There was a post today on the lb-l mailing list asking about alternatives to Cisco’s CSS. This is part of a trend I’ve noticed lately, where people who have an existing Cisco CSS installation are looking to replace that gear with new gear.
Cisco CSS users specifically have an interesting choice when it comes to choosing a new product: They can take the high road, or they can take the low road.
Feature-wise, the Cisco CSS is roughly in parity with much of the value market (KEMP, Barracuda, Coyote Point). If a site is looking to keep the same level of functionality along with saving a ton of cash, then the value market may be the way to go.
More advanced load balancers, such as F5′s BIG-IP, A10 networks, and of course, Cisco’s ACE platform, offer a lot more features than the CSS. F5 for example offers their iRule platform, which allows the load balancer to do some pretty sophisticated app-level functions (such as authentication) before ever hitting an application. They all offer a more flexible network implementation, with multiple in-bound and out-bound routes. Of course, the prices are significantly more than the value market products.
The good news is, if you’re looking to replace your Cisco CSS load balancers, there are over a dozen appropriate vendors that can replace your infrastructure while giving you similar functionality. The bad news is, there is over a dozen vendors to choose from. So don’t be afraid to get picky, and start looking into either saving a lot of money, or getting a lot more features.
