Where
can I find good quality Load
Balancer information?
Well that depends if you want it
to be biased or not. A lot of competitors have started setting up
dodgy comparison sites highlighting their best features and ignoring
the draw backs.
We're not saying that we're
un-biased when it comes to load balancers in fact we have a pretty
strong
opinion. But, as far as we're aware the chart below is an accurate
comparison of load balancing hardware, price, performance and
capability:
Loadbalancer.org,
Barracuda,
Kemp
&
CAI all use various flavours of LVS as their code base.
Of these vendors Loadbalancer.org is the only one with strong UK
support.
Barracuda, Kemp & CAI
are based in California.
CoyotePoint is a long
established brand, and a good quality product. It is a FreeBSD
implementation with similar properties to LVS (but probably lower
performance). Support is completely through the channel, so varies
with location. They are based in California.
Zeus
&
F5 are load
balancing proxies (F5 also has switching and good layer 4 options). F5
is by far the best product on the market if you want an uber solution,
good kernel code, good support, seriously expensive....
Zeus
is perfectly good and has
advanced layer 7 capability (same as F5) but it's expensive, not kernel
based and therefore needs seriously powerful hardware to run at
anywhere near decent speed.
It
should be noted that all prices quoted on this site are for
single appliances only. In order to obtain high availability, load
balancers should always be purchased as clustered pairs, hence
eradicating this single point of failure. Vendors will commonly offer
significant price cuts for such purchases.
Anyway
onto the load balancing hardware comparison!:
|
Load Balancer Model
|
Warranty
|
Max
Cons |
Throughput |
RIPS
|
SSL
(TPS) |
Price
|
|
Barracuda
- 240
|
90
Days
|
n/a |
95
Mbps |
10
|
n/a |
£1,400 |
|
Barracuda
- 340
|
90
Days
|
n/a |
950
Mbps |
35
|
150 |
£2,400 |
|
Barracuda
- 440
|
90
Days |
n/a |
950
Mbps |
50
|
200 |
£3,700 |
|
Barracuda
- 640
|
90
Days |
n/a |
950
Mbps |
250
|
2000 |
£10,000 |
|
Loadbalancer.org
- Enterprise R16
|
90
Days |
500K |
100
Mbps |
16
|
100 |
£1,495 |
|
Loadbalancer.org
- Enterprise
|
1
Year |
3M |
1
Gbps |
Unlimited
|
150 |
£2,995 |
|
Loadbalancer.org
- Sledgehammer
|
3
Years |
7M |
1.8
Gbps |
Unlimited
|
200 |
£4,995 |
|
Loadbalancer.org
- Eco
|
3
Years |
3M |
1
Gbps |
Unlimited
|
150 |
£3,995 |
|
Kemp
- LM1500
|
1
Year
|
250K |
100
Mbps |
1000
|
100 |
£1,800 |
|
Kemp
- LM2500
|
1
Year
|
1M |
350
Mbps |
1000
|
1000 |
£4,000 |
|
Kemp
- LM3500
|
1
Year
|
2M |
2
Gbps |
1000
|
2000 |
£6,000 |
|
Coyote
- E250si
|
1
Year
|
100K |
60
Mbps |
16
|
n/a |
£2,550 |
|
Coyote
- E350si
|
1
Year
|
2M |
775
Mbps |
32
|
Optional |
£3,550 |
|
Coyote
- E450si
|
1
Year
|
8M |
800
Mbps |
128
|
Optional |
£4,700 |
|
Coyote
- E550si
|
1
Year
|
12M |
1
Gbps |
512
|
Optional |
£5,900 |
|
Coyote
- E650si
|
1
Year
|
12M |
1
Gbps |
512
|
2000 |
£7,500 |
|
CAI
- 481s
|
3 Years
|
1.4M |
200
Mbps |
65K
|
120 |
£2,500 |
|
CAI
- 591sg
|
3 Years
|
2.9M |
1
Gbps |
65K
|
250 |
£3,700 |
|
CAI
- 680pg
|
3 Years
|
5.8M |
4
Gbps |
65K
|
4000 |
£8,100 |
|
ClusterScale
- Pegasys
|
3 Years
|
7M |
2
Gbps |
Unlimited
|
1000 |
£4,995 |
|
ClusterScale
- Nemasys
|
3 Years
|
7M |
2
Gbps |
Unlimited
|
2000 |
£7,995 |
|
ClusterScale
- ClusterLoad ESX VA
|
3 Years
|
n/a
* |
n/a
* |
Unlimited
|
n/a
* |
£3,995 |
|
F5 - BIG-IP 1500
|
1 Year |
n/a |
500
Mbps |
Unlimited
|
2000 |
£12,000 |
|
F5 - BIG-IP 3400
|
1 Year |
n/a |
1
Gbps |
Unlimited
|
5000 |
£18,000 |
|
F5 - BIG-IP 6400
|
1 Year |
n/a |
2
Gbps |
Unlimited
|
15000 |
£25,000 |
*
Dependant on hardware
This table only includes a limited selection of the load balancing
appliances available to you. For a full insight into your options go to
the Vendors section.
If you have any more information or factual corrections don't hesitate
to let us know at
info@loadbalancer.biz,
thank you.
