Kemp LoadMaster Reviews

I used it as a front end to an RDS Farm. Its load-balancing port 80 and port 443 to multiple RDS Gateways. It's deployed as a virtual appliance on an on-prem virtual machine hosted on the Hyper-V server. Kemp LoadMaster is used by more than 1,000 internal users on a daily bases to access the application system at the back end. It's not exposed to the internet, it's used only from internal users inside the corporate LAN. We have daily VM backups setup as well as application backups from inside KEMP.

We used to have DNS round-robin based load balancing from some small applications but it was not highly available and if one instance were to do down half of the traffic would go down. We have tested the build it Microsoft Load balancer, but it was free and it was not reliable. Currently, we are using ZEN NLB for a few small applications that do not require many features but when it came to having a proper NLB for 1000 users the ZEN NLB could not handle the load. We have tested F5 and Kemp and Kemp were much cheaper and easier to setup.

I like that this is a Network Load Balancer that can be used practically with any application in the backend. They have how-to guides on how to set up Kemp NLB with Exchange, but you can use it as well for Sharepoint, RDS, or any other back end server. I like that the interface is intuitive, you have the option to load an SSL certificate on it so then the traffic can be inspected there, this is especially important when you have an Exchange server or RD Gateway at the back that heavily uses SSL Certificates. It has an option to be HA so if you need you can set up two of them to be up and running at the same time in Active-Active fashion. 

The product is really good as-is out of the box. If there is one thing I would change is to have the license file not be coupled with the MAC address of the device. This is actually not really useful in a virtual environment where if you have a single VM with KEMP LoadMaster and you have not set up static MAC Address, if you, for example, recreate the VM and just load the disk file on a new VM it will get new MAC address and the NLB will not work as it will not see a proper license. You need to call their support, explain what the issue is, and then they will generate a new license that you can apply. If this is a production environment and you just had an outage and quickly required the VM then you are extending the outage by the time it will take to get their support to help with the new license.

I have been using Kemp LoadMaster for more than two years.

It's rock-solid and very stable.

It can scale easily, I believe you only need to load a new license.

Technical support is nice, they will help you over the phone/email but I had few questions about the design and even professional services were not purchased their support engineer did a screen sharing session to take a look on the configuration to make sure it's following their best practices for the use case we were using it for.

I have used ZEN NLB and Microsoft NLB.

It was easy to get in touch with their sales and get it ordered.

I have implemented it myself.

KEMP NLB is on the cheaper side of the spectrum but works great. If your license expires it will still run just you won't be able to do any changes.

Yes, F5.

Its a nice and easy NLB to set up and operate on a day to day basis. I highly recommend it. 

We use an on-premises Skype for Business Server VoIP service that utilizes the Kemp LoadMaster LM-2400 for service resiliency. This allows our three front-end servers to seamlessly support our service. We never miss a call and our chat service is always ready as a result.

Kemp has a pre-made virtual service profile that perfectly fits our use case so the initial setup is quite easy. We also have expanded the use of the LoadMaster to accommodate a number of ancillary services that also require resilience.

The Kemp LoadMaster is easy to set up, well documented, and very easy to maintain. It has done a flawless job supporting our Microsoft Skype for Business Server VoIP services, as well as expanding to cover a number of other services that require load balancing.

The LoadMaster has helped to keep our Voice over IP services in-house, which has produced tremendous savings versus hosting our services in the cloud. This has allowed us to devote our resources to other projects, increasing our overall effectiveness.

The load balancing features of the LoadMaster are the best we have used.

Failover is seamless and our services are rock solid. Kemp maintains a library of templates pre-configured for a number of services, including Microsoft Skype for Business Server. This makes configuring the virtual services very easy. It also makes it very easy to add additional virtual services as you find new use cases. The convenience of being able to download new or updated templates from Kemp's support site cannot be understated.

If I had to pick an area for improvement, I think it would be direct integration with the template library. At present, you need to download the templates from the Kemp support portal and then upload them onto the LoadMaster. It would be much easier to have the management interface directly integrate with the Kemp Support library, allowing you to choose the desired template from the online catalog to then directly download to the LoadMaster.

We first implemented our Kemp LoadMaster eight years ago when we launched a new VoIP project that required load balancing for enhanced reliability.

The stability is rock solid. We have only experienced one issue in eight years. Kemp support was all over it and got us back online in no time.

For our organization, the LM-2400 is perfectly sized. I'm sure it has an upper limit but we have not gotten anywhere near it yet.

