We performed a comparison between A10 Networks Thunder ADC, Citrix NetScaler, and HAProxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Citrix, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)."A10 explained why the latency dropped significantly on a site that we have."
"The SLB and GSLB load balancing are the most valuable features. They meet our need to do server-side load balancing and global site load balancing so we can distribute traffic, not only intra-data center, but inter-data center."
"We do have the option of creating virtual chassis, so that gives it a bit more security. If we find an application which is not going to play well in the main pool, we can easily create a virtual chassis and have that application in that virtual chassis. With the virtual chassis we can also create system partitions and have a test system for test applications, and have the others elsewhere."
"The solution is flexible."
"A lot of our SSL management is done on the front-end side, so there is one pane of glass for a lot of our security certificates. It gives us visibility. It also falls under when certificates are going to expire. Even for servers that are coming down, we can see how that affects the traffic flow by using the services map."
"We have two appliances and I'm able to move my application from one appliance to another. I don't have to move my whole A10 to be active on the other side or to be passive on the other side. If an application is having a problem, I can just move it using a command."
"A10 Networks Thunder ADC is an easy-to-use and flexible solution."
"The Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) is simple to use."
"Very stable."
"Most of the functions are user-friendly and great."
"Its flexibility, agility, and robustness are the most valuable. Its management and implementation are also quite easy."
"My clients use it for load balancing."
"It is a very stable solution."
"Enables a Web service that offers persistent client-server connections, IP restriction, URL rewrite (such as remove "/assets/" path from client-side URL path), and cache for CSS or JS files... You can easily use the GUI to set up all these requirements on the same network device within 20-30 minutes. (If you do the same steps on CLI, it might take less time.)"
"Manageability and visibility are good."
"For desktop application management, I recommend the NetScaler edition. This product is like a Swiss army knife. Citrix NetScaler ADC supports the education front-end."
"Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced."
"The VRRP redundancy is also a mission-critical feature that works seamlessly. I can bring down a server live with minimal downtime because of this."
"The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source."
"The solution is user-friendly and efficient."
"I can simplify configurations of many internal services (e.g. Web server configs) by moving some elements (like SSL) to HAProxy. I can also disable additional applications, like Varnish, by moving traffic shaping configurations to HAProxy."
"What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks."
"It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."
"We did not need technical support because the documentation is good."
"The interface and integrated custom applications can be a bit difficult."
"Traffic flow issues are very difficult, as there's no means for us to analyze the traffic coming in or out of the appliance without technical support."
"When it comes to support, there is always room for improvement. First call resolution is not always there for urgent issues. The first call resolution is something that could be improved upon."
"We are starting to do a lot with containers and how the solution hooks into Kubernetes that we haven't explored. I'm hoping that they have a lot of hooks into Kubernetes. That would be the part for improvement: Marketing use cases with containers."
"There is room for improvement in the upgrading process. Sometimes we have to contact A10 for verification of some stuff."
"The user interface is not as pretty as it could be."
"The tool's load-balancing feature should improve."
"There is two-factor authentication built-in, but it could be more robust."
"I would like to see support for scripting, like "iRule", which gives you the option to implement any configuration which is not available out of the box."
"The solution can improve their support and send tickets directly to a Citrix ADC engineer in order to avoid having to escalate each support call."
"Needs configuration processes like disabling LB VIPs, automatically disabling the IPs used."
"The only thing customers told me that could be improved is that they would like to be able to purchase and receive the products in one box, rather than two boxes. This is something related to marketing, though."
"The GUI should be improved."
"Citrix NetScaler has been recently acquired by another company and the support has been negatively impacted, the solution is at its end of life. The support for the solution could improve. The sales team needs to be improved."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"Its GUI should be improved. Its CLI is powerful, but GUI needs more features."
"The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs."
"The configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."
"There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out. If some standard deployment details are available, it would be helpful for people while deploying it. There should be more documentation on the standard deployment."
"The web stats UI, which provides the status of the health and numbers, could greatly benefit from having a RESTful interface to control the load-balanced nodes. Although there is a hack around the UI (by issuing a POST request to HAProxy with parameters), a RESTful interface would greatly improve the automation process (through Chef and Ansible)."
"There is room for improvement in HAProxy's dynamic configuration."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
"The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup. The clustering is mainly a configuration replication and is great in a case of active-passive usage. In the case of an active-active (or with more than two nodes) where the configuration is not fully identical, it cannot be used as-is."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model. It could be cheaper."
