Network managers and data center managers can use load balancing software to control their network load. This application is used to direct network traffic to the correct servers based on user preferences.
Today, there are a plethora of load balancing technologies accessible for a wide range of applications and organizations. In this top tools list, we'll look at the top 23 load balancing tools in this article and highlight the important aspects of each.
1. GCP (Google Cloud Product) Load Balancer
Cloud Load Balancing enables you to put all of your assets behind one single IP address that is either outwardly accessible or internal to your VPC network. You may offer content as near to your users as possible with Cloud Load Balancing on a system that can handle more than a million queries per second.
Cloud Load Balancing is a software-defined, distributed managed service. Because it isn't hardware-based, you won't have to worry about maintaining a physical load balancing system.
Key Features:
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The front end will be served from a single IP address.
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Backend autoscaling that is intuitive and automatic
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When consumers access your applications via the internet, external load balancing is used.
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When your users are already there in Google Cloud, internal load balancing is used.
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When your apps are only available in a particular region, you can use regional load balancing.
Cost:
$0.025 per hour
2. Amazon ELB(Electric Load Balancer)
Incoming application traffic is automatically distributed over many objectives, including such Amazon EC2 instances, containers, IP addresses, Lambda functions, and virtual appliances, using Elastic Load Balancing. In a single Availability Zone or across many Availability Zones, it can handle the variable load of your application traffic.
Amazon Elastic Load Balancer provides four different types of load balancers, each with the high availability, intelligent scaling, and robust security that your applications require to be fault-tolerant.
Key Features:
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Elastic Load Balancing can be implemented in a variety of ways. With APIs, AWS Command Line Interfaces (CLI), or the AWS Management Console, you can set up an Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer, or Gateway Load Balancer.
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You may create high availability, fault-tolerant systems that dynamically scale capacity up or down depending on the traffic fluctuations when you utilize Elastic Load Balancing with Auto Scaling.
Cost:
$0.027 USD per Load Balancer per hour
3. Microsoft Azure Load Balancer
With increased application traffic, Azure Load Balancer scales automatically. Your applications give a better client experience without requiring you to alter or manage them. You can construct highly accessible and scalable apps in minutes with built-in application load balancing for cloud services and virtual machines.
TCP/UDP-based protocols like HTTP, HTTPS, and SMTP, as well as protocols for real-time phone and video messaging, are supported by Azure Load Balancer.
Key Features:
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Add scalability to your applications right now.
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Load distribution Traffic on the internet and private networks
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Increase the reliability of your application by doing health checks.
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NAT rules that are more flexible for improved security
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VMS and cloud services are directly connected.
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Support for IPv6 natively
Cost:
$18.25 per month
4. Big-IP Local Traffic Manager
BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager controls network traffic to ensure that applications are constantly available, quick, and protected.
BIG-IP application delivery controllers keep your programs up and running. BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and BIG-IP DNS safeguard your infrastructure while handling application traffic. Regardless of whether your applications are hosted in a private data center or the cloud, you'll get constructed security, traffic control, and performance application services.
Key Features:
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Fast and secured applications.
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Built-in security and traffic management
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High-performance application services despite private or public servers.
Cost:
Free trial available.
5. NGINX
Even though NGINX began as a web server and quickly established itself as a high-speed web server, it is now extensively used as a load balancer to control inbound traffic and route it to slow or inactive upper servers. It's known for its tremendous performance and sophisticated network management, and it can handle millions of requests per second.
NGINX, as a load balancing tool, can also provide content caching and web server monitoring, among other functions, and has shown to be a comprehensive and capable solution ideal for enterprises of all sizes.
Key Features:
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Configuration is done automatically.
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API Gateways for load balancing
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Gzipping — Optimising network cycles by compressing answers.
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Caching and transmission of data
Cost:
Nginx can be purchased as a yearly or hourly subscription with a variety of pricing options. Individual instances in a cloud marketplace are used to calculate per-instance pricing. The annual cost of a single instance starts at $2500.
6. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor (SAM)
SolarWinds® Server and Application Monitor (SAM) is a single-tool solution for monitoring your entire on-premise, cloud, or hybrid application infrastructure. It allows expanded monitoring over any customized or homegrown apps while leveraging your existing scripts to develop new monitors, with a vast selection of templates extending across applications, systems, and the cloud, including Windows, Linux, Java, and Office 365 to mention a few.
