it_user1069098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Base It
Consultant
Works well and offers good security features and support
Pros and Cons
  • "The security features are the most valuable features of this solution."
  • "To make it a perfect ten out of ten it would need better connection logging. If there is an active connection, that there is better logging. It should also have better management monitoring tools."

What is our primary use case?

We implement it for our customers and we have every different version available from Kemp. The primary use case is for load balancing for different applications, mostly Microsoft Exchange. We use the on-prem deployment model.

What is most valuable?

The security features are the most valuable features of this solution.

It works very well. It's a good product that has good support. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's very scalable. There are solutions for small customers and very large customers available from Kemp. In terms of users, we have different customers. The largest customer has about 5,000 co-workers.

How are customer service and support?

We are satisfied with technical support. 

How was the initial setup?

The implementation is not complex. The deployment took one day. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is fine for their solution and what they give back from the product.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. To make it a perfect ten out of ten it would need better connection logging. If there is an active connection, then there is better logging. It should also have better management monitoring tools. 

They have great technical documentation on their website. That would be my recommendation if someone needs to implement Kemp Technology products.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
it_user806598 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant
User
Simplicity to the setup and configuration
Pros and Cons
  • "There is a simplicity to the setup and configuration."
  • "It helps with efficiency and reactivity, in case of assistance needs."
  • "SNMP and/or RESTCONF management, in order to collect many counters, for plotting in a central application need to be improved."

What is our primary use case?

Load balancing to server farms upon response time performances. Usage of Web Application Firewall module.

How has it helped my organization?

There is a simplicity to the setup and configuration. It helps with efficiency and reactivity, in case of assistance needs.

What is most valuable?

The trio: Simplicity (no needs for many days of training) and a very attractive ratio of price/performance.

What needs improvement?

SNMP and/or RESTCONF management, in order to collect many counters, for plotting in a central application need to be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
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Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
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Chief Consuntant/KEMP VIP at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Technical support is very good. They are quick to answer questions and provide online help.
Pros and Cons
  • "​Simple to install with good documentation."
  • "Some documentation is out of date versus the new version, and things have been moved​."

How has it helped my organization?

When patching Skype for Business Enterprise, we experienced no downtime at all for internal users.

What is most valuable?

  • Skype for Business
  • Reverse proxy
  • Web application firewall
  • Multi-factor authentication 

There is a Forefront TMG replacement together with Skype for Business which even Microsoft recommends for DNS LB. However, customers require uptime, and my tests show that DNS for external users will have quite long time downtimes versus HLB.

What needs improvement?

  • Templates
  • More detailed documentation

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues. It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues. On the VLM, just update the license.

How is customer service and technical support?

Technical support is very good. They are quick to answer questions and provide online help. 

How was the initial setup?

Simple to install with good documentation. Some documentation is out-of-date versus the new version, and things have been moved.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I have control on the licensing and all the prices since I work for a partner.

KEMP gives away free trials for 30 days. This can be stretched if you want. During the test, you will have access to KEMP support.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked into F5 BIG-IP. However, for small customers, they can't pay for four to five days do to basic config.

What other advice do I have?

Look into what you need. Do you want to use virtual (VLM running on Hyper-V or VMware) or physical (LM)?

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: The company that I work for is the only KEMP Center Partner in the Nordic region.
PeerSpot user
Head Of Technology at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Excellent support, no outage, and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "It has been functional. We don't have any outages."
  • "When we go serverless, we may again have to revisit this because the configuration needs to be changed. With this change, we can run into a lot of other configurations that we haven't got into, which involve additional expenses. It would be challenging to convince management to buy at that price point. It would be a balancing act of justifying that expense and the value, that is, how it is going to save a bit of time and make our platform secure. It can have better configuration ability. A lot of iterations happen when we have multiple servers pointing to the same domain. If we do not orchestrate carefully, it gets into a loop, which takes away the precious time of the user who is trying to subscribe to a service. It takes a little longer time to realize services as well as web pages."

What is our primary use case?

We have several customers for different services. We have built services on private cloud libraries. We load Java and Python. A lot of these applications interact at multiple data points. For that, we use software load balancers. 

What is most valuable?

It has been functional. We don't have any outages. 

What needs improvement?

When we go serverless, we may again have to revisit this because the configuration needs to be changed. With this change, we can run into a lot of other configurations that we haven't got into, which involve additional expenses. It would be challenging to convince management to buy at that price point. It would be a balancing act of justifying that expense and the value, that is, how it is going to save a bit of time and make our platform secure.

It can have better configuration ability. A lot of iterations happen when we have multiple servers pointing to the same domain. If we do not orchestrate carefully, it gets into a loop, which takes away the precious time of the user who is trying to subscribe to a service. It takes a little longer time to realize services as well as web pages.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for the past four months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable. We don't have any outages.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. It is a load balancer. We have around 2 lakh customers who are using our systems. Every single login has to go through these load balancers.

