Kemp LoadMaster Reviews

We currently utilize the Kemp LoadMaster VLM-500 series virtual appliances in our VMware environment. Initially, we were running with only a single appliance, but recently added a second to allow for High Availability pairing between them.

Our primary use for the LoadMaster appliances is to provide load balancing between our two Microsoft Exchange servers in our Office 365 hybrid environment. This has allowed us to obtain redundancy between them, rather than having a single point of failure for our email environment.                   

Before we implemented the Kemp LoadMasters into our Microsoft Exchange environment, we were operating our SMTP relay and OWA traffic directly to the Exchange server itself. This put us in a bad spot when it came to patching and maintenance, as well as when we had service-impacting Exchange issues occur on the server. 

By implementing load balancing via our Kemp LoadMaster, we were able to add an additional Exchange server into our environment, which allowed us to failover manually for maintenance, as well as have a backup for unexpected issues

The most valuable feature so far has been the high-availability options that allowed us to add an additional Kemp LoadMaster VLM virtual appliance into our VMware vSphere environment, to provide failover for our existing LoadMaster. We have never run into any service-impacting issues with the appliance itself, but having a second one allows us to reduce the downtime associated with maintenance upgrades to zero. 

I also appreciate the online licensing feature, which lets us update and install licenses on the appliances by simply logging into our KempID account. It was nice not to have to fuss with licensing and key file download/uploads.

So far, the only hitch we have run into is that would have been nice to have an easier method to add allow/whitelist entries into the Access Control lists for virtual services. 

Following an upgrade, we inadvertently lost all of our Access Control whitelist entries on one of our virtual services. Thankfully we had a backup of them, but to plug them back in, we had to enter them all manually. This ended up being a bit of a pain.

It would be great if there was a way to upload a .CSV file of ACL entries into the access control list, rather than having to add them one at a time.

We've been using Kemp LoadMaster for approximately five years.

We ran a single (non-redundant) LoadMaster appliance in our VMware environment for close to five years with zero outages caused by it, so I am very impressed with the stability of KEMP's devices. The only reason we explored adding a second appliance for High Availability was to make maintenance easier.

We've had other virtual appliances in the past that had to be rebooted occasionally, but that is not the case with the Kemp LoadMaster. They are rock solid in terms of stability.
 

We so far have not come anywhere near utilizing the total throughput of the appliances we have. They have no problems keeping up.

The customer service was great! They helped me to quickly resolve two licensing-related issues with our additional appliance purchase.

We did not previously use load balancing, Kemp was our first choice.

The initial setup is a breeze and is well documented.

It was implemented in-house using only Kemp documentation and no outside support.

Pricing for the perpetual licensing was fair to us for the features and ease of use we received.

We also evaluated Citrix NetScaler.

The VLM appliances boot insanely quickly, which is really impressive. During power cycles, we only drop between two and three pings to the devices.

We use LoadMaster for HA Clustered Pair Load Balancer for primarily Exchange on-premises deployment and all supporting services (SMTP, ActiveSync, Autodiscovery, OWA/EWS, etc.)  Secondarily, for non-Exchange, application-server-based mail routing.

We implemented in 2014 as a dedicated load handling solution for inbound on-prem internal Exchange SMTP. We soon adapted the appliances to handle more tasks such as VIP-based routing to our middleware MTAs, mobile devices via ActiveSync, Outlook Autodiscover services Exchange Web Services & Outlook Web Access.

It has greatly fortified the performance and uptime of our front-door email ingress, simplified and segmented mail routing, and reduced admin overhead for mail issue resolution and troubleshooting.

The ease of the UI has allowed several relatively untrained admins to take over administrative duties, firmware upgrades, service monitoring, issue troubleshooting, and basic maintenance tasks like failover/failbacks.

It has also given us previously lacking visibility into mail flow metrics, service-based volume, connection issue granularity, and high availability.

The Virtual Service setup, maintenance & monitoring, the straightforward setup, ease of configuration changes, and simple investigation of issues are the most valuable features. 

The ability to rapidly and without interruption, redirect traffic from place to place, set up testing environments, and use as a tool to eliminate variables in downstream application/real Servers when they are having issues are also valuable.

