We performed a comparison between Citrix NetScaler, HAProxy, and Kemp LoadMaster based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Citrix, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC).
"Provides resiliency for applications that reside on servers, as well as connectivity to remote applications."
"Load balancing, cache redirection, content switching, all connected with traffic management."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Citrix ADC is its ease of use."
"The program is easy to install and to set up."
"Citrix Netscaler makes it easy to provide services to end users, offering better visibility into user sessions compared to VMware. However, instability in network or machine can cause headaches as it's hard to pinpoint issues. SSL offload feature enhances security posture by providing secure connectivity between end users and backend systems. We use additional Azure remote security solutions for comprehensive protection."
"Very stable."
"One of its most valuable features is fundamental load balancing, supporting both basic load balancing and database teams."
"The most valuable thing for me is TCP/IP Layer 4 stuff you can do with HAProxy. You can go down to the protocol level and make decisions on something."
"Stability is number one."
"The most important features would be the load-balancing of HTTP and TCP requests, according to multiple LB-algorithms (busyness, weighted-busyness, round robin, traffic, etc). Another important feature that we cannot live without is the username/passwd authentication for legacy systems that had none."
"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."
"Reliability. HAProxy is the most reliable product I have ever used."
"The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us."
"It improves our scalability and responsiveness services to meet our demanding customer requirements."
"HAProxy Enterprise Edition has been rock solid. We have essentially had no downtime caused by our load balancers in the last 10 months, because they’ve worked so well. Previously, our load balancers caused us multiple hours per year in downtime."
"It has been functional. We don't have any outages."
"The user interface is very easy to work with."
"With Kemp 360 Central, our customers get a nice overview of their Kemp products and an easy way to upgrade firmware on all devices from a single interface."
"The configuration is really easy and the web portal is self-explanatory."
"We needed a Microsoft Threat Management Gateway server replacement solution for a customer and were impressed with the simplified deployment of the Kemp LoadMasters."
"We are most impressed with the ease of use and great support."
"The Global WAF has saved us more than one time from unwanted traffic."
"One of the most valuable features I like is the ability to block specific cipher suites like RC4, and older protocols like SSL 3.0."
"Currently, the support team's responsiveness is lacking, and the technical personnel on calls often seem unfamiliar with the issues or inadequately trained."
"We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution."
"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."
"Its GUI should be improved. Its CLI is powerful, but GUI needs more features."
"I would like to see them make it easier to do some of the more complex things. For example, a web re-direct requires two pieces to it. You have two ports and when people want to go to a web page, they just type in the webpage that on the backend it will redirect them to a secure link. The initial setup of that is cumbersome because you have to do it twice. There are things that can be replicated. The IP address, for example, is the same. This change would go a long way. Don't make me do it twice and don't make me have to read tons of documentation to figure out how to do it. Ease of configuration for some of the more complex processes would be a good improvement."
"Needs configuration processes like disabling LB VIPs, automatically disabling the IPs used."
"Currently, it is not easy to use the configuration capabilities of the product."
"Too many bugs in the software and it's always difficult when you need to update."
"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."
"The product does not have any new technologies."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model. It could be cheaper."
"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)."
"The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs."
"While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties. There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good; however, if there is a troubleshooting issue or an incident occurs, we will have issues because this is open-source."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of the solution."
"UI is very basic and unattractive."
"I definitely think that the WAF can be improved."
"Over the last several major versions, the GUI has remained virtually unchanged and still seems lacking."
"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."
"In my opinion, the layer seven loads balancing that we're mainly using for web servers, doesn't seem to pick up when there are issues at the application level."
"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."
"I think there should be more visual instructions on how to configure advanced features."
