Kemp LoadMaster Reviews

We acquired Kemp LoadMaster initially to balance our Exchange multi-site environment. We configured it and now balance the Autodiscover, OWA, and mail services for our three Exchange services in three different sites. Everything flows and works without issues.

As time went on, we added other services such as RDP connections, online banking, and other applications to the LM to balance the load, which made our operations even more efficient.

The implementation of the LoadMaster has created internal and operational efficiencies. It allows us to balance several applications all at once with an easy-to-setup and use application.

The security features, load balancing, built-in templates, and the easy to implement virtual IPs are great. It allows us to accomplish our goals with one application.

In the next release, Kemp should include the ability for LoadMaster to create different DNS record types.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for about three years.

The product is very stable. I have had no issues. 

Every experience I have had with the technical support team has been great. I've worked with about four different engineers and they have all given consistent good service. 

This was the first solution of this type.

The initial setup was very straightforward, as there are many built-in templates. Even though I had the assistance of the support team to ensure everything was good, it was a breeze.

The deployment was done by our in-house team.

This is a cost-efficient product.

I didn't really evaluate other options. In my research, I saw great recommendations for the product to balance exchange, so I tested it and it worked well.

It's a great product to use if you need to balance multiple sites and applications. It is easy to set up, the support engineers are top-notch, and it is cost-efficient as well.

We use it to load balance our ADFS serves. We also have it set up at our DR location when we need to switch over to DR. We have it set up and just flip the server over and since we have it set up at DR, once the IPs are swapped to the new DR IP range it picks up and starts working in our DR location.

We also use it for our main application. We have multiple app servers that people log on to which allows us to keep the logins spread out among the servers. And if we need to take one down we can force the user to one server. 

It was a total mess using the Windows Load balancer, it was not easy to work with. Switching to Kemp has made our lives so much easier. We can now swap machines and users around based on the needs if something goes up and or down. We are allowed to take machines up and down as we please. We can also take machines to DR and use the same thing at our DR location. It has improved our DR and emergency issues and almost eliminated it. It's hard to believe we can cut it down to almost no time. Kemp has made it so much easier. I would recommend it. 

The feature that allows us to easily disconnect a server when we need and bring back online is the most valuable. It's a click of a button. This allows us to keep all systems up. We can then run updates, perform reboots whatever we need to one of the servers without taking production down.

In the old days, we had to kill both servers and reboot only at a certain time. Now, we can do it as we please, and when the server comes back up, we check to see if the green button shows and we move onto the next. This feature allows us to do work and keep things running.

It works well, we really can't think of anything to make it easier They have templates that you can import that do most of the work for you anyways.

If I had to change something it would maybe be to have a little better reporting graphics that show more details in the reporting. It seems to be a little small in the graphic, and I'm not sure if possible but maybe a GUI page that one can use to monitor if any server goes down. And not sure a full login, so we can login to another page if something happens. Besides better GUI things i'm not sure. 

We have had it for about 3+ years.

They run with no issues, the only time we had issues was when the user rebooted by accident. The product runs with little overhead to servers. 

Allows for the growth of other virtual services with no issues at all.

Anytime we have issues they are quick to respond and we are giving a tech that knows the answer. We are not handed off to level 1 and then level 2 two days later. They know their stuff from the get-go. 

Microsoft LB and was recommended by a Vendor we used for a project. 

The setup was straightforward, support was a dream to work with.

Kemp PS helped and they were amazing, 

Not sure about exact numbers but the time and effort we don't spend dealing with it, makes up for it. 

You won't need anything they offer great support and licensing was super easy. 

The only thing we evaluated was what level we needed for our needs. 

I recommend Kemp to all, product works great and makes jobs easier. 

The client required an infrastructure solution for the internal development team that was complaining regarding the performance and issues with the previous open-source solution. The usual infrastructure staging/development/production is available to the development team. Kemp LoadMaster serves as the internal load balancer for the application and web security layer with the Intrusion Prevention (IPS) and Web Application Firewall (WAF) that replace the opensource solution previously implemented.