The true real-time monitoring of service interruptions downstream have been a very valuable tool for us when troubleshooting end to end transmission issues.

Certificate installations could be simplified and modernized, and allowed to be monitored for expirations/issues.

We had a particular issue where we believed the Kemp LoadMaster was to blame for service disruption of a particular VIP (virtual-IP) based service, based on the supporting evidence. In the end, it was actually expired certificates downstream, which was not the Kemp's fault per se but it would have helped greatly and reduced our time with support if the Kemp had an alert for this type of problem, without needing to search logs/packet capture.

I have been using Kemp LoadMaster for more than seven years.

In 20 years in IT with over a dozen similar products used, it ranks easily in my top 3 for overall uptime and stability of application/IP-based load balancers.

We only use a 2 node cluster but the scalability at the hardware level seems to be mostly effortless. Partners can be added relatively easily.

Scaling up the number of VIPs/services is likewise as effortless. Performance seems very good for the roughly 20 VIP/services we use it for.

Kemp's Support is the best in the business, having opened several tickets with them over the years they have always excelled and never disappointed.

Yes, because we were upgrading the entire organization's Exchange version and we wanted a better, HA Clustered solution to match the Exchange redundancy we had built.

From what I have gleaned it was straightforward but we had a 3rd party set it up for us.

Vendor Team, very high level of expertise. The purchase of this product was suggested solely by him due to his past successes with deploying it.

I have not quantified actual ROI numbers but given the longevity and high-usage of this appliance I would imagine very high, easily our top 15% of IT Infrastructure ROI.

We did hire a 3rd party professional service contractor for the setup, however, he was already used to implement the Exchange build-out. This added some cost to it but may have not been needed since the Kemp design and initial config seems very straightforward.

Purchasers may want to consider this setup expense depending on their own staff confidence level.

For one major customer, we installed the Kemp Loadmaster as before this I was in security and firewall. But it was requested by Microsoft that there needs to be a Load Balancer in front of the exchange platform. So Kemp is used as a Load Balancer.

From my personal experience, many firewalls provide Load Balancing functionalities, but Kemp Loadmaster has a lot of features and functionalities like what you can configure. So there are a lot of features but we use only five percent of it. 

They were still in the process of development, and for example, we set it up in a cluster. So it was one logistical unit built out of two physical devices. And the expected behavior, which I know from other devices, will be formed into a logic cluster. It's that you configure one unit. Then you bring the second unit into this cluster with the already configured primary unit. So the secondary box pulls all the configured ones from its neighbor, does everything automatically, and then synchronizes with this primary neighbor. And then it works, like, one logical unit. And this didn't work with the Kemp's initially, where they caused a lot of issues when building up a cluster, so there were some specials on how to set this up. When we built or set them up for the first time and the months afterward with no new software releases, there were a couple of problems, but in the end, they worked fine. So, they developed a lot and learned from what they've responded to, what we responded to them, and what needs fixing.

 I have been using the solution since 2015. 

It is a stable solution. We do not have many users using the solution only one customer is left who uses virtual Loadmasters and the solution is working stable. 

The technical support team is good. I rate them nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward as they have good documentation.

The price of the solution is cheap. 

My advice is on what they are already using. For example, if it's in a Data Center customer and he already has some security devices and servers. And I would ask him what kind of functionality you want if this can already be set up in a firewall because I'm working very much with FortiGate Firewalls, which also provide load-balancing functionalities. But only up to a specific level, and if it's simple load balancing, round drop into two servers, then you can do it with the firewall. So you don't need an extra device like a dedicated load balancer. But when it comes to load balancing for an exchange platform or another. For the same customer, we replaced the Microsoft TMG with Kemp LoadMaster. Then you have to deal with things and features. For this, you need then this dedicated load to balance the device. So it depends on the functionalities that one requires. 

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

We use Kemp to balance the load of connections to various places. We have IIS, RDP, API, gateway servers, and objects that get over 5000 connections that are balanced with Kemp. 

We have had very good success at getting this working properly and doing exactly what we need. We need to balance resources and utilize the Kemp Loadmaster to organize the servers and resources to keep them operating at an optimal level. RDP and Gateway servers are 99.99% uptime so having Kemp in the middle makes that an easy transition if there is an outage or server error.

