Load Balancers Comparisons: F5 Vs KEMP Vs Citrix

Today I am going to discuss about the comparison between the load balancers which are generally best with their features and also Gartner rated them high in their reports. Load Balancers are the basic and the important need of the Enterprise network now a days. Some of the them used as Local and some of them used as Global Load Balancers. 

Before we talk about Load balancers,  I would like to tell you guys that we have our own youtube channel for various network videos that can further help you guys to study further. I will going to add many more videos soon on the channel, Please subscribe to the channel for the study network related videos

Subscribe us on Youtube: http://y2u.be/0c4lMYVp9go

As per the Gartner report, F5 BIG-IP leads the magic quadrant in leaders with Citrix and KEMP is also gaining the speed in Challengers. Although we have many more vendors in the market of load balancers like Radware, A10 Networks, Brocade, Barracuda Networks, Cisco and Array Networks. F5 is leading the market with the best features and capable of doing a lot of best performance and security features as well. I will discuss the comparison at the end with the features, capabilities, Performance and Security.

So i guess the query is now, what is Load Balancers are ?
Well Load balancers are the devices which actually distributes your application or Network traffic across the various servers depends upon the availability across the globe for a single server provider.
Which means, If I am a service Provider and I hosted 4 servers for a specific application in USA, UK, Singapore and India, the traffic will be distributed across all these 4 servers based upon the load of the server, so it can be a reverse proxy for your request to land your request onto the best available server which can be there at US or can be at UK or Singapore and India accordingly.

Fig 1.1- F5 Load Balancers Primary and Standby

F5 Networks LTM 10000
Applications drive innovation and profitability, allowing your business to leverage trends such as cloud computing, mobility, and software-defined networks (SDN). Your IT department depends on your network infrastructure to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) helps you deliver your applications to your users, in a reliable, secure, and optimised way. You get the extensibility and flexibility of an intelligent services framework with the programmability you need to manage your physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. With BIG-IP LTM, you have the power to simplify, automate, and customise applications faster and more predictably.

Fig 1.2 F5 LTM load Balancers
  • While using F5 LTM 1000 ensure that your customers and users have access to the applications they need - whenever they need them.
  • You can Control your applications via connection and traffic to configuration and management with F5's unique TMOS operating system, which includes native protocol support, an open-management API, and an event-driven scripting language.
  • You can realise operational consistency and comply with business needs across physical, virtual, and cloud environments with deployment flexibility and scalability.
  • With F5 LTM 1000, user-defined F5 iApps templates make it easy to deploy, manage, and get complete visibility into your applications.
  • You can also protect the apps that run your business with industry-leading SSL performance and visibility.
Feature Supports
There are some of the features which F5 LTM 1000 supports and these features are :-
Network monitoring, firewall protection, NAT+ support, IPv6 support, DDos attack prevention, Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) support, Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) support, Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP) support, F5 iRules, Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP) support, Quality of Service (QoS), SSL acceleration, Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), tagged VLAN, F5 iApps, F5 ScaleN, F5 iControl.

Performance
  • Layer 7 throughput: 1000000 requests per second 
  • Layer 4 throughput: 500000 connections per second 
  • Layer 7 throughput: 40 Gbps 
  • Layer 4 throughput: 80 Gbps 
  • SSL encryption performance: 21000 transactions per second 
  • SSL bulk throughput: 22 Gbps 
  • SYN/DDoS protection: 40000000 cookies per second 
  • Software compression: 12 Gbps
KEMP-LM-8020
With the use of KEMP LM-8020 you can have the capacity and features to support high traffic application requirements in FIPS-compliant infrastructures. High performance load balancing and content switching combined with web application firewall protection, intrusion prevention and endpoint authentication ensures that published applications are highly available and protected from malicious threats. 

Multimode clustering capabilities support a scale out strategy and investment protection. An integrated FIPS 140-2 L2 Validated HSM combined with KEMP’s LoadMaster Operating system.

Fig 1.3- KEMP Load Balancers


Feature Supports
Server Load Balancing (SLB) for TCP/UDP based protocols; TLS (SSL) Offload; Layer 7 Content Switching; Advanced application transparent caching for HTTP/HTTPS; Optimised compression of static and dynamic HTTP/HTTPS Content; SNORT-rule compatible Layer 7 intrusion prevention system (IPS); Up to 1000 Virtual and 1000 Real Servers; IPv6 support for addressing and features; IPv6 - IPv4 bidirectional conversion; NAT-based forwarding; Support for Direct Server Return (DSR) configurations; Session reconnection for Microsoft remote desktop services (RDS); Configurable S-NAT support; VLAN Trunking (802.1Q); Link interface bonding (802.3ad); Edge Security Pack (Pre-Auth& SSO); CAC/PIV – Kerberos Constrained Delegation support.

Citrix MPX-11530
The same nCore architecture and NetScaler feature set relied on by massive web sites is also available for small to mid-size organizations with MPX models handling up to 1 Gbps of overall performance. Additional midrange models enable organizations to scale via Pay-As-You-Grow licensing from 2 Gbps to 6 Gbps to support growth in online traffic.

Running on the MPX platform, the NetScaler AppFirewall inspects all bi-directional traffic and leverages a hybrid security model (positive and negative) to protect applications from all types of threats, including cross-site scripting and SQL injection.

Fig 1.4- Citrix Netscaler Load Balancers

The performance and scalability of NetScaler MPX is ideally suited to support the "flex" tier, providing a multitude of services for all applications, including global server load balancing, SSL termination and distributed denial of service (Dos) protection.

Feature Supports
Firewall protection, NAT support, layer 7 switching, LDAP support, OCSP support, VLAN support, DoS attack prevention, content filtering, packet filtering, port mirroring, manageable, IPv6 support, High Availability, surge protection, Virtual Route Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) support, Access Control List (ACL) support, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) support, RADIUS support, SSH support, layer 4 load balancing, SSL acceleration, DNS proxy, front to back airflow, Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP), IPv4 support, Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB), Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), IPv6-to-IPv4 gateway, NetFlow, DNS authoritative, Management Information Base (MIB), IPFIX

Now i can compare all these model in the below mentioned table for you. Please let me know if you have any queries.

Fig 1.5- Comparison- F5, Citrix and KEMP Load Balancers