Kemp LoadMaster Reviews

Our primary use case is for load balancing traffic for solutions such as Exchange and Skype, as well as for web servers using HTTP and SMTP.

Another team is in charge of operating this solution.

Most valuable features of the KEMP Loadmaster:
ready-made templates for various well-known applications
stability of the product

We would like to see them improve the security by putting a well trusted and very efficient WAF inside the appliance. They currently use an open-source solution for this, but it would be great to include a more secure one because it would be a complete solution in terms of load balancing and security. We are currently researching WAF solutions to implement for our perimeter, so it is on the radar for our model.

The GUI is rather technical and complex, so it could be improved by making it simpler and more user-friendly. This is a very powerful solution that gives you an edge, but some of the features are hard to understand. For example, the configuration values are difficult. The templates help in this regard. Each value is explained in the documentation, but it still needs to be simpler.

I would like to see Active Directory integration for authentication of the admin role, so the usernames are not on the local appliance.

I have been using this solution for four years.

This solution is very stable. If I had to rate it out of ten then I would give it nine-point-eight.

We have the virtual appliance rather than the hardware, so in our case, scalability is easy. It is just a matter of licensing. If you want to add more CPU and RAM then you just upgrade your license and give the virtual machine more resources.

For the hardware appliance, my understanding is that it can scale depending on the environment.

They even have software that can turn any bare metal server into a hardware appliance.

We have six deployments across six offices, and in total there are approximately four thousand users. We do have plans to increase usage as we consolidate some of the servers in our private cloud. This will mean that more users are hitting the same office.

The technical support is great. They are knowledgeable on the technical level, responsive, and give you the solution very quickly. The troubleshoot the issue until the problem is solved.

They communicate by email and by phone and can log in remotely. They send us updates about new versions. 

The initial setup of this solution is simple.

They have very good documentation available on their website. The have templated well-known applications to help with load-balancing, and these help you a lot. One example is that they have templates for Exchange.

The return that we get for the money that we pay is very high.

This cost of this solution is not high, and cheaper than their competitors.

The license varies according to the number of megabits. For example, a 200Meg license can handle two hundred megabits per second, concurrently. If you need more then you just upgrade the license.

This product does what is advertised.

In terms of the value you get for the amount of money you pay, this is the number one solution.

For anybody who is implementing this solution, there is nothing to worry about. This product is mature, the documentation is there, and the support is very good. My recommendation is to get the virtual appliance instead of the hardware because it is easy, and that's what we have experience with. You get the same features and it is easy to scale and add more resources.

I would also suggest taking a backup of the configuration just in case they misconfigure something later. It is a complex configuration and if something goes wrong when somebody is changing it, it will break the traffic. You should be very careful when making changes to the configuration.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is for simple things like balancing web servers or balancing remote desktop servers. My company is based in Brazil. We are resellers of this solution, usually to small and middle size businesses.

The most valuable features for us are the web balancing and remote access balancing - the product is flawless in regard to these things. The installation is very simple and I like the interface.

I've only used the virtual version of the small LoadManager (VLM-500), but on the "improvement" side my comment would be about the equivalent hardware based LM (LM-X1) to offer redundant power supply like the more beefier KEMP models do. No matter the size, the role played by these solutions tend to be critical for the business.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

Stability is great, I've never had any issues with it.  

I cannot vouch for scalability because I've never dealt with scaling.

The technical support is really good and I've only needed to use the product manual a couple of times. It was extremely efficient and easy to follow. Whenever I need, I can exchange mails or phone calls with their support and they are very quick, and everything works just fine.

The installation is done remotely and I never visit our customers to deploy. The configuration, the operation and the planning is all done remotely. The product is flawless and all the customers are really happy. The price is very good too compared to the other solutions. Of course, it's aimed at small and medium businesses. I cannot tell you anything about big enterprise or about the higher end LoadMaster. Initial deployment takes a few minutes. 

This is a very competitive solution - they have a very solid product and it's cheaper than other solutions. There is no need to look at anything else because of the cost and you have an especially good product to do simple things. 

On-premises

Our primary use case is to synchronize mail to mobile devices and specifically, the Outlook application on laptops.

I have a virtualized environment that contains Exchange Server 2016 and I need a service in the DMZ that knows how to handle emails that have arrived, as a reverse proxy product.

My employees are using mobile phones like Samsung. They need to be able to send and receive emails anywhere with their mobile phones and laptops, so now, for about one year, we are working with Kemp and the users are satisfied. There is no complaining, as they had done before.

Using Kemp LoadMaster has solved the problems that I was having with my previous solution, PineApp.

The most valuable features are synchronizing email with mobile devices and synchronizing with Outlook.

We have experienced at least one problem with stability, although it was fixed with an upgrade.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for one year.

The product is stable and very easy to implement. Since it was installed, there has been one small problem that has been resolved in a version upgrade.

The product does its job for the users and I do not receive any complaints.

I recently had one small glitch when syncing to an iPhone. I received support that was courteous, polite, professional, and fast.

Prior to this, I had a product from Cybonet called PineApp.

