Load balancing (Application Delivery Controller), security, and traffic optimization are key to application performance and functionality. Without these features, application services would not function as intended, or would lack the necessary scalability and/or performance. During testing and development, free and open-source components, including load balancers, are often used to conduct tests without requiring purchases and eliminating the paperwork associated with service contracts.
However, many of these solutions have limitations that make it very difficult or impossible to replicate the interactions that would appear in a complete production infrastructure, once the development team creates the repetitive link for the service or application to perform operations in the typical DevOps model.
KEMP's new Free LoadMaster eliminates this problem in the "application delivery" part of the puzzle by providing all the functionality included in the commercial version of the product at no extra cost. Therefore, there's no longer a need to choose between cost and functionality in analysis and development environments, whether in public or private cloud ecosystems such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or VMware vCloud Air.
While many free and open-source load balancers have weak coupling between the underlying operating system and the load balancer itself, KEMP's free LoadMaster is a optimized and hardened virtual appliance. This minimizes the need for host configuration and alleviates concerns about ensuring the entire solution is properly configured for attack protection. Because application architecture and usage protocols can vary widely, a load balancer with diverse capabilities is also important during the mid-development stage.
Sometimes, open-source load balancers, and even low-end commercial ones, lack protocol support beyond HTTP/HTTPS and don't have all the capabilities associated with modern load balancers. Free LoadMaster includes all the key functionalities expected of a load balancer, enabling testing and validation of application interactions, including global site load balancing via KEMP's GSLB functionality, single sign-on (SSO) with the Edge Security Pack (an alternative to TMG and reverse proxy), and verification of custom WAF standards before deployment to production with the KEMP Application Firewall Pack (AFP) at no cost.
KEMP's well-documented REST API (LMAPI) provides access to approximately 95% of the product's full functionality for workflow automation and writing. PowerShell and Java APIs offer flexibility in the language used to exemplify, implement, and integrate Free LoadMaster into development and testing workflows. Community-focused support provides a space for collaboration and innovation in new use cases and methodologies through the KEMP Help Center.