Kemp tech support has been absolutely fantastic. 

We have had one hardware issue, which over a span of eight years isn't bad at all, and one setup question. Both of these issues were handled quickly and to our satisfaction.

Previously, we had been using a Barracuda load balancer. It was nice but the management was not as easy to use and it was not quite as reliable as we would have liked.

The initial setup was very straightforward. The virtual service templates provided by Kemp make setup a snap!

We used a vendor team but our assigned technician was not familiar with networking or load balancing. I ended up taking over the setup and it couldn't have been easier.

The Kemp LoadMaster is a tremendous value. It works well and is easy to set up and to maintain.

Barracuda and F5 were evaluated as well. The performance and value were found to be much better with the Kemp LoadMaster.

The Kemp LoadMaster just works. It is extraordinarily difficult to suggest any changes that might improve its feature set. Go with Kemp, you won't regret it!

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. 

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

We acquired Kemp LoadMaster initially to balance our Exchange multi-site environment. We configured it and now balance the Autodiscover, OWA, and mail services for our three Exchange services in three different sites. Everything flows and works without issues.

As time went on, we added other services such as RDP connections, online banking, and other applications to the LM to balance the load, which made our operations even more efficient.

The implementation of the LoadMaster has created internal and operational efficiencies. It allows us to balance several applications all at once with an easy-to-setup and use application.

The security features, load balancing, built-in templates, and the easy to implement virtual IPs are great. It allows us to accomplish our goals with one application.

In the next release, Kemp should include the ability for LoadMaster to create different DNS record types.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for about three years.

The product is very stable. I have had no issues. 

Every experience I have had with the technical support team has been great. I've worked with about four different engineers and they have all given consistent good service. 

This was the first solution of this type.

The initial setup was very straightforward, as there are many built-in templates. Even though I had the assistance of the support team to ensure everything was good, it was a breeze.

The deployment was done by our in-house team.

This is a cost-efficient product.

I didn't really evaluate other options. In my research, I saw great recommendations for the product to balance exchange, so I tested it and it worked well.

It's a great product to use if you need to balance multiple sites and applications. It is easy to set up, the support engineers are top-notch, and it is cost-efficient as well.

Kemp LoadMaster is used in our server for load balancing. Our organization produces software for public sectors like Transport, Healthcare, and Banking system. For continuous service and support, we need to run our system with high availability and avoid failures. Thus, the Kemp LoadMaster helps us to give continuous service to reach and is accessed by our clients.

Kemp LoadMaster is the easiest server maintenance application that gives you a high-performance virtual Load Balancer and a Reverse Proxy. It helps to enable the firewall to secure all servers, including setting up virtual IPs.

This product has good network management for command-based operating systems like Linux.

Managing and maintaining multiple servers is done in a single place.

Most of the networking commands are accessible with the UI, including complete tasks such as closing or opening ports. This makes it simple and clean.

Major roll-on load-balancing with multiple servers and a security layer with VIP gives more security for our servers.

Have a better UI can attract more customers.

Multiple SSL uploads for a single VIP can be added in the future.

Prices on their maintenance plans should be reduced, as it would be better for the users.

It doesn't run well in Hyper-V or at least, it didn't when I bought it. I really don't like the way the logs are presented in the software. A lot of the information in the logs is only meaningful to the Kemp Support Team.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for more than two years.

The technical support is really great and they respond quickly. The people at Kemp were very kind and I got always a proper response. I really want to thank my technician for taking care of my issue, as well as the quick replies.

As for now, things are good and I give lots of thanks to the support team.

We did not use another similar solution. There is no alternative advice; we heard that Kemp is the best load-balancer.

The setup cost and pricing plan is reasonable and will ultimately give you a worthy return.

We have evaluated NGINX, but because of the great support, we have decided on Kemp LoadMaster.

I need to work on the Kemp cloud-based product, as I don't have experience with it.

I use Kemp LoadMaster as a load balancer for my web applications.

All web servers (all technologies) are available through the Kemp LoadMaster so all users use the transparent load balancer. 

Kemp Loadmaster is more efficient than the HA Proxy that we used a long time ago.

It is an easy-to-use, user-friendly interface, and you can set up a new VIP in a couple of minutes.                              

Ease to use is the most valuable feature.   

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

I have been using LoadMaster for about five years. 

It is quite stable. No weird issues.

It is scalable. 

I can add one or more appliances to the existing ones.

Technical support is reactive.

We haven't really needed to contact the support except for license renewal.