It is supposed to perform as a  reverse proxy and synchronize emails to mobiles phone and Outlook but I had a lot of issues and it did not work smoothly. I asked them to suggest to me what to do and they told me that they can only handle 20 to 30 users. They said that if I wanted me then I need to purchase another dedicated product.

I was not satisfied and this caused me to replace it.

As I mentioned earlier the installation went smoothly without any issues with the help of the company support

I was helped by the KEMP support team and they were very professional and would be happy to work with them

The product definitely provides what the organization needs and its cost is reasonable considering the value it brings.

At this time, the only features that the organization needs are the synchronization of emails to mobile devices and Outlook, so overall, we are satisfied with this product.

I would definitely recommend the product to my friends.

On-premises

The primary use case of this solution was to replace our Citrix Netscaler and help us load balance traffic for solutions such as Citrix, Exchange, RDP, as well as for web servers using HTTP and SMTP.

We have been able to manage several applications as well as run certain services such as Exchange through the WAF. This is with it all being on one screen instead of jumping to several different windows to see how everything is configured. It helps out.

The pre-configured templates help our technicians correctly modify the services, which is another benefit.

We are most impressed with the ease of use and great support.

The features we have found most valuable would be the Kemp 360, which helps narrow down the logging.

You can filter and review which IPs are causing issues.

I also like how there are templates for various types of technologies, such as RDP, Exchange, etc. It helps tremendously when making sure that everything is configured.

I definitely think that the WAF can be improved. We have had several issues for which, at times some our services that were being run through the kemp would stop working. It was strange because everything showed green. Their first solution was to enable/disable the WAF and it worked. But then at time it stopped again and it required further investigation with Kemp support in which logs were needed to be turned on and collected to analyze the behavior. 

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for two months.

Stability-wise, so far so good. Sometimes we wish we had a little more notice if something wasn’t working, such as a notification email.

AMAZING! Their support team is US-based and quick to answer, help troubleshoot, solve problems.

We used Citrix Netscaler prior to this product.

The initial setup was straightforward and the support team was also very helpful.

In-house with minimal experience.

Setup is easy, the cost is affordable, and the licensing is quick and simple.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution. 

On-premises

Our company e-mail and mobile communication system, which is based on Exchange Servers, needed load-balancing and security. After a few discussions with resellers and external consultants, we decided on the Kemp Load Balancer solution.

Our installation is a virtual Kemp Load Balancer based on VMware. We have configured four  Exchange Servers in a DAG configuration and we have been very satisfied since it was installed. In the future, we would like to map further services via the Kemp.

For us and our e-mail and mobile communication system, the load-balancing and security features are very well-suited. 

From the installation and configuration to the daily routine, Kemp is great. Importing and defining the rules for the communication systems was quick and easy. Various services and ports are configured for our e-mail and mobile communication system, and we configured some Access Control Lists (ACLs) and the Web Application Firewall (WAF).

 After the configuration was complete, we found that we can still use Kemp for more services. 

The most valuable feature is that load-balancing, as Kemp helps to maintain the uptime from the e-mail servers.

If we have or need a maintenance window for one of the other e-mail servers, Kemp will still deliver your e-mail traffic to the other server. It just works.

It is easy to apply windows updates to your Exchange environment, and using the Kemp Load Balancer made it easier to handle.

Another great feature is the ability to use the Kemp Load Balancer virtual appliance in our VMware environment.

In the web interface, there are a lot of settings in the different menus and it would be helpful if there were an interactive help system or tooltips to help the administrators find and configure the right settings.

The configuration of "standard" services is quite easy but when you configure more advanced settings, it's no longer easy and can be challenging. The Kemp Load Balancer is a very good product out of the VMware ISO (Box).

Sometimes, you feel years back in the web interface but it's just cosmetic.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for nearly two years.

Stability-wise, this is a great product.

The scalability is great.

We had contact with customer service/technical support for the license renewal and i can say the contact was very helpful and friendly, just great. Until now all our questions have been answered and resolved by the vendor.

We haven't tried any other solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

It was a mix between in-house and vendor team, and the expertise of the vendor team is awesome.

There is no ROI. It is for security reasons that we decided to use the Kemp Load Balancer solution. We no longer wanted the traffic to go directly to the Exchange servers.

The costs for the Kemp Load Balancer solution are okay because, for a good product, you have to spend money.

We did not evaluate other products. We thought about some other solutions in theory but ultimately decided in favor of Kemp.

Its a Kemp it works great.

On-premises

I use Kemp LoadMaster as a load balancer for my web applications.

All web servers (all technologies) are available through the Kemp LoadMaster so all users use the transparent load balancer. 

Kemp Loadmaster is more efficient than the HA Proxy that we used a long time ago.

It is an easy-to-use, user-friendly interface, and you can set up a new VIP in a couple of minutes.                              

Ease to use is the most valuable feature.   

It would be very helpful to get all the http/https session logs by default in the log monitor without activating debugging mode like an apache web sever natively does

I have been using LoadMaster for about five years. 

It is quite stable. No weird issues.

It is scalable. 

