Hi Jodi, The old Alteons are excellent :) We run F5 virtuals here (they cluster well) and a combination of virtuals + physical F5 units in AU. Have been testing KEMP Technologies as well - they have an excellent Aussie team based in SG. Cheers Darren. ----- Original Message ----- From: Jodi Thomson To: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2014 10:37 AM Subject: Re: [nznog] Load balance appliances Just been pointed out that I forgot to add what we're aiming to load balance at this stage it'll be mostly web traffic, but also looking at possibly pop/imap/smtp and streaming on port 1935 later on down the track cheers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: "Jodi Thomson" To: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Sent: Tuesday, 11 November, 2014 10:20:58 AM Subject: [nznog] Load balance appliances Hi All Just wondering what people are using these days for dedicated load balance appliances. Last ones I had anything to do with were the Alteon Ace Directors going back 7-8 yrs so am a little out of touch with whats in use today. Cheers Jodi -- Jodi Thomson Systems & Networks Big Noise Group Ltd 501 Heretaunga Street West, Hastings 4122 Cell (021) 903712 Ph: (06) 876 9661 Fax: (06) 876 9668 Skype: jodit1 Web : http://www.bignoisegroup.com _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

Hi Jodi, If it’s web traffic, safe to confirm SSL too? If so; and it’s decent volumes, ignore the base model F5s and A10s - the next step up have hardware-based SSL offload, which increases capacity markedly. We needed the A10 3030s, as running campaign sites means we can get 10,000 visitors wanting to establish SSL sessions in a very short space of time, and moving ~10Gbit/s of traffic. As others have pointed out - a more robust use case scenario would help narrow down the choices. Cheers, Karl On 11/11/2014, at 11:16 am, Bill Walker wrote:

+1 for F5's we use them here

On 2014-11-11 10:56, Darren Moss wrote:

...

 Hi Jodi, The old Alteons are excellent :) We run F5 virtuals here (they cluster well) and a combination of virtuals + physical F5 units in AU. Have been testing KEMP Technologies as well - they have an excellent Aussie team based in SG. Cheers Darren. ----- Original Message ----- FROM: Jodi Thomson TO: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz SENT: Tuesday, November 11, 2014 10:37 AM SUBJECT: Re: [nznog] Load balance appliances Just been pointed out that I forgot to add what we're aiming to load balance at this stage it'll be mostly web traffic, but also looking at possibly pop/imap/smtp and streaming on port 1935 later on down the track cheers ------------------------- FROM: "Jodi Thomson" TO: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz SENT: Tuesday, 11 November, 2014 10:20:58 AM SUBJECT: [nznog] Load balance appliances Hi All Just wondering what people are using these days for dedicated load balance appliances. Last ones I had anything to do with were the Alteon Ace Directors going back 7-8 yrs so am a little out of touch with whats in use today. Cheers Jodi -- Jodi Thomson Systems & Networks Big Noise Group Ltd 501 Heretaunga Street West, Hastings 4122 Cell (021) 903712 Ph: (06) 876 9661 Fax: (06) 876 9668 Skype: jodit1 Web : http://www.bignoisegroup.com _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog ------------------------- _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

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Hi Jodi, No doubt with <= 2Gbps of vanilla HTTP/S you could roll your own with linux, a modern Intel with AES-NI and script glue. What you get with appliances (F5 in particular, but other vendors as well) is the ability to do crazy wonderful in a predictable and simple way. An iRule to remove a null value ( : ) HTTP header created by a brain-dead browser from the dumbphone days; or timestamping the first request, first response, final packet and final browser load-time (network, server or client problem); spring to mind. With that in mind, I suggest you look at load balancers with the corner case problems you want to solve, and the vendor's solutions to them. Thanks, Jed. Sent from a dumbphone with a big screen. On 11/11/2014 12:32 pm, "Jodi Thomson" wrote:

Many thanks to all who've replied

To be honest I hadn't considered SSL until now as many of our sites are still vanilla http - however with the way things are moving we should probably plan for it

To narrow things down at this stage we're currently sitting at ~50-100meg traffic with ~2000 active sessions. However we want to plan ahead and install a decent infrastructure now, which can be easily scaled up when/if required

cheers JT

------------------------------ *From: *"Karl Hardisty" *To: *"nznog" *Sent: *Tuesday, 11 November, 2014 12:05:04 PM *Subject: *Re: [nznog] Load balance appliances

Hi Jodi,

If it’s web traffic, safe to confirm SSL too?

If so; and it’s decent volumes, ignore the base model F5s and A10s - the next step up have hardware-based SSL offload, which increases capacity markedly. We needed the A10 3030s, as running campaign sites means we can get 10,000 visitors wanting to establish SSL sessions in a very short space of time, and moving ~10Gbit/s of traffic.

As others have pointed out - a more robust use case scenario would help narrow down the choices.

Cheers,

Karl

On 11/11/2014, at 11:16 am, Bill Walker wrote:

+1 for F5's we use them here

On 2014-11-11 10:56, Darren Moss wrote:

 Hi Jodi, The old Alteons are excellent :) We run F5 virtuals here (they cluster well) and a combination of virtuals + physical F5 units in AU. Have been testing KEMP Technologies as well - they have an excellent Aussie team based in SG. Cheers Darren. ----- Original Message ----- FROM: Jodi Thomson TO: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz SENT: Tuesday, November 11, 2014 10:37 AM SUBJECT: Re: [nznog] Load balance appliances Just been pointed out that I forgot to add what we're aiming to load balance at this stage it'll be mostly web traffic, but also looking at possibly pop/imap/smtp and streaming on port 1935 later on down the track cheers ------------------------- FROM: "Jodi Thomson" TO: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz SENT: Tuesday, 11 November, 2014 10:20:58 AM SUBJECT: [nznog] Load balance appliances Hi All Just wondering what people are using these days for dedicated load balance appliances. Last ones I had anything to do with were the Alteon Ace Directors going back 7-8 yrs so am a little out of touch with whats in use today. Cheers Jodi -- Jodi Thomson Systems & Networks Big Noise Group Ltd 501 Heretaunga Street West, Hastings 4122 Cell (021) 903712 Ph: (06) 876 9661 Fax: (06) 876 9668 Skype: jodit1 Web : http://www.bignoisegroup.com _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog ------------------------- _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

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