In terms of our plans to increase its usage, we are thinking of implementing our solution across the cloud. Therefore, when we go serverless, we may need a lot of cloud balancers. We will have to move to a virtual cloud balancer, which is altogether a multi-cloud. We want to take it across multiple geographic locations, which would be huge work.

How are customer service and technical support?

They are excellent. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy. We took it into production after two days, and it took less than 30 minutes.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it ourselves, but consultants gave us all the information and required knowledge about how to verify. We spent two days doing a hands-on exercise in our staging area, and we were able to understand the entire software ergonomics. After we understood and played around, we finally did some hackathon. We finally concluded that the build is safe and secure, so we posted it. After that, we decided to post it to production. It took less than 30 minutes. We have three DevOps. Our overall software development team has around 20 people.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Currently, no cost is involved with a virtual load balancer. They have used open source. We did not pay for software. We paid for the expertise. We are only paying the consulting charges, which are very reasonable, that is, around a thousand dollars.

What other advice do I have?

The load balancer that we're using right now is for having a tougher load balance between all the services. Very soon, we are looking forward to rolling out a serverless platform on Azure so that we remove the dependency on DevOps configurations and having this container management hub. We will move to a virtual load balancer. They have offered us a pretty competitive price. We are not using all the capabilities. We are only using a subset. We are in touch with their team, and they are very collaborative.

I would definitely recommend this solution to others. If they're looking out for a load balancer for a cloud or on-premises deployment, Kemp LoadMaster definitely works.

I would rate Kemp LoadMaster a nine out of ten. It is hard to find a thing to complain about.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Messaging Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Consultant
We implemented the virtual load balancer and it was a very simple and straightforward installation​

Valuable Features

Most interesting features are like geo-redundancy, support of important Microsoft application like Exchange, Lync, Sharepoint, Skype for business etc. It also integration with Azure make unique about this tool.

Improvements to My Organization

It help to provide efficiently and robust load balance of Exchange servers when one or more server/service failure occurs.

Room for Improvement

It needs to offer support for more business applications.

Deployment Issues

We had no issues with the deployment.

Stability Issues

There were no issues with the stability.

Scalability Issues

We have had no issues with scaling it for our needs.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Customer Service:

They are are very knowledgeable and friendly.

Technical Support:

They are are very knowledgeable and friendly.

Initial Setup

Implementation was easy. We implemented the virtual load balancer and it was a very simple and straightforward installation

Other Advice

I would recommend trying the trial version, and if it meets all your needs then go ahead and implement it.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Consultant
Edge Security Pack differentiates between critical infrastructure and public internet
Pros and Cons
  • "Edge Security Pack is valuable because of the way it separates between critical infrastructure and the public internet."
  • "They need to improve the UI environment. Currently, it's hard to navigate and use product."

How has it helped my organization?

Having LDAP authentication from the LoadMaster to the AD.

What is most valuable?

Edge Security Pack, because of the way it differentiates between critical infrastructure and the public internet. That, I think, is essential.

What needs improvement?

They need to improve the UI environment. Currently, it's hard to navigate and use product.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would rate tech support at nine out of 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This is the first such solution we have used.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It has a great price for the solution they offer.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Azure but we preferred Kemp.

What other advice do I have?

We do not use this solution on AWS.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Product Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
Ease of usage and configuration templates make deployment easy.

What is most valuable?

Ease of usage and configuration templates to make deployment easy.

What needs improvement?

I would say overall improvement of the solution features

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been proposing it to end customers from last July and have been using the Virtual edition.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

no

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

no

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

no

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

nil

Technical Support:

good

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously we were proposing Citrix NetScaler or F5. We switched due to cost.

How was the initial setup?

Very straightforward.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes, Citrix NetScaler and F5.

What other advice do I have?

Try the VLM edition to get a feeling for the product.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Used to be a partner
PeerSpot user
it_user8178 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user8178Product Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant

Nil

it_user771618 - PeerSpot reviewer
System and Server Administrator at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
Exchange load balancing and reverse proxy for Skype for Business are key features
Pros and Cons
  • "Exchange load balancing and reverse proxy for Skype for Business are key features."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are using Kemp Virtual LoadMaster for Microsoft Exchange load balancing, Skype for Business reverse proxy, and Oracle Forms load balancing.

    How has it helped my organization?

    For Skype for Business, we were using Microsoft TMG which is now end-of-support. Then we tried to use IIS as a reverse proxy but that feature was not suitable, especially on video calls where there were many issues. When we started using KEMP, we didn't face a single connectivity or delay issue on Skype for Business.

    Previously, when we had maintenance on Exchange Servers, we had to take downtime. Also, whenever there was a glitch in the network our cluster got shifted to the secondary node. With KEMP, we don’t have to take any downtime for maintenance nor do we face any Outlook disconnect issue when there is a network interruption.

    What is most valuable?

    The load balancing for Exchange and reverse proxy for Skype are the features I like about it so far.

    What needs improvement?

    Reporting and monitoring need serious improvement.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Report and find out what your peers are saying about Progress Software, HAProxy, F5, and more!
    Updated: April 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Report and find out what your peers are saying about Progress Software, HAProxy, F5, and more!