February 09, 2010, 9:51 PM — Most small businesses typically outsource their Web and e-commerce hosting needs to a dedicated hosting operation rather than host it on-site, because it's cheaper and more reliable than hiring someone full-time to do it themselves. However, small businesses that instead choose to bring their own Web servers, or have other application and terminal servers prone to overloading, might want to look at a dedicated load-balancing appliance that can help them deal with more traffic while minimizing service slowdown and outages. Enter the LoadMaster 2000, a $1590 load balancer by KEMP Technologies aimed at SMBs with overworked servers.
The LoadMaster 2000 is essentially a scaled-down version of KEMP Technologies' higher-end load balancers, which offer higher data rates (300mbps vs. 1.5Gbps) for heavier loads and larger networks--and start at about $6,000.
However, the LoadMaster 2000 retains many of the features found in the higher-end models, like integrated SSL acceleration (which offloads the processor-intensive task of decrypting Secure Socket Layer session keys from the servers), HTTP caching and compression (which allows the load balancer to compress and deliver some data without having to deliver it from the Web server), IPS security functions, Layer 7 content switching (which lets you prioritize what kinds of data get sent out first--images, apps, video, etc.), and more.
This way, people who visit your business's Web site won't have to worry about their sessions being dropped, services being interrupted, or, most importantly, their transactions not going through.
The LoadMaster 2000 is configurable via a Web GUI and consumes fairly little power.. What's more, the $1590 price tag includes a year of service and support via phone and e-mail as well as a hardware replacement warranty.
For more information, check out the LoadMaster 2000 product page.
