Kemp LoadMaster is the undisputed King of Email Load Balancing
Updated April 13, 2021
Kemp LoadMaster is the undisputed King of Email Load Balancing
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Kemp LoadMaster
Our Kemp LoadMasters are being used as a High Availability Active/Passive Clustered Pair to load balance all On-Premises inbound SMTP traffic and email access across multiple protocols (ActiveSync, Webmail, etc.).
It's used for the entire organization's email.
It addresses the business problems of:
1. Having a single point of failure for email ingress.
2. Providing a simple, robust load balancing and mail routing solution.
3. Guarantees performance as a dedicated load balancer separate from shared load balancer equipment used for other business segments like web and application.
-UPDATED APRIL 2021-
After successfully upgrading from LM2400s to X3s and greatly leveraging Kemp Support throughout the process, with unique unforeseen issues that arose, Kemp Support very aggressively deployed their Support Experts to walk us through the cutover on multiple attempts until we were successful.
It's used for the entire organization's email.
It addresses the business problems of:
1. Having a single point of failure for email ingress.
2. Providing a simple, robust load balancing and mail routing solution.
3. Guarantees performance as a dedicated load balancer separate from shared load balancer equipment used for other business segments like web and application.
-UPDATED APRIL 2021-
After successfully upgrading from LM2400s to X3s and greatly leveraging Kemp Support throughout the process, with unique unforeseen issues that arose, Kemp Support very aggressively deployed their Support Experts to walk us through the cutover on multiple attempts until we were successful.
Pros
- Provisioning of Virtual Services to Real IP'ed internal systems.
- Detailed logging facilitating rapid and easy Root Cause Analysis of issues.
- Extensive Online community resources and excellent customer support for issues.
- Simple, effective and intuitive UI design.
- Effortless manual failover/failback and upgrading procedures.
- Provided meticulously detailed upgrade-in-place documentation for transitioning to new hardware
- Pursued Root Cause possibilities of unforeseen upgrade issue/misconfiguration scenarios
Cons
- Ability to 'clone' existing Virtual Services for rapid deployment of similar ones.
- A better API for ease of automation.
- Simplification of Certificate management.
- Better explanations of Kemp implementations of industry standard protocols like VRRP (or CARP)
- More control over device factory reset configuration and forcibly breaking HA pairs at boot time
- It has drastically reduced time spent on mail chasing/delivery delay investigations.
- It has greatly improved and modernized the mail flow evolution of our On Premise Email.
- It has given the Infrastructure Team great flexibility and control over implementing different mail routing topologies for various segments of our business, particularly with Customer Communications and IT Development.
- It has provided a robust, simpler & more affordable alternative to Netscaler or F5 for HA Load Balancing of critical internal & external business services
- Citrix ADC (formerly NetScaler ADC)
Although we use the two LBs in vastly different roles, the Kemp's architecture and interfaces are generally much easier and intuitive than the Netscaler's. Hardware/sw/fw upgrades and hardware migrations of the Kemps are much easier and straightforward. The Netscaler does excel in its online community and market share, but the Kemp's loyal following and devoted support staff make for a great customer experience.
Do you think Kemp LoadMaster delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Kemp LoadMaster's feature set?
Yes
Did Kemp LoadMaster live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Kemp LoadMaster go as expected?
No
Would you buy Kemp LoadMaster again?
Yes
Configuring Kemp LoadMaster
Don't hesitate to open a proactive Support Case with them, they will provide you with updated documentation and advise on any gotchas in your environment.
Research KEMP's implementation for VRRP (CARP) if you are using HA, in respect to your own upstream core or edge switch vendors for known issues (we discovered one during our project!)
Research KEMP's implementation for VRRP (CARP) if you are using HA, in respect to your own upstream core or edge switch vendors for known issues (we discovered one during our project!)
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
No - we have not done any custom code
Kemp LoadMaster Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Quick Initial Response | Support doesn't seem to care |
Yes
Because our company depends on the LoadMaster as critical infrastructure hardware.
The previous time I contacted support their Tech helped identify (via Verbos logs and packet captures) the downstream issue (invalid certificate path) with our own different equipment, and went so far as to help remediate that issue and test afterward to insure our equipment was all working as expected. He followed-up with a recap of the issue and gave steps to avoid the issue from recurring.
Using Kemp LoadMaster
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Hardware upgrade/Upgrade-in-Place preserving configs and certificates
- VIP additions and monitoring
- Out-of-box Setup
- HA configuration in an Upgrade-in-Place scenario
- Ability to change eth interface settings from console after HA configs applied
Comments
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