Buyer's Guide
From LB Wiki
It's important to remember that there are, in fact, two very distinctive markets for load balancers. The first, the Enterprise Market, has been around since load balancing began. Even when they offered basic functionality, they were costly enough that only major installations could afford them. This money facilitated a high rate of innovation, and as a result the Enterprise market products are the height of technology and performance.
- High performance (multi-Gigs)
- High feature set (such as control languages and the ability to dynamically manipulate HTTP streams)
- Enterprise-grade vendor (support, training, professional services, large consultant community)
The second market is relatively new. It evolved out of the need for SMB (small and medium sized businesses) to utilize some of the same features the Enterprise market has long enjoyed. Basic Layer 4 load balancing, cookie persistence, SSL termination and acceleration, are some more of the basic load balancer functions that are readily used by the SMB. They typically do not have the immediate need to do multi-Gig throughput, utilize control languages, nor do they require an extended support system.
With that in mind, the new Buyer's Guide is divided into two sections:
