How-tos
Wizardry from our load balancer experts
Open source
NGINX and X-Forwarded-For Header (XFF)
The X-Forwarded-For Header is a simple yet powerful solution to a very common problem. I'm not sure why, but for some reason it also seems to cause a lot of confusion...
WAF
How to train your Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Let's look at the best way to use the WAF with as little pain as possible!..
HAProxy
Loadbalancer.org releases Open Source SNMP MIB and Agent for HAProxy
We’re always keen to give back to the community that writes such great software – our new SNMP agents and MIBs for HAProxy make monitoring your Virtual Services and Real Servers a breeze...
WAF
Secure connections: encrypt, inspect and decrypt traffic when using a WAF
We’re often asked how to configure our load balancer to protect both web servers and users...
Print
Load balancing PaperCut Version 20
PaperCut v20 has made great strides with high availability and failover capabilities...
How-tos
How to YAML your load balancer deployment
With this, we now have the YAML interface and a method to post the contents!..
Open source
How to load balance VMware's AirWatch Mobile Access Gateway (MAG) and Secure Email Gateway (SEG) with HAProxy
Want to configure a load balancer for VMware's AirWatch Mobile Access Gateway (MAG) and Secure Email Gateway (SEG)? Let's help you out...
AWS / Azure / GCP
AWS reservations, savings plans, and spot instances explained
I often hear that AWS seems expensive, in most cases, this is because people are not fully aware of the best cost-saving practices. Amazon offers many tools to help keep costs down and is always working to improve on these. One such recent improvement is the new "AWS Savings Plans"...
How-tos
Security through geography: blocking traffic by country, continent, or IP address using ModSecurity
Imagine you’re running a business and you often see malicious-looking web traffic from the other side of the globe hitting your website...
How-tos
Smart, secure encryption with SNI
In the early days of the Internet, there was very little encrypted traffic. People simply trusted that nobody was out to get them. But later on, security and encryption became an important part of online life...
Print
Microsoft Windows print spooler and any other Windows service health check
If you haven’t already deployed print servers with high availability, please don't fret. It is a relatively simple and straightforward process,..
Comparisons
How should you compare load balancers?
I didn't ask anything about the load balancer's features, because we already know the market is mature and I have no unusual requirements. I also didn't ask about the load balancer's maximum performance...
AWS / Azure / GCP
Choosing the best load balancer for AWS: Cloud conundrums
You’re moving over to Amazon Web Services (AWS), where you know you’ll find a broad set of global cloud-based services. These services help organizations like yours to move faster, lower IT costs, and scale...
Comparisons
What are the best load balancing methods and algorithms?
The primary function of a load balancer is to keep your application running with no downtime. It is an invaluable tool for systems architects, and it has the benefit of being pretty simple to understand...
How-tos
How do I secure my load balancer with Active Directory, LDAP or RADIUS?
I’ve noticed a lot more of our customers are asking to use their Active Directory login details with the load balancer appliance. And it can get a bit fiddly, so I wanted to explain the process in more detail...
Security
FTPS Implicit vs FTPS Explicit: Who will win?
Implementation of FTP and configuration of your firewalls can be cumbersome, especially when it comes to being secure during your file transfer...
Application Management
Load Balancing Exchange 2016
Exchange 2016 is Microsoft's latest enterprise level messaging and collaboration server...
HAProxy
How to write an external health check script for HAProxy
Loadbalancer.org were the original sponsors of the external health check mechanism in HAProxy. We think it's an invaluable tool when you need something a bit special...
Print
Printing without pain: How to scale print environments and avoid downtime
Print environments often bring together multiple technologies and applications, which can present challenges. There’s the issue of planned downtime: end-users may need to make manual changes to their network when print services fail, taking servers out of production for maintenance or updates.....
High Availability
Can you load balance multiple applications at the same time? The pros and cons
Performance is not generally an issue when load balancing multiple applications - but maintenance is...
WAF
Brute force login: Simple protection techniques with the ModSecurity WAF
The web-based login to your application is a juicy target for hackers. And once they get past the login, they can cause you some serious pain...
Application Management
Monitoring Loadbalancer.org appliances using OmniCenter from Netreo
OmniCenter is a server monitoring, alerting and reporting product which can be deployed to monitor your whole network/infrastructure, providing a single place to view of all systems and alerting you if there are any problems...
Performance
Load balancing your load balancers for a crazy amount of SSL TPS
The plan is to use an inexpensive pair of load balancers - using Layer 4 DR mode for maximum throughput and transparency - to load balance some more mid to high-end load balancers. This enables us to handle the SSL offload at a much more affordable price than simply buying a big box...
AWS / Azure / GCP
How to design a disaster recovery plan for your cloud infrastructure
To design a well-targeted disaster recovery plan, you need to work out two key metrics: the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO)...