Key Features:
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The built-in AppStackTM dashboard is intended to provide you with a contextual view of how the applications are connected to other components in the IT infrastructure.
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Based on current application communication and re-collecting network connection characteristics like packet loss and latency, dynamic maps can also intuitively find the correlation between apps and servers.
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IT has a cross-stack feature. Drag and drop network performance measurements on a standard timeline for rapid visual connection throughout your network data to assist speed up the process of uncovering the underlying root causes.
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Additionally, it assists in the scheduling and generation of bespoke system performance reports and warnings.
Cost:
Free trial available.
7. LoadMaster
LoadMaster is a comprehensive load balancing technology that has shown to be a great fit for both private and multi-cloud environments. It contains a powerful and robust set of tools for ensuring security and brilliant performance on cloud applications, as well as a user-friendly, convenient interface, centralized management, and application templates, enabling the most straightforward network infrastructure administration while achieving the most reliable results.
Key Features:
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Processing that is quick and adaptable.
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may be scaled up or down as needed, and it can identify app flaws and fix them quickly.
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It can be easily modified thanks to the simple deployment method.
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LoadMaster provides round-the-clock service and interacts with third-party solutions to boost your productivity.
Cost:
The product is offered a 21-day free trial. The software is available for a one-time purchase of $2500.
8. Zevenet
Zevenet is a popular open-source load balancer that many businesses use to strengthen their web architecture while also ranking among the best solutions for lowering response time. The quality of this load balancer as an Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and as a network and services enhancer has won hearts. The Zevenet load balancing solution is appropriate for users in a variety of industries, including education, health care, telecoms, and entertainment.
Key Features:
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Because of the full compatibility of their solution via API, they are well-known for automating scalable infrastructure for their customers.
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DDoS real-time security is enabled by a sophisticated Intrusion Prevention and Detection System mostly at the networking and application levels.
Cost:
Free trial available.
9. Incapsula
Incapsula is a feature-rich and dependable load balancing solution that supports a variety of load-balancing techniques, reducing server load and improving application performance.
Incapsula is the appropriate solution if you're seeking a secure, fast, and intelligent load balancer to improve your results. Its authentic server tracking and health check detect outages quickly and eliminate downtime. Active or passive tracking can be used to acquire better control, depending on the situation.
Key Features:
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In the event of a server failure, routing is halted until the server is operational again, and automated failover among primary and secondary sites is supported by shoving in a standby data center when a primary site outage is identified.
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While allowing everything to be controlled from a single dashboard, it also provides for real-time traffic monitoring and even load distribution for optimum responsiveness and availability.
Cost:
Network security subscriptions start at $500 for speeds up to 20 Mbps and go up to $2,000 for speeds up to 100 Mbps. The load balancing add-on costs $1,000 per month extra.
10. A10 Networks Thunder ADC
A10 Networks now offers a full suite of sophisticated load balancers and application delivery controllers, fifteen years after launching its initial load balancing appliance (ADC). To suit hybrid infrastructure needs, the A10 Networks Thunder ADC range comprises physical and SPE appliances, bare metal, virtual appliances, containers, and clouds.
Layer 4 through Layer 7 load balancing, capacity pooling licensing, and security features such as SSO, sophisticated encryption, and application firewalls are included with all A10 Thunder ADC systems. With 220 Gbps of application throughput, A10's load balancer provides industry-leading efficiency.
Key Features:
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Advanced analytics and performance visibility are provided by Harmony Controller.
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DDoS protection, SSL/TLS support, and IP anomaly detection are all included.
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Multiplexing and compression of HTTP connections for speed.
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Recursive DNS search, firewall, and cache are some of the DNS load balancing features.
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For health checks and monitoring, comprehensive protocol assistance and scripting options are available.
Cost:
Free trial available.
11. Array APV x800
Array Networks is a two-decade-old application delivery and load-balancing company with a significant presence in China, Japan, and India. The Array APV x800 Series ADCs are the latest server load balancers from the Silicon Valley-based business, and they ensure 99.999 percent stability for corporate applications and cloud services.
