We performed a comparison between Citrix NetScaler, Kemp LoadMaster, and Loadbalancer.org based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Citrix, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)."Citrix NetScaler offers robust security features, including SmartAccess and customizable policies, making it a reliable choice for safeguarding user data."
"Easy, user-friendly setup with content switching and integrated caching features."
"Citrix Director has been great. It gives us one pane of glass to be able to monitor what's going on with the user sessions as well as to keep on top of the virtual desktops, any servers that may be offline or behaving suspiciously, or any troublesome spots like disconnections. We also use Citrix Studio for maintaining the actual servers that are hosting these applications. We use it for delivery groups in case we need to modify delivery groups in regards to which groups have access to which applications. It has been very helpful."
"It is a very stable solution."
"If you need PCI-compliance and have high security requirements, WAF is the most valuable feature. If you need to monitor your load-balancing services with complex types of monitoring, make sure everything is alright, and load balancing is important, Content Switching and Monitoring features are the keys to your needs. If you want to provide a lot of static images or data, the Caching feature works best for you."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN."
"I can turn on features without actually owning a license. I can test them out, I can use them for a while, and then I can be licensed up. That's awesome. I don't have to have a license immediately before I can start to deploy things rapidly, rapid deployment is a plus."
"HTTP analysis and action. We have a lot of custom web applications that sometimes require custom header insertions. Some of these custom apps are external and, via the content switching, we can use one IP and leverage various back-end web app servers."
"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)."
"It has greatly fortified the performance and uptime of our front-door email ingress, simplified and segmented mail routing, and reduced admin overhead for mail issue resolution and troubleshooting."
"Simple to install with good documentation."
"From my personal experience, many firewalls provide Load Balancing functionalities, but Kemp Loadmaster has a lot of features and functionalities like what you can configure. So there are a lot of features but we use only five percent of it."
"We are most impressed with the ease of use and great support."
"Persistence is very valuable. This holds the connection information of the source and that connection is important to RDP and our APO calls. The connection has to be persisted to the original source to operate properly. We also use the subsections for sub-services to create services inside our services for our API resources, this is most awesome. We would not be able to do this without Kemp and offer this type of sub-service to route based on an API instance. It routes the traffic properly based on the sub-service type."
"When you configure the listening services, you can implement a lot of security features like the Edge Security Pack that intercepts the requests and processes those before they are sent to the real servers."
"I like the way this solution handles multiple SSLs in different domains while still load balancing."
"It's pretty much a Swiss Army knife for managing all the load balancing techniques."
"The connection that this solution helps our servers maintain has been most useful."
"The user interface precludes need to be well versed with Linux IPVS command line. This make it easy for junior team members to participate in managing load balancing needs."
"The SSL Layer 7 load balancing is valuable."
"The support we have received from Loadbalancer.org has been good."
"With basic network knowledge, our required system functionality can be configured and maintained."
"Load balancing helps us distribute both incoming and outgoing data loads evenly among the servers, preventing overload on a single server."
"For now, it's stable."
"Scripting and writing expressions need to be improved by putting logic behind the rules and improve policies involving some of the scripting part, which is a tedious task to do."
"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."
"Its GUI should be improved. Its CLI is powerful, but GUI needs more features."
"The setup for Citrix NetScaler has room for improvement. It could be easier."
"It can be difficult to setup."
"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."
"The tool needs to add a feature where we can access the network policy access manager."
"There are some drawbacks, such as using EUG for specific configurations. It could be improved."
"The product could be improved by making the SSL Offloading easier."
"Certificate installations could be simplified and modernized, and allowed to be monitored for expirations/issues."
"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."
"It would be very helpful to get all the http/https session logs by default in the log monitor without activating debugging mode like an apache web sever natively does"
"Several elements of the GUI need work. For example, if you have many content switches, it’s difficult to find the ones you need. And where is the search feature?"
"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."
"Over the last several major versions, the GUI has remained virtually unchanged and still seems lacking."
"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."
"Compared to the physical products, the solution's throughput is a little less."
"The configuration is somewhat complicated. Someone who does not know the solution may find this challenging."
"Originally we had some stability issues with it, so they replaced it with a new box and it's fine."
"The automatic refresh of the System Overview webpage: It sometimes has an extra webpage reload (after a change) before you see it is executed. This can be confusing."
"The configuration is somewhat complicated. Someone who does not know the solution may find this challenging."
"You can run into an issue when one engineer passes the case over to another engineer after their shift and they don't know what the first engineer worked on up to that point."
"It would be great if there was a way to gain access to the graphing data, to create custom reports. If we had a way to use the graphing data, we could use it to present certain information to our client, such as the uptime status for their service."
"There are many features you can set in the backend of Loadbalancer. They should simplify the configuration. The administrator should be able to configure it more simply. How it is now, you can only configure it if you have a lot of experience."