We used to manually balance the load and we overallocated resources to account for this situation. Since we started using Kemp, we have become more reliable and have less downtime. We also have the added resources back now that we can allocate the precise need. There is another added bonus, we can have rolling updates because we can balance the load and update inactive servers or resources.

We have had our uptime guarantee enhanced because of the Kemp tools and resources. The load that our servers can handle has been minimized and resources have been restored.  

Persistence is very valuable. This holds the connection information of the source and that connection is important to RDP and our APO calls. The connection has to be persisted to the original source to operate properly. We also use the subsections for sub-services to create services inside our services for our API resources, this is most awesome. We would not be able to do this without Kemp and offer this type of sub-service to route based on an API instance. It routes the traffic properly based on the sub-service type. 

I would like to see more automation and control of overactive and inactive resources. If I could schedule these around our updates then it would be all automated. I would like to set up an automated script to coincide with the scripts I use to update resources and servers. If I update a server on Wednesday then I would use Kemp to automate the server being taken out of service before and then put back into service after. That could streamline the whole update process and it should do some simple checks and tests to make sure the server or resource is reliable and able to be reached. 

We have been using Kemp for about five years now. 

I have only had one issue in five years, so I would say the stability is impeccable. 

It scales for everything we have grown to need and more so far! 

Kemp has the best customer service of all the vendors we use. 

We used DNS Round-robin and some manual intervention but it was unreliable and very time-consuming. 

I had support walk me through the setup. They happily helped me before I was even a client. They set up the first service with me and I had it in production that same day! 

I implemented this myself. It is turn key ready with various templates that are plug and play. 

We have saved on man-hours from the manual intervention we used to do as well as the resources we saved from right-sizing our resources that we could then use in other areas. 

The return is triple what we invest. 

I would advise them to take advantage of the trials and support. Use the support to set it up exactly the way you want and see how much actually need to pay for. 

I looked at Barracuda but the support was terrible and so I went with Kemp and am so glad I did. The support has been stellar. 

Go with Kemp, you will thank me later. 

We use this to load balance internal and external IT systems ranging from a few connections per minute to well over 10k connections per minute.

We also leverage the Global WAF features that Kemp offers.

We run these LoadMasters in an HA environment, to better allow for failovers and increased uptime. We use to balance HTTP/HTTPS traffic on the public internet for public sites, some with near 0k connections per minute. We also use to balance internal IT services such as LDAP, LDAPS, and DNS through various VIPs. 

Kemp has greatly improved our uptime, reduced time we spend on maintenance, and increased the reliability/trust we have in our load balancing system.

We had issues with the network architecture that was needed with our previous balancing system, and we found that we could run a much simpler network setup with the Kemp HA pair.

We can now avoid scheduled downtimes for infrastructure events, through the use of Kemp's HA setup and multiple real servers behind each VIP.

HA failovers are seamless and have allowed for a huge improvement in agility and flexibility in our environment. 

We leverage HTTP/HTTPS  load balancing, WAF, and DNS load balancing the most. We have found Kemp to be the most reliable for these services and have not had any issues at all.

The Global WAF has saved us more than one time from unwanted traffic.

HTTPS/HTTP balancing has been smooth and Kemp handles extremely high traffic loads with ease. We really also like the ability to do LDAP/LDAPS balancing for our internal customers.  This allows for a more smooth experience for our end users and for our internal applications.  

The one area that really could be improved upon is the GUI. Over the last several major versions, the GUI has remained virtually unchanged and still seems lacking. Since there is no "save" or "confirm" button, it is very easy to accidentally make a change on a live, production VIP, or endpoint.

Adding some sort of saving or confirming mechanism in the GUI would be nice and would make it seem more modern. This is not a show stopper for us, but really just a "nice to have". 

Overall, there is little that needs to be improved with this product. 

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for six years.

They are very stable and reliable. We have had no issues at all over the last six years.

This product is very easy to scale up and grow. If in an HA pair, it can be done without downtime.

Support is a ten out of ten. They are quick to answer and very knowledgeable from the start.  They are far better than other IT vendors I have worked with.