The APV Series delivers application services intelligently to maximize performance while redirecting traffic from failed servers. With its network of sites dedicated to global server load balancing (GSLB) and link load balancing, Array can also provide the dependability of wide-area network (WAN) connections (LLB).
Key Features:
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Remote users can administer the cluster through SSH, WebUI, or secure CLI.
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TCP buffering and client connection persistence are used to improve performance.
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Ensuring high reliability and uptime requires failover capabilities.
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Certificate security and a proxy-based firewall are included in web application security.
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For link load balancing, outbound and inbound algorithms are utilized.
Cost:
Free trial available.
12. Barracuda Load Balancer ADC
Barracuda Networks' load balancer was one of the company's first solutions until it became a renowned cybersecurity firm. Barracuda Load Balancer ADC now combines the vendor's security expertise with the most up-to-date application performance optimization.
For enterprise clients, Barracuda provides worldwide server load balancing with geographic IP and priority, site health checks, and authoritative DNS services. The Load Balancer ADC protects against a wide range of application attacks, and also as SQL injections, cross-site scripting, and the OWASP Top 10.
Key Features:
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REST API management tools, real-time traffic metrics, and position access control are all available.
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2FA, Kerberos, RSA Secure ID, RADIUS, and LDAP authentication are all supported.
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Data loss prevention (DLP) features and granular defense policy management
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Request/response rework and content-based routing are examples of application traffic control.
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Connectivity, authorization, audits, and web firewalls all have log reporting and analytics.
Cost:
A 30-day free trial is provided to test the software's features. There is no pricing information available on the internet.
13. Citrix ADC
Citrix, an enterprise IT vendor, entered the load balancing industry in 2005 when it bought NetScaler, a network traffic acceleration business. Citrix ADC is a common code base that can be deployed beside monolithic and microservice-based apps across hybrid environment platforms.
Citrix provides tools for compressed material, pictures, front end, and TCP, as well as integrated caching technology, to help clients enhance application delivery. Administrators can centrally manage rules and reporting for app stability, security analytics, and ML-powered baseline activity monitoring with Citrix Application Delivery Management (ADM).
Key Features:
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The content layout, JS optimization, and domain clustering front-end analysis tools.
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Surge security, dynamic routing protocols, and GSLP for high availability.
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Citrix ADM provides actionable insights and a visual policymaker.
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DoS protection for L4-L7 rewrite and responder capabilities, as well as L7 rewrite and responder skills.
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Endpoint analysis, stateless RDP proxy, and PCoIP support are just a few of the gateway's functions.
Cost:
The Citrix ADC load balancing app has a starting price of $2,440.
14. HAProxy Enterprise
HAProxy offers the most well-known peer community, regular updates, and enhanced tools and assistance for enterprise clients to individuals interested in free, open-source load balancing software.
HAProxy Enterprise adds 24x7 support, ticket key synchronization, high reliability, and cluster-wide tracking to the open-source version's improved health checks, acceleration, and persistence. For advanced security, the corporate software features an unusual activity detection engine, WAF, and bot detection.
Key Features:
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Load balancing approaches have a great deal of support.
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A reverse proxy, traffic filtering, and a WAF module are all security features.
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Advanced SSL algorithm selection for selecting the most appropriate certificates for clients.
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A runtime API, DNS, data plane API, and server templates are among the administrative tools available.
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Methods for granular traffic and user access management, including slow start and stop.
Cost:
Free load balancer.
15. Loadbalancer.org
Clients can choose from a variety of enterprise choices, including hardware, virtual, and cloud ADC solutions, at the namesake Loadbalancer.org. The firm offers six variants, each with infinite servers and increasing levels of high throughput, SSL TPS keys, Layer 7 concurrent connections, and optimum connections in a single rack (1U) hardware device.
The cloud and virtual ADC solutions from Loadbalancer.org feature a variety of price options, including pay-as-you-go, permanent, subscription, and site licensing. The load balancers from the UK-based company work with the top three cloud infrastructure suppliers: AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Key Features:
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Scalable, throughput and SSL transactions are all unlimited with virtual load balancing.
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Content routing, caching, and tagging configuration management and automation.
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An incorporated WAF, virtual patching, and a reverse proxy are among the security features.
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Any TCP/UDP protocol can benefit from high-performance direct routing and server load balancing.
