Latest
What's the best cloud load balancer? AWS, Azure, GCP, Cloudflare, or a third-party alternative?
Choosing the right load balancer is about much more than just moving traffic.
Insights from the load balancer experts
HAProxy
Using Grafana Loki with HAProxy for log aggregation
In today's security-conscious world, logs are crucial for gaining insight into your systems...
How-tos
What is Stunnel and how do you configure it?
Here is another example of a more “exotic” Stunnel configuration. Most people, and rightly so, will ask “but why?”. Well, because we can!..
Automation
Solving the Layer 4 ARP problem on Linux with Ansible
The ARP problem for Layer 4 DR (Direct Routing) mode is something that needs to be solved for each of your Real Servers in the virtual service...
Events
American customer service, German engineering and British values bring royal recognition for Loadbalancer.org
Here at Loadbalancer.org, we'd like to say a big thank you to all of our customers, partners and staff. Coinciding with the opening of our new Californian support office in San Mateo; Loadbalancer.org has been awarded the prestigious Queen's Award for Enterprise 2018, International Trade...
Open source
Highly Available NFS based Kerberos KDC (aka. Ganesha + GlusterFS + HAProxy)
Load balancing NFS is a real pain; especially when it comes to the locked mounts issue. In this blog I'll explain how to create a highly available NFS server for Kerberos...
Comparisons
No, it's not a bloody free load balancer — and never will be
Several people visiting our stand mentioned the announcement that Kemp Technologies had released a free load balancer. Understandably, they were interested to hear if we would be responding in kind...
Microsoft
Load Balancing Microsoft Session Host in Azure
The Loadbalancer.org Feedback Agent is installed on the Session Host servers to provide real time performance stats to enable optimum load distribution...
AWS / Azure / GCP
How do you combine AWS Auto Scaling with a proper load balancer?
The Loadbalancer.org appliance automatically detects changes in your auto-scaling groups, with zero configuration and zero downtime...
Direct Server Return
Why Direct Server Return (DSR) is simply awesome
Direct Server Return (DSR) is my favorite way to load balance application servers because it’s simple, transparent, and super fast...
Application Management
Load Balancing Web Servers with OWASP Top 10 WAF in Azure
In the Azure Management Portal, select the Virtual Machines option, click on the newly deployed Load Balancer VM, click on Network interfaces and then select the network interface attached to the load balancer, then click IP configurations and ensure that IP forwarding is Enabled...
Comparisons
The 15 year story behind Loadbalancer.org...
My first piece of code was an animated fish tank (because I wasn't allowed a real one). I soon started dreaming of being a software developer and started learning machine code...
Comparisons
Loadbalancer.org pricing — how much does it cost?
Our aim is always to deliver the features you want, without presenting you with a deluge of checkboxes. Anything out of the ordinary can be achieved via a separate manual configuration - and we are always happy to build one for you...
Comparisons
NGINX vs HAProxy — a bit like comparing a 2CV with a Tesla?
As I design, build and sell load balancers based on LVS and HAProxy, it’s in my interests to combat the avalanche of NGINX+ marketing propaganda that I've seen over the last year. Let's call it an attempt to skewer fake news...
Security
Load Balancing Apache Web Servers with OWASP Top 10 WAF in Azure
The WAF addresses the OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and is very quick and simple to deploy...
High Availability
Load balancing Nutanix: Choosing an enterprise load balancer
Nutanix offers a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) platform that integrates virtualization, computing, networking, storage, and security resources into a single system...
Comparisons
Load balancing vs link balancing — what exactly is the difference?
I dream of a world where people stop calling a *link balancer* a *load balancer* — because we don't sell link balancers!..
Events
IP EXPO Europe 2017 competition winner announced!
I would like to say thank you to all of those that visited us at our stand during the 2 days we were there - we hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did!..
Direct Server Return
Yahoo’s L3 Direct Server Return (DSR), an alternative to LVS-TUN, explored
L3 DSR is an alternative technique to achieve direct server return at Layer 3. Instead of using an IPIP tunnel like LVS-TUN it changes the destination IP address like LVS-NAT when sending the traffic to the real server...
Comparisons
JetNEXUS (EdgeNEXUS) review and Kemp comparison
You can check directly what customers having been telling Gartner about Loadbalancer.org, JetNexus, Barracuda Networks and Kemp Technologies on the new Peer Insights platform...
Direct Server Return
Layer 4 Direct Routing (LVS-DR) and Layer 4 TUN (LVS-TUN) in AWS
LVS-DR and LVS-TUN are both forms of Direct Server Return where the load balancer only has to deal with one half of the connection...
Automation
How to automate legacy load balancer deployments
Automation is very important for many organisations, which is why it's one of the core features of our upcoming V9 release...
Events
Macmillan coffee morning - cake or death?!
We recently held a coffee morning at Loadbalancer.org HQ to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. To support the charity we were selling coffee and cake throughout the day - and we even had a bake off! I must admit...competition was tough!..
HAProxy
Breaking HAProxy with the help of a Spirent Avalanche and lots of very small packets...
HAProxy is awesome. So awesome in fact, that here at Loadbalancer.org HQ - I find it very difficult to generate enough load to break it...so let's try harder!..
Security
Security through obscurity - double login protection made easy...
Security through obscurity is not a great idea when it is your ONLY protection technique. For example moving your SSH port from 22 -> 23 won't fool any hackers for long! However, I've always liked putting a 'double login' in front of important web sites to frustrate simple automated hacking tools...
Application Management
How to load balance Microsoft FTP Server with HAProxy
Open standards are awesome, and the File Transfer Protocol FTP (inspite of its flaws) has been in constant use for an amazing 40 years! FTP can be a pain to run over firewalls and load balancers, so this blog explains how to configure Microsoft FTP and HAProxy...
Healthcare
Load balancing diagnostic medical imaging — Strengthening the radiology workflow
An efficient, resilient radiology workflow is crucial to delivering the best patient care. A complex and ever-changing environment, often with resource constraints, requires a considered approach...
How-tos
Client Certificate Authentication with HAProxy: How to configure
Using client certificates for security is a pretty cool idea! You can protect an entire application or even just a specific Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to only those that provide a valid client certificate...