I switched because Kemp LoadMAster is more efficient, stable and scalable than the other solution.

The initial setup is not very complex. It was a normal setup with a partner.

We implemented it with a partner.

A partner strongly suggested this product so there was no need to evaluate other options.

We have a small number of internal web servers that we host on-premises in our data center, along with other services that need to be accessible from the public internet. These include Remote Desktop servers, an SFTP server, Exchange, etc.

All of these servers need extra protection on top of our standard firewall, intrusion detection, and endpoint protection.

The primary use case of Kemp is the reverse proxy for added protection, and load balancing for better performance. We are able to leverage Kemp to protect our web servers by adding content rules and restrictions.

We will continue to add more resources as needed behind Kemp. 

Kemp is a great product to have in our organization.

For our use case, it provides an additional security layer by using the reverse proxy process to protect my real servers. Using Kemp as a front-facing service appliance, it allows me to have the flexibility of swapping out real servers behind the scenes without any intervention from my network team.

Using the content rules restriction gives me the power to block off certain sections of the web pages if there is a need to do so. The load balancer aspect will allow me to optimally offload traffic evenly across my servers. 

For now, the reverse proxy feature is a great feature used to protect my public-facing servers. It is configured to restrict/control certain protocols from hitting my actual servers.

Though not a feature of the product, tech support from the company is also a feature as part of the overall solution that is very valuable. I was able to get in touch with an engineer within a few minutes of calling the support line. I was able to resolve my issue pretty quickly once we restructured a few things within the environment.

Overall, the Kemp appliance seems to have performed very well for me over the years.

If there is anything that needs to be updated, the GUI can get a refresh to make it look more like 2020, although it is just a cosmetic change.

It would be a plus if there were a real-time live traffic capture that allows administrators to see the current traffic that is coming into the appliance. Currently, you can only start the TCPdump capture and have the information logged into a file.

Maybe a configurable dashboard to show more detail about each VS service would be welcome.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for three years.

KEMP is very stable as we have not had any downtime using this appliance.

Scalability-wise, it works very well for me.

Very pleased with the experience of talking to the tech support team.

We have another solution in place and we are currently planning to retire it, now that Kemp has been implemented.

The selection was made before I came on board.

It is a great product and service support is awesome.

Our primary use for the Kemp LoadMaster is load balancing our exchange and IIS web services to be able to meet the high availability standard for our organization. We get additional security features so there is no need to make these configuration steps on a server again. With the offloading capability, you can even secure servers that normally can't be secured.

Currently, we are using it with our web servers and exchange, for both internal and external access. Also, the reverse proxy is one of the greatest benefits.

We use Kemp to improve the security and availability of our web properties to external customers and partners, as well as a custom banquet application that is accessed over a cloud connection.

The Kemp LoadMaster gives us load balancing/reverse proxy capabilities as well as a web application firewall to protect our web application environment and website.

We use the technology across the entire organization to solve the issue of site performance and availability issues of our applications to external users when booking and managing events.

The most valuable features for us are the Load Balancing and Web Application Firewall, as we have a lot of web applications. It was difficult to meet the high availability without doubling most of the work. With the WAF, we can publish without risking our infrastructure being internet-facing.

The following features are also valuable:

• TLS (SSL) Offload
• Layer 7 Content Switching
• High Availability (Active/Standby)
• Health Checking
• Permit /Deny Access Control Lists
• IP address filtering
• IPsec Tunnel support
• DDoS mitigation, including L7 rate-based attacks
• IPSec VPN to Azure, AWS, vCloud Air public clouds
• Authenticated NTP
  

From my point of view, the only minor thing that needed to be improved is log management. It has all types of logs and they are very detailed, but it's a little bit hard to search for a single event.

Log management is critical for investigating an attack or unwanted behavior. Since they have a lot of logs, it takes a lot of time to look for a specific event. Also, for the WAF, it would be great if they can provide a dashboard or insight dashboard for WAF logs.

other than that there is nothing need to be improved from kemp

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for three years.

very stable, since 3 years we didn't face any issues 

very easy to scale the solution

very helpful technical team

We used to work with Windows NLB, and we switched to Kemp to meet a higher level of stability and quality of service.

straightforward, using the documentation provided by kemp

in-house

This product has good value and features for the money.

Prior to choosing Kemp, we evaluated Zen Load Balancer and NGINX. Comparing price and features, Kemp was the best option for us.

Basically, Kemp covers every critical thing that must be needed to complete the task at hand.