Kemp LoadMaster has definitely reduced the complaints from the development team since its deployment. Even the administrators/support are pleased with the intuitive administrative portal and ease of usage. In terms of stability, the application is much more reliable and the security feature of Web Application Firewall (WAF) fully has the auditor requirement. With the virtual version of the Kemp LoadMaster, it was simply carving a virtual resource to spin up a virtual instance to test or put in use for another section.

The base feature of Kemp LoadMaster load balancing ticks all the boxes but the most valuable features would be the security features Intrusion Prevention (IPS) and Web Application Firewall (WAF). Both the features are not only reliable and stable but being an integrated solution makes troubleshooting and pinpointing the issue much easier than fumbling around on different devices/logs. The RESTful and PowerShell APIs are definitely come handy in this automation era and makes network development easy.

Overall, the Kemp LoadMaster has been an all-rounder great product and stable. The free trial and virtual edition make it a breeze for any potential customer to give it a spin before actually deciding to put it on the infrastructure or even talk to the CFO. Kemp could create a more structured lab oriented training program as part of its certification bundled with an online cloud lab that makes it easy for a client to learn and try out the Kemp LoadMaster immediately. The sales team would also benefit from this cloud lab service.

It has been roughly about a year plus since the solution was deployed for the client.

The Kemp LoadMaster perform extremely well and stable during the POC testing and actual going live with the users.

Very scalable product.

Technical support is smooth and responsive.

We previously used a different solution and we switched mainly due to cost restriction.

Straightforward setup.

The deployment was done through a vendor team.

There must be a balance between cost and features. Going opensource usually goes up in terms of learning/training cost.

We evaluated F5, HA proxy, NGINX.

Kemp LoadMaster is used for the high resiliency of the application. The most beneficial function of using the ADC is to ensure this resiliency.

There is room for improvement in the stability of the solution. 

It's been using Kemp LoadMaster for only less than a year. It's only for basic ADC functions.

It is a stable solution. I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

The scalability of the solution is good. There are currently four to five customers using the solution. 

The initial setup was straightforward. It took us around two weeks to completely deploy the solution.

For the deployment process, We usually start with ForeSee to show them the value, and then the management evaluates and reviews the result of our POC after we present it to them. And after that, we end the process.

The price is cheaper than other options, so I don't have a problem with it. 

The user interface is good. The integration is also not an issue for the customers. The integration so far has been advanced for the customers, and I have no problems with it.

I recommend considering the pricing model because the solution has good performance and a competitive price. Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

The solution is used for load balancing the servers. 

The solution is easy to configure when changing the load balancing method to Round Robin or least connection.

In the next release, they can introduce 360 views in the same dashboard to make it easier for users to view. The graphical information should be displayed on the dashboard.

It is a stable solution. I give nine point five out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. I give nine point five out of ten.

The support team is very communicative and provides fairly good support.

The solution is easy to setup. I would rate it a nine-point five out of ten. It was deployed within two days by two engineers.

The pricing is alright and we pay a monthly licensing fee

We primarily use this solution as an application load balancer internally and externally for load balancing of web-based software.

The pricing of the solution is valuable.

The ability to see live traffic is not great and can be improved. When we check live traffic via the external link, we sometimes see up to 80 concurrent connections but find it difficult to drill down into them. So although we can see 80, we can't drill down to get more information about those 80 connections. Additionally, the graphics for the solution can be improved.

We have been using the solution for approximately three years. 

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. We are currently using the load balancer for six internal and external applications. During the last utilization, we noticed that we're barely doing 20%, so I believe we can have more applications.

Regarding people managing and using it, 6% are in telecom and are responsible for Kemp LoadMaster, but approximately a thousand users are connecting to it internally.

I rate customer service and support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I rate the initial setup a ten out of ten. It is easy.

I believe this solution has the best pricing in the market. It is a corporate price.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. The solution is good, but its ability to investigate life traffic and its graphics can be improved. My advice for users considering this solution is to ensure they have adherent to deploy it.

Our use case included product testing on how to configure the load balancing products.