We are using Kemp as a reverse proxy for Microsoft Exchange. We are also using the product for load-balancing internal services.

The Kemp virtual appliance is installed in the DMZ and forwards the traffic to the internal servers. We configured the Edge Security Pack (ESP) so that the virtual appliance captures the credentials of the user, validates those against the authentication services, and then lets the user pass through.

Using this solution, it doesn't publish Exchange servers directly over the internet, thus providing security.

Having a reverse proxy is a secure way to protect access to inside services like Microsoft Exchange. With the ESP configured, we feel that the services are more protected from external threats. There's a lot of attacks possible on Exchange and we needed a solution that would prevent direct access to the web interfaces.

Having the virtual appliance sitting between the internet and the real servers, it intercepts the requests, process them, and can block unwanted requests with the Web Application Firewall.

The most valuable feature is the reverse proxy with ESP since it protects forms and provides authentication of web services. 

When you configure the listening services, you can implement a lot of security features like the Edge Security Pack that intercepts the requests and processes those before they are sent to the real servers.

There's an integrated Web Application Firewall module that you can activate to protect your online services. The module has an auto-update feature, where Kemp pushes the latest rules automatically to protect you against new threats.

The configuration of basic services is pretty straightforward but when you want to configure more advanced settings like the Edge Security Pack feature, it can be somewhat challenging! Even with the documentation, I had to contact the support to get help set this up properly. I think there should be more visual instructions on how to configure advanced features.

Support-wise, I've nothing to complain about. The support technicians are knowledgeable and were able to quickly help me set up and get things working.

The logging feature is somewhat archaic, as you have to go through text files. I think they should implement something more user-friendly for logging.

We've been using Kemp for several years. We used the physical appliances for about five years and we recently switched to the virtual.

We've been using the product for several years and it never crashed.

This product is pretty scalable with the virtual appliance.

Great support, fast and really professional.

Kemp was the first solution we used as a reverse proxy.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

We implemented in-house with help of Kemp support.

Nowadays, going with the virtual appliance is the easiest way and the cost is reasonable.

We did not evaluate other products before choosing Kemp. Instead, we looked at product reviews before purchasing.

We use LoadMaster for application load balancing.

LoadMaster is easy to deploy and understand. 

I want to have the ability to pull a particular server. The DevOps portion was challenging for me, like if I needed to redirect from one IP to another URL. I needed to look that up, and the knowledge base is not well organized. When I look for information about Kemp on the Internet, I don't find many articles or anything like that.

I have used LoadMaster for about four years.

LoadMaster is highly stable.

LoadMaster is suitable for enterprise businesses. 

I rate Kemp support nine out of 10. Kemp support is good, but LoadMaster is highly stable, so we don't have many issues. We contacted them only once. 

Positive

The deployment doesn't take much time. It's easier if you have a VM. The hardware takes some time to connect. It hardly takes an hour to deploy if you have everything configured. Kemp is easier to maintain compared to Cisco. 

LoadMaster is cheaper than some other solutions. It has a perpetual license, so it's a one-time cost.

I rate Kemp LoadMaster nine out of 10. 

My primary use case for this solution is load balancing and application load balancing.

The feature I find most valuable is load balancing with different algorithms.

In my opinion, the layer seven loads balancing that we're mainly using for web servers, doesn't seem to pick up when there are issues at the application level. I am not sure if this is due to poor configuration or not, but I think that the stability could be improved.

I have been using this solution since 2019.

I would rate the scalability of this solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

When it comes to the maintenance and support of this solution, we have one person dedicated to solving these issues from Kemp Resources that knows our environment and setup.

We used NLP, which is not in the same leak. That's a Microsoft inbuilt network load balancer, but it's not in the same leak. It doesn't do the application-level low balancing.

My impression is that the initial setup process is quite straightforward and decent. The only part that was tricky was the global server load balancing.

Our model of deployment is on-premises.

The deployment was done with assistance from Kemp resources based in our country.

Regarding the pricing of this solution, I would say it's somewhere in the middle because at the bottom you have free solutions and at the top the most expensive ones.

I would rate this solution as a whole a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would advise other people trying to use this solution to go ahead and try to use it as some use cases are quite complex. Our use case is straightforward.