Thoughts on loadbalancers

[spidey07]

This thing is a real bear. Powerful as all get out can do just about whatever you want.

Problem is it's complicated as all get out, I'm actually using the GUI on it instead of the CLI. *shudder*.

Anybody else mess with them? The concept of local and global load balancing is nothing new, but the interface on this thing could use some work.

 

[Jamsan]

Originally posted by: spidey07
This thing is a real bear. Powerful as all get out can do just about whatever you want.

Problem is it's complicated as all get out, I'm actually using the GUI on it instead of the CLI. *shudder*.

Anybody else mess with them? The concept of local and global load balancing is nothing new, but the interface on this thing could use some work.

We'll be looking at this before we officially purchase our F5 unit. Hopefully its better than the old CCS stuff.

 

[spidey07]

F5 vs. the ACE would be a good comparison.

To put it lightly the CSS was lightyears ahead of the ACE and BigIP was barely behind CSS.

I'm only talking management and not what they can do, hardware wise the ACE is incredible. Management/administration, do not want.

 

[Cooky]

We initially had F5 BigIP's.
They used to crash once every month, so we migrated to CSM's.
We then migrated from CSM's to ACE's. (still migrating)

Performance and features aside...in terms of management, I like the CSM the most.
F5 was all GUI driven, so if you needed to see something real quick, it's a pain.
CSM's show commands give you a nicer layout of useful information than that of ACE.
I'm still looking for the equivalence of "show mod csm n vserver" on the ACE.

We have the ANM, which supposedly allows you to manage the ACE modules easily via GUI.
Haven't given that a try though...we're having problem w/ the RHEL server that hosts the software.

 

[spidey07]

I'm finding it next to impossible to get any real information out of the ACE even with the CLI.