My primary use case is to deploy the load balancer. We provide the deployment professional service to the end-user. Due to Singapore's government policy, government sectors do not allow the connection of the internet. Therefore, we will be the hands and legs of the Kemp professional service. We will seek advice from the Kemp professional service team before and after every time we onsite to the customer's site.

As a partner of Kemp Technologies, we're using the load balancers as a demo and testing environment. This helps us in providing product issue support for load balancers.    

Other than that, the demo is also conducted during product introduction, pre-sales stage.  

Next, we also conduct feature testing on Kemp's load balancing products.   

Functional testing is done on our environment before we implement to a customer's environment. Other than that, we can also try to simulate the customer's issues when we were handling support cases.  

The most valuable feature that I found is the load balancing feature, it is the core function of the product.   

The load balancer is stable and met the customer's expectations. So far, there have not been any issues reported on the basic load balancing functions.  

Besides that, there is also a load balancing mode that fits into the customer's requirements. This also gives more choice for the customer to change their load balancing mode in the future due to the yearly improvement of the audit requirement.   

I would like to give some advice on security improvement:

• First, is the password complexity's restriction. For example, there should be a password restriction policy on the password that only can be made up of a minimum of 12 alphanumeric characters with upper & lower cases.
• Second, is the password age restriction. For example, the password should be changed at least every 90 days.
• Third, the password history restriction needs improvement. For example, the password policy will restrict the user to always use a unique password combination. The password should not be reused for a minimum of three generations of passwords.
• Last but not the least, the default administrator account should be able to rename. This is to prevent a hacker to use brute force attack on the known default administrator ID.
  

I have been using this solution for more than one year.

We have fewer issues reported from the end-user. The support response is fast.

So far scalability has been good.

Technical support is good. So far every case is handled properly.

We did not previously use a different solution.

We implemented through the vendor team. They are very experienced.

We currently use multiple Kemp appliances to load-balance the delivery of email to our CAS\Mailbox environment.

Previously, we had multiple CAS servers and Mailbox servers and Kemp was handling that environment greatly. We also used it to migrate to a Single CAS with multiple DAGs. The process was very simple on the Kemp side.

We also are using it to assist us with uptime due to any possible maintenance windows we have and/or any troubleshooting with the server environment. Kemp allows us to reboot servers and not affect mail delivery, as it will still deliver to a different node.

LoadMaster has greatly helped us with the uptime of our email services. If one server is having issues, it will still deliver to another server.

Using this product also made it easier to handle migrations to newer Exchange services because the product was the main point of communication, which meant that changes on the device affected everything. This made things simpler for us.

Not spending hours on troubleshooting issues, Kemp support resolved issues quickly.

The load-balancing is the biggest feature, of course. It just works. If one CAS goes down, Kemp will still deliver to the other server. It is the same with multiple mailbox servers. If one goes down then mail can still be delivered, due to the fact that Kemp is handling the communications.

Updates are easy to apply and don't cause downtime as long as you have two load-balancers. 

The product also allows us to limit certain services on the Exchange server. Allows more control and Access Control Lists (ACLs) for internal and or external access. Instead of making changes in IIS on a server, you can have Kemp control it.

Obviously, there are a lot of moving parts and fields\settings on Kemp LoadMaster. Not all the settings are easily understandable. It would be helpful if there were a way to incorporate tooltips on the fields so that we don't have to dig through documentation.

I don't expect the software to assist in migrations, but it would be a plus if they had more documentation on Exchange migrations with Kemp and specific changes that need to be made. However, support is very knowledgeable and assisted us.

I would like to see an increase in the knowledge base on technical issues or common troubles.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for one year.

We have used the product for multiple years and haven't had any issues or outages from it, so downtime was never an issue.

This product is highly scalable.

Technical support is A+. They were great in our migration process and even went to assist us with questions that we had on Exchange.

We did not use another similar solution prior to Kemp LoadMaster.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The vendor, Kemp, assisted us and they are very knowledgeable.

It has paid for itself after multiple years. 

Any decent product will cost money and if you want great support and a great product, then you will want to spend the money on it.

We did not evaluate other products before choosing this one.