backend server. The user will not know the real application server, which can be masked using the load balancer.

I can also rewrite HTTP requests and responses using the load balancer. By implementing reverse proxy functionality and making the load balancer a gateway for the servers, I can enable full proxy mode. My main use cases involve load sharing, load balancing, and rewriting HTTP content.

The best features LoadBalancer Enterprise offers include HTTP request and response rewrite and SSL termination, also called SSL offloading. I can achieve link-level load balancing where if I have multiple WAN links, I can accomplish load sharing and traffic management. Content rewriting is achievable here. Additionally, I can implement RFC compliance for requests using the HTTP profile. I can also achieve load sharing of UDP traffic, not just TCP, and even handle ICMP traffic where a number of requests can be managed. DNS and ASM can also be integrated with this load balancer.

I find myself using traffic management and content rewriting most often. These are the major features that make the biggest difference in my day-to-day work.

LoadBalancer Enterprise has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to onboard approximately 200 to 300 applications depending on resource availability. This enables high availability and reduces resource utilization on the backend servers. It is useful for routing traffic during maintenance of the backend application servers.

LoadBalancer Enterprise can be improved by having additional features, specifically in-depth log and data analysis. Improvements in measuring RTT values from the client to the load balancer and from the load balancer to the server would be beneficial. More security features can also be enabled. For instance, deeper RFC compliance checks and Layer 7 inspections can help improve security aspects.

I have been using LoadBalancer Enterprise for about 7-8 years.

LoadBalancer Enterprise is stable.

LoadBalancer Enterprise's scalability is good, and I find it to be a scalable product.

The customer support for LoadBalancer Enterprise is good; however, it could be better. They need to improve their customer service and response time.

I did not use any different solution before LoadBalancer Enterprise.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing LoadBalancer Enterprise and went directly to it.

I chose a rating of 8 out of 10 because LoadBalancer Enterprise has many benefits. Overall, it has features that I can achieve using the load balancer, including content rewriting, load balancing, and using it as a gateway for my servers. It acts as a firewall and enables SSL certificate management. These features are valuable, and I see positive aspects in the basic security function where I can inspect traffic based on whether the packet is RFC compliant or not.

Regarding LoadBalancer Enterprise's AI capabilities, I think its governance and security are not as mature as they could be. I do not see integrated AI features. I think I missed mentioning improvements related to AI where they could develop AI-based capabilities to enhance resource management and performance in the next generation. Furthermore, improvements in Kubernetes integration are necessary, not only from the application server but also from the pod level.

I do not have much information about the accuracy and reliability of LoadBalancer Enterprise's AI outputs. My overall rating for this product is 8 out of 10.

My main use case for LoadBalancer Enterprise is to ensure my servers are available and are accessible to customers around the world.

I have three-node servers around which I set up the load balancer within them. In case one of them goes off, the load balancer can switch over to the next one. The servers use a virtual IP to connect to our application and then it detects the health of each of the servers. Only when they are down does the load balancer switch over to the next available healthy server and services are restored to our users.

The best features that LoadBalancer Enterprise offers include Round Robin, where different servers are available, and also the VRRP and the virtual IP as well.

The Round Robin and virtual IP features help me by ensuring that traffic is routed across all the nodes. Whatever is available receives the traffic. There is no queue. Any server that is available takes over the master role and brings that service back to the application so that it continues running.

The major feature of load balancing is to ensure that all services are available around the clock and at any time. Having multiple options is a significant advantage that I enjoy with load balancing.

LoadBalancer Enterprise has impacted my organization positively by making our applications and services available to all users across the globe. Even when we have issues with the firewalls, nodes, or application database, customers do not need to know because on the back end, we are able to access the application through another node with the help of the load balancer.

LoadBalancer Enterprise could be improved in terms of cost.

I have been using LoadBalancer Enterprise for a little over one year.

LoadBalancer Enterprise is stable.

The customer support is very good.

With load balancing in place, there has been a high inflow of satisfaction from customers. The company could make more money. Additionally, there are no issues with the availability of applications across the board.

One of the reasons why we went for LoadBalancer Enterprise is because of losing revenue when services are not available. With load balancing, services are available. A customer can make payments and there has been improvement in terms of income.

My advice to others looking into using LoadBalancer Enterprise is that it is a good product and they can be very certain it will work for them as they require. I believe this review has a rating of ten.