I can add one or more appliances to the existing ones.

Technical support is reactive.

We haven't really needed to contact the support except for license renewal.

I switched because Kemp LoadMAster is more efficient, stable and scalable than the other solution.

The initial setup is not very complex. It was a normal setup with a partner.

We implemented it with a partner.

A partner strongly suggested this product so there was no need to evaluate other options.

On-premises

We have a small number of internal web servers that we host on-premises in our data center, along with other services that need to be accessible from the public internet. These include Remote Desktop servers, an SFTP server, Exchange, etc.

All of these servers need extra protection on top of our standard firewall, intrusion detection, and endpoint protection.

The primary use case of Kemp is the reverse proxy for added protection, and load balancing for better performance. We are able to leverage Kemp to protect our web servers by adding content rules and restrictions.

We will continue to add more resources as needed behind Kemp. 

Kemp is a great product to have in our organization.

For our use case, it provides an additional security layer by using the reverse proxy process to protect my real servers. Using Kemp as a front-facing service appliance, it allows me to have the flexibility of swapping out real servers behind the scenes without any intervention from my network team.

Using the content rules restriction gives me the power to block off certain sections of the web pages if there is a need to do so. The load balancer aspect will allow me to optimally offload traffic evenly across my servers. 

For now, the reverse proxy feature is a great feature used to protect my public-facing servers. It is configured to restrict/control certain protocols from hitting my actual servers.

Though not a feature of the product, tech support from the company is also a feature as part of the overall solution that is very valuable. I was able to get in touch with an engineer within a few minutes of calling the support line. I was able to resolve my issue pretty quickly once we restructured a few things within the environment.

Overall, the Kemp appliance seems to have performed very well for me over the years.

If there is anything that needs to be updated, the GUI can get a refresh to make it look more like 2020, although it is just a cosmetic change.

It would be a plus if there were a real-time live traffic capture that allows administrators to see the current traffic that is coming into the appliance. Currently, you can only start the TCPdump capture and have the information logged into a file.

Maybe a configurable dashboard to show more detail about each VS service would be welcome.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for three years.

KEMP is very stable as we have not had any downtime using this appliance.

Scalability-wise, it works very well for me.

Very pleased with the experience of talking to the tech support team.

We have another solution in place and we are currently planning to retire it, now that Kemp has been implemented.

The selection was made before I came on board.

It is a great product and service support is awesome.

On-premises

Other

We use an on-premises Skype for Business Server VoIP service that utilizes the Kemp LoadMaster LM-2400 for service resiliency. This allows our three front-end servers to seamlessly support our service. We never miss a call and our chat service is always ready as a result.

Kemp has a pre-made virtual service profile that perfectly fits our use case so the initial setup is quite easy. We also have expanded the use of the LoadMaster to accommodate a number of ancillary services that also require resilience.

The Kemp LoadMaster is easy to set up, well documented, and very easy to maintain. It has done a flawless job supporting our Microsoft Skype for Business Server VoIP services, as well as expanding to cover a number of other services that require load balancing.

The LoadMaster has helped to keep our Voice over IP services in-house, which has produced tremendous savings versus hosting our services in the cloud. This has allowed us to devote our resources to other projects, increasing our overall effectiveness.

The load balancing features of the LoadMaster are the best we have used.

Failover is seamless and our services are rock solid. Kemp maintains a library of templates pre-configured for a number of services, including Microsoft Skype for Business Server. This makes configuring the virtual services very easy. It also makes it very easy to add additional virtual services as you find new use cases. The convenience of being able to download new or updated templates from Kemp's support site cannot be understated.

If I had to pick an area for improvement, I think it would be direct integration with the template library. At present, you need to download the templates from the Kemp support portal and then upload them onto the LoadMaster. It would be much easier to have the management interface directly integrate with the Kemp Support library, allowing you to choose the desired template from the online catalog to then directly download to the LoadMaster.

We first implemented our Kemp LoadMaster eight years ago when we launched a new VoIP project that required load balancing for enhanced reliability.

The stability is rock solid. We have only experienced one issue in eight years. Kemp support was all over it and got us back online in no time.

For our organization, the LM-2400 is perfectly sized. I'm sure it has an upper limit but we have not gotten anywhere near it yet.

Kemp tech support has been absolutely fantastic. 

We have had one hardware issue, which over a span of eight years isn't bad at all, and one setup question. Both of these issues were handled quickly and to our satisfaction.

Previously, we had been using a Barracuda load balancer. It was nice but the management was not as easy to use and it was not quite as reliable as we would have liked.

The initial setup was very straightforward. The virtual service templates provided by Kemp make setup a snap!

We used a vendor team but our assigned technician was not familiar with networking or load balancing. I ended up taking over the setup and it couldn't have been easier.

The Kemp LoadMaster is a tremendous value. It works well and is easy to set up and to maintain.

Barracuda and F5 were evaluated as well. The performance and value were found to be much better with the Kemp LoadMaster.

The Kemp LoadMaster just works. It is extraordinarily difficult to suggest any changes that might improve its feature set. Go with Kemp, you won't regret it!

On-premises