Zeus Load Balancer

A High Performance Load Balancer

Zeus ZXTM LB adds load balancing and resilience to your services, with high-performance SSL and content compression, content-aware traffic management rules and flexible health monitoring. 

Resilient Load Balancing

ZXTM LB allows you to create a fully fault-tolerant cluster of server machines by protecting against failures of back-end server nodes and frontend load balancer units.

Performance, Reliability and Scalability

ZXTM LB improves the performance, reliability and scalability of networked and web-enabled applications through a combination of SSL and WAN offload, content compression, performance and health monitoring, and automatic failover in the event of hardware or software failure. CPU-intensive processing such as SSL can be offloaded onto ZXTM LB to free up application servers do their own specialist tasks, greatly enhancing their performance and your return on investment.

ZXTM LB Operation

• ZXTM LB can be deployed in active / active clusters to protect you against hardware failures.
• Each ZXTM LB monitors the health of its paired unit, and each of the back-end servers.
• Incoming traffic is processed by ZXTM LB.
• SSL Traffic is decrypted and re-encrypted if required
• RuleBuilder rules are used to route each request to an appropriate server pool.
• The traffic is distributed across the server pool using the appropriate load balancing algorithm.

Manage your Services

ZXTM LB is deployed close to the servers it manages, making sophisticated load balancing decisions and closely monitoring the hosted services. It can balance any UDP or TCP-based protocol, including web, DNS, mail (SMTP/IMAP/POP), FTP and streaming media. The load balancing decisions maximize the responsiveness of the service and prevent any one application or server node becoming overloaded. By working seamlessly with any networked application service, ZXTM LB avoids expensive and complex integration  and enhances existing infrastructures.

Performance Improvements

ZXTM LB is able to greatly improve the performance of your application services through traffic optimization and intelligent load balancing. It allows you to redirect traffic to specific sets of servers using content-aware routing policies, to take advantage of different applications’ capabilities and to reserve capacity for premium customers. ZXTM LB supports a wide range of session persistence methods.

Easy configuration with GUI Wizards and the RuleBuilder

The GUI RuleBuilder makes it very easy to create load balancing policies to identify different types of traffic and handle them accordingly. Wizards facilitate common administration tasks, such as creating services and draining groups of servers.

Connection Draining

The unique ’connection draining’ capability lets you safely take a server out of service for maintenance, without interrupting any user connections or sessions.

Cost-Effective SSL Processing

ZXTM LB’s high performance SSL technology (over 9000 tps on dual processor hardware) assures end-to-end security of your services.

Detailed health monitoring

ZXTM LB’s health monitors check the availability and correct operation of the services on the nodes, routing traffic away from nodes that have failed. A wide range of built-in health monitors and the ability to run custom health scripts means that any server failure - including embedded error messages and failures of related services - can be detected, raised to the attention of the administrator and worked around whenever possible.

Traffic Visualization, Trend Analysis and complete system diagnosis

ZXTM LB provides you with real-time reporting and historical trend graphs of the performance of your network from a single user interface. You can plan future capacity requirements and allows rapid fault isolation, reducing the time to fix. Statistical data gathered by ZXTM LB can be retrieved using SNMP for easy integration into existing network monitoring infrastructure.

Easy and cost-effective upgrade path

ZXTM LB is available in versions suitable for small organizations through to large enterprises, restricted to 4, 12 or unlimited backend servers. It can be cost effectively scaled as your needs grow. For maximum growth, ZXTM LB can be upgraded via a license key change to the full ZXTM application delivery solution, without any downtime or interruption of service.

Key Features and Benefits

ZXTM Load Balancer is a multi-capability solution combining:

• RuleBuilder for making content-aware load balancing and routing decisions
• Server load balancing providing Layer 7 traffic management for all applications
• Application acceleration for enhanced ROI on new and existing deployments
• High performance SSL decryption and re-encryption for end-to-end security
• HTTP Content Compression for improved performance and bandwidth savings
• Active / active resilience to protect against hardware failures
• Multiple session persistence modes to ensure session integrity
• Service protection policies for hardening of vulnerable application services
• Comprehensive traffic visualization for trend analysis and fault isolation
• Server health monitoring to detect and route around problem servers
• Secure web-based UI for advanced cluster diagnosis and troubleshooting
• Unlimited content inspection of TCP and UDP protocols for greater application awareness
• SIP and RTSP fully supported at no additional cost 

Software Solution

Dramatic improvements in hardware performance and cost are often followed by dramatic increases in application traffic. Only ZXTM offers a pure software architecture that  allows you to grow the performance of your traffic management layer to keep in step with advances in commodity hardware. A pure software architecture. The core technology of ZXTM is pure software, with no dependencies on custom network processing or acceleration hardware. The software is be deployed on a standard x86 HP server for the best possible deployment flexibility. For organisations considering a software-based solution, ZXTM Load Balancing software is the most cost effective way to deploy Zeus' traffic management technology.

Fully Supported by Xtraordinary

Xtraordinary will install the load balancing software, monitor server hardware, support the software and apply updates as required. As a Zeus partner Xtraordinary can access Zeus expertise and support if required.

Customers will have administrative access to the load balancing system via a secure web interface.

About Zeus

Founded in 1995, Zeus Technology Ltd develops application traffic management software, dramatically improving network and web-enabled applications making them faster, more reliable, secure and easy to manage. Zeus powers over 1 million sites across the world and provides web infrastructure solutions to over 800 customers.

Reviews

IT Pro - September 2008
When it comes to load balancing Zeus has always had an Olympian reputation.
"The Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager Load Balancer (ZXTM LB) is an enterprise class traffic management suite for web based applications. It's available in a range of formats and sizes to suit every requirement, deployment is fast and it also extremely easy to use."

Deployment Options; Licensing & Management Pricing

Zeus ZXTM-LB software is available to lease in conjunction with our HP DL320 G5p, DL360 G5 and DL380 G5 HP dedicated servers.  Fees vary depending on the number of servers receiving traffic from the load balancer. The 4 server license could therefore support a configuration of one load balancer box and up to four application servers behind the load balancer.

In addition we also offer the full ZXTM system which has additional capabilities:

*ZXTM Full includes the following modules:  Service Level Monitoring, Bandwidth Management and Content Caching

+VAT

Important: the above fees are only for the software rental and management, in addition dedicated server fees are required for the load balancer hardware. See example below.

Example Fees for Full Hosted Load Balancer Solution 

Plus a setup fee equal to the dedicated server monthly fee.
Minimum 12 month contract
+VAT

More information...

• ZXTM LB Management