How the Award Winning KEMP Loadmaster 5300 Load Balancer can help Optimize your IT Infrastructure

Posted on

Kemp Default Blog Image

When KEMP Technologies received the prestigious UK Network Computing IT Optimization Product of the Year 2013 and even came runner up as Hardware Product of the Year 2013, it was recognized by the market that the KEMP Technologies 5300 is a one of the most dramatic entrants into the network load balancer market in the last 5 years.

A new player in the network load balancer market

The LoadMaster 5300 was launched into the market in March 2012, this in itself is significant as this makes this new load balancer appliance one of them most modern available today. Design engineers taking advantage of what they had learned from its predecessor the LoadMaster 5500 delivered a product that is leaner, faster and even more cost effective. As our own Chris Heyn says, “The 5300 is to Application Delivery what the Supermarine Spitfire was in the Battle of Britain or the Patriot Missile was in the Gulf War, it is a class act a real winner in all classes, particularly in the support of Microsoft applications.”

But why change?

Many of you will be familiar with Microsoft NLB, it could have served you for years but now its effective life has come to an end, is this the opinion of KEMP Technologies? No it is actually what Microsoft themselves have been saying for the last 12 months. The reason for this is that Microsoft NLB lacks three key load balancing features that render it obsolete:

  • Doesn’t scale to meet today’s Networking load balancing requirements
  • Can’t cope with service awareness
  • Doesn’t balance at Layer 7

So all in all Windows NLB is being consigned to the load balancing museum, anyone who doesn’t believe that this is correct should talk to Microsoft experts they know to confirm this is a fact not an opinion.

The LoadMasters move into position

Having understood that Microsoft NLB solutions are no longer an option it is time to focus on the LoadMaster product range and position the LM5300 into this evaluation.

One of the first things that you will immediately understand when you research the LoadMaster product family is that they are fully accredited to support all Microsoft applications including Microsoft Lync and Exchange, both 2010 and 2013. Here is a good customer citation.

The reason that Microsoft specialists and independent MVPs recommend KEMP LoadMasters time and again cannot be overlooked. Microsoft specialists all over the world recommend LoadMasters to ensure that you can optimize your Microsoft application network load balancing requirements and often say that they are the best hardware load balancers for SMB (Small Medium Business) requirements.

Moving on up

While the LoadMaster 2200, 2600 and the Virtual LoadMasters have been taking business from their competitors including Barracuda, Loadbalancer.org and Brocade in the SMB space, the business won by the LM 3600 and the LM 5300 has been a more silent success.

Consider for a moment that one of the big four international accountancy and audit companies has adopted the LoadMaster 5300 as their preferred platform for Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Lync migration and in their worldwide deployments. A fine victory considering that the KEMP LM 5300 beat off F5 with the Big 1600 and 3600 and Citrix Netscaler, as while they are powerful load balancers they are showing signs of age.

Useful links

Find out more about Load balancing Microsoft Exchange with KEMP.

Find out more about Load balancing Microsoft Lync with KEMP.

Download a FREE trial of the our Virtual LoadMaster

Get a FREE hardware LoadMaster unit to try in your own environment

Posted on

Kemp Technologies

Kemp Technologies