In these challenging times, government, healthcare, and educational institutions (as well as businesses and organizations in all segments of the global economy) are struggling to keep up with the demands being placed on their digital infrastructure. Simultaneously, severe constraints are being placed on budgets and timeframes, while users, employees and customers must still have reliable and uninterrupted access to key applications and critical workloads.
Use cases like remote workspaces, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), distance learning, medical imaging and remote medicine, telecommunications, e-commerce, and supply chain managemen are now ALL experiencing exponential increases in user demand.
Load balancers and application delivery controllers (ADCs) have always played a critical role in assuring reliable and scalable access to critical applications. At this precise moment and in the near-to-medium term, however, traditional approaches to provisioning are simply not feasible in the majority of cases, particularly where near-real-time deployment and availability are paramount.
Physical vs. Virtual ADC dilemma
Both hardware and software versions of the load balancer (a.k.a. virtual ADC) form-factor have key advantages and disadvantages. Physical load balancers have the advantage of delivering predictable performance envelopes and are fully supported by a single vendor. On the other hand, they require dedicated rack space and power provisions, not to mentions time for procurement, logistics and physical access to data center infrastructure to manage.
Virtual appliance load balancers, often referred to as vADCs, are procured, deployed and managed much like any other software or virtual machine (VM). Time to functionality can be reduced greatly from days to a matter of hours, or even minutes. These instances can be easily resized and redeployed on-demand, and in most cases, remotely from the physical data center location. However, sizing and licensing of software-based virtual ADCs can be complex and can require careful planning and consideration in order to avoid under-provisioning and over-subscribing, or over-provisioning/paying.
VLM MAX 90: A different virtual Load Balancer – made for today’s challenges
At its core, Kemp’s VLM (Virtual LoadMaster) MAX is Kemp’s highest-end virtual load balancer/ADC model. The key difference between the new VLM-MAX 90 and other Kemp virtual appliance models (and nearly all competitive offerings) is that there are no imposed throughput, encryption or resource allocation or license restrictions what-so-ever! In other words, the VLM MAX will consume all vCPU, vNic, memory, and virtual disk resources allocated to the host VM to scale performance on-demand.
VLM-MAX will, in fact, scale near-linearly with the compute and memory resources allocated to it. This provides for unparalleled flexibility to the administrator to adjust for changing performance requirements (e.g. L7 throughput, SSL TPS, L7 RPS, concurrent connections, etc.) without having to worry about exceeding licensing or any other vendor-imposed limitations. It also eliminates any and all risks associated with unforeseen costs or budget over-subscriptions. If more performance is needed, simply add more resources through your hypervisor management UI or API and you’re good to go. All done Remotely, and without ever stepping foot in your physical data center!
By far – the most comprehensive feature-set of all vADC offerings
The VLM-MAX-90 is bundled with every available critical function that is required to power most critical of applications and workloads. This includes support for complex, multi-site, multi-cloud, ultra-resilient, high-performance global data centers.
Beyond the most comprehensive, ultra-performant Layer 4-7 load balancing and ADC functions, the VLM-MAX-90 is bundled with Kemp’s “Enterprise Plus” support subscription as a standard option that includes the following advanced features:
- WAF – A fully featured Web Application Firewall (WAF) for mitigating the OWASP Top 10 and other application-level threats
- Identity Access Management (IAM) – One of the most widely deployed SSO and secure application access management frameworks to support your overall IAM strategy
- Multi-Site Load Balancing – A comprehensive Global Traffic Management/DNS management services platforms (including IP Reputation and DNSSEC capabilities)
- Centralized Management – For deployments with multiple vADC instances, the Kemp 360 Centralmanagement platform is also included to provide single pane of glass administration, analytics, reporting, and automated provisioning capabilities. This separate software package is included with VLM-MAX-90 to help administrators quickly and easily deploy a large number of virtual ADC instances.
- Expert Support – 24×7 Live Support, Deployment and Migration Assistance by one of the most regarded and experienced load balancers engineering teams in the industry.
Since 2003, and as of this post, Kemp is extremely proud to have supported every one of our 10,527 customers’ unique and individual needs – at every corner of the world. For Kemp, it is NOT just about the load balancer. Our goal is to ensure that the entire application delivery environment that is connected to the LoadMaster is performing to the best possible level.
We understand that customer environments must be able to change and adapt to THEIR customers’ needs – at all times – on-demand. Kemp’s engineers are standing by to help with initial deployment, configuration optimization, migration from legacy load balancers (e.g. F5, Cisco ACE, NetScaler, and many others) across a wide range of enterprise and custom applications. And for five straight years, Kemp’s customer support organization has been rated at 98.9% customer satisfaction for quality and responsiveness.
Completely and Unconditionally FREE for 90 days
While your IT budget may now be seriously constrained (or even frozen) for the foreseeable future, Kemp understands that your number one priority is to keep the services of your organization available and your business operational. Kemp is offering free of charge, an unlimited number of 3-month licensed VLM-MAX-90 instances per organization. The 3 months start from the day of activation of each individual instance. No limits on quantity are being applied to enable your organization to fully operate in a highly-available, fully scalable environment. Whether you need one or one hundred highly available instances, across one or hundreds of applications, Kemp will deliver a fully enabled, fully supported solution to you within 24 hours of your request.
For additional information on Kemp VLM-MAX-90 virtual load balancer, please visit: https://kemp.ax/load-balancer-vlm-max-90/#blog