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Load Balancing: Dedicated Appliance VS Software Application

djoye

djoye

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Aug 31, 2004
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Anyone familiar with network load balancing? Say you have a handful (5-10) of network services that you want load balanced, is it best to use a dedicated appliance or is something like the Network Load Balancer that is included with Windows Server adequate?
 
So many questions..............

1. What are you load balancing?
2. are you going to offload ssl termination (terminate ssl/tls/port 443) on the load balancer or just pass it along to the web front-end?
3. is it going to face the internet or is it exclusively on the internal lan?
4. Do you need to manipulate the traffic in any way? Will the load balancer need to understand what the traffic is to manipulate it?
5. are you going to use non-standard (not 443/80/etc) ports?
6. do you need ha?
7. Will the load balancer do any application security functions?
8. Do you need to pass security audits that look at whether you are using rc4/dhe/ssl if you terminate the encrypted traffic
9. do you need to adhere to standards like fips-140?
10 how much throughput will you need?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_balancing_(computing)

And one vendor describes it:

https://f5.com/glossary/load-balancer

There are more, but you need a good basis listing WHAT you need to do, then go from there. I will admit i have never used the win Server built-in, I use the larger appliances because where I work we handle a lot of traffic on the load balancers, and manipulate the traffic, the appliances do the best at that. If you have low-volume, simple requirements the win server may work for you. Remember, though, if you outgrow the win server the configuration will be a bitch to migrate to an appliance. Might be best to get a pair of small appliances to get your feet wet and learn how they work. Also looks good on the old resume.
 
Check out Kemp technologies. I recently deployed this at work. Supports all l4 thru l7 applications. It's cheap and it's software base. It was just over 2500$ for the appliance(software VM based) and a year of there highest level support. Working great so far with our new 2016 exchange hybrid setup. Don't use NLB. Its horrid. Please for the love of god spend the money on something dedicated. If any of these are production based, Don't use NLB.
 
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It really depends on what you are trying to load balance. With Windows NLB, to my knowledge, you are limited to whatever services can be stood up on a windows box. However, with a hardware/software appliance that sits in the middle such as a kemp or F5, you are not tied into just one operating system and can load balance many different OS types and services
 
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