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SSL acceleration and offloading are supported, as well as SSL certificate chaining that is automatic.
Cost:
You have 30 days to try out the software. The program is available for a one-time purchase of $2,995.
16. Radware
Radware, a joint venture between Israel and the United States, has evolved into a large supplier of cybersecurity and application delivery services since 1997. For physical, digital, and cloud load balancing, Radware's Alteon family of application delivery controllers is ideal.
Radware also has one of the industry's largest maximum capability ranges, in addition to its extensive application protection. Clients can choose from three different licensing packages for each model and throughput level, giving them a lot of options. These packages cover advanced L4-L7 ADC capability, application performance, and advanced security in a variety of deployment scenarios.
Key Features:
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For high-density virtual ADC instances per device, virtualization possibilities are available.
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Help for on-demand service scaling and high-performance SSL
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For security, use the most recent encryption standards, WAF mobile, and an authentication gateway.
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Compatibility with infrastructure related to network function virtualization (NFV).
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Global server load balancing, link load balancing, and ADC service operations are automated.
Cost:
Free trial available.
17. Snapt
Snapt Nova is the vendor's ML-powered ADC, which includes features including core load balancing, web acceleration, GSLB, and WAF.
Aria, Snapt's other load-balancing tool, is a full-stack ADC that works with system architectures and independent deployments. Nova is ideal for multi-cloud architectures and users who want to build and manage hybrid infrastructure from a single location.
Key Features:
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Rich media files, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can all be cached and compressed.
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Infrastructure management with global server load balancing for the lowest cost and latency.
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DDoS attacks, botnets, and SQL injections are all protected. XSS, among other things.
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Consul, Docker, Kubernetes, and Rancher all have container support.
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AWS, DigitalOcean, GCP, Azure, Red Hat, and VMware all have cloud support.
Cost:
$400.00/year
18. VMware
The VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer for Kubernetes is designed for the multi-cloud age and includes analytics, application security, and ingress capabilities.
A REST-based API intended for a software-defined architecture allows the Avi Controller and Services Engine to be fully automated. As a worldwide IT leader, VMware provides broad integrations and assistance for surveillance, automating, DNS, public cloud infrastructure, SDN, and more.
Key Features:
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WAF, rate restriction, DDoS mitigation, and authentication are examples of security tools.
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Monitoring and analytics for application and infrastructure performance.
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Transformational leadership is used to keep track of important transactions and logs.
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Service for Amazon EKS, AKS, GKE, OpenShift, Tanzu, and Kubernetes containers in Amazon EKS, AKS, GKE, OpenShift, Tanzu, and Kubernetes.
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Benefit for GSLB, DNS, TLS 1.3, and SSL termination in load balancing.
Cost:
Free trial available.
19. ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine OPManager is a network load manager and asset management tool that may be customized. The application enables end-to-end network control and offers a flexible and beautiful user interface.
ManageEngine OPManager is a network setup and traffic management tool that is easy to use. The program is highly customizable and provides real-time and detailed network monitoring.
Key Features:
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Load balancing and internet traffic monitoring
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Management of network setup.
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Handling of firewall logs.
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Management of switch ports and IP addresses.
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Network surveillance from afar.
Cost:
The software is priced starting at $1,995 for up to 50 devices. Although there is no free trial, consumers can try out an online demo of the product.
20. Total Uptime Cloud Load Balancer
Total Uptime Cloud Load Balancer is a cloud-based load balancer that offers integrated load balancing. Load balancing can be automated using the software if certain rules are followed.
It's also ideal for disaster response and failover. Customized load balancing for web-based platforms is possible with Total Uptime Cloud Load Balancer. The programme aids cloud service providers in increasing their dependability and performance.
Key Features:
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Compatibility for multi-cloud and hybrid platforms.
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Load balancing from afar.
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Load balancing on layers 4 through 7.
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Route traffic around problems with ISPs, cloud outages, and network outages.
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SSL, HTTP, UDP, TCP, SIP, RTSP, DNS, and more protocols are supported.
Cost:
Total Uptime Cloud Load Balancer is available in four different price packages. For the next 21 days, users can trial the product for free.
21. jetNEXUS Load Balancer
The jetNEXUS Load Balancer is designed for large businesses that require extensive network traffic features. The majority of consumers complimented its user-friendly interface and powerful network traffic control capabilities.
Advanced network load control functions are supported by the jetNEXUS Load Balancer. SSL offload and a reverse proxy are both supported by the software. VMware, Microsoft HyperV, XenServer, and Sparkle Base systems are all supported.
Key Features:
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Requests are forwarded to specialized servers.
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SQL injection should be avoided at all costs.
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Detection of different languages.
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There is an IP limitation.
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Reverse proxy
Cost:
The entry-level plan, which is limited to four real servers, starts at £2995. To try the functionality, you can also get a 30-day free trial of this software.
22. HashiCorp Consul
HashiCorp Consul is a distributed service networking layer that may be used to connect, secure, and configure services on any runtime platform. With a management server that preserves a real-time list of services, their whereabouts, and their health, Consul service discovery enables service-to-service interaction in modern microservices infrastructures.
Key Features:
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Provides a dedicated networking layer to handle microservice networking challenges
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Service discovery,
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Service segmentation,
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Routing and network observability
Cost:
Free trial available.
23. Varnish
Varnish Software's sophisticated caching technology enables the world's largest content providers to provide flash-speed web and streaming services to massive audiences around the world. This system combines open-source flexibility with enterprise scalability to accelerate streaming video services, websites, and APIs, as well as enabling multinational enterprises to create custom CDNs, resulting in unrivaled content delivery performance and reliability.
Key Features:
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It's simple to deal with demand surges.
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Keep essential infrastructure safe and costs under control.
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allows you to provide excellent web experiences to all of your users, resulting in more income and lower expenditures.
Cost:
Free trial available.
Things to Consider When Choosing a Load Balancing Tool
Ownership costs in total
Establishing an accurate TCO calculation helps with budgeting, particularly when comparing the perceived worth of different solutions. Decision-makers should include in not only the upfront costs of deployment but also continuing costs such as service contracts and software updates.
Concerns about security
When you implement load balancing in your network, you can expect more traffic to be handled and more app servers to be employed in the data center. As a result, attackers will have more targets to assault. Your company's growth strategy should include security as a key component.
Availability is high (HA)
Even if a load balancing solution is chosen to minimize server utilization and increase traffic flow, IT organizations should not underestimate the value of business continuity. This can make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful firm. When selecting a load balancing system, online businesses should always prioritize HA.
Calculate the expected loads
A load balancing solution is frequently chosen by an organization to match its present traffic growth. Many people, on the other hand, either overpay on unnecessary hardware (and services) or underbuy, resulting in a scenario where they quickly exceed their selected solution. To avoid such common errors, you should figure out what is causing the increase in traffic (e.g., temporary peak, new service, merger) and prepare ahead.
Conclusion
When the amount of traffic on a webpage or application program grows, a single server can no longer support the entire burden. As a result, organizations must distribute the workload over multiple servers, and load balancer software can assist inequitably in distributing network traffic and therefore reducing failures caused by resource overload.
FAQS
What is Load Balancing?
The redirection of network traffic over a pool of servers dedicated to guaranteeing efficient management for businesses and clients, as well as service uptime, is known as load balancing. Load balancers are essential for handling increasing amounts of simultaneous client requests while also maximizing speed and capacity usage.
What Are Load Balancing Tools?
The load balancing tool makes it easier to distribute network traffic efficiently. This program collects data from many sources and spreads it around data servers. The program also functions as a reverse proxy, obtaining resources from servers and delivering them to clients as if they had come from a proxy server.
How to Choose A Load Balancing Tool?
A product must meet the following criteria to be considered for the Load Balancing tool:
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Web traffic should be monitored and resources should be distributed.
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Infrastructure responsibilities should be scaled to match traffic.
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Provide or combine services for failover and restoration.
Why Should You Use A Load Balancing Tool?
A load balancer is absolutely necessary, especially for the following reasons:
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Handling downtime is no longer an issue.
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Optimal Results
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Getting Rid of Redundancy
How Does A Load Balancing Tool Work?
Load balancers are modern web applications' Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs). On a virtual computer or a regular server, load balancing is done. It's usually used in conjunction with a Hardware Load Balancing Device (HLD) to distribute traffic among servers, resulting in a highly efficient and dependable network with high uptimes.
