Kemp provides a product called LoadMaster that provides a load balancer. Load Master is available in physical and virtual appliances. The virtual appliance is also called VLM (Virtual LoadMaster). LoadMaster can be deployed either in On-Prem and in Microsoft Azure. Today I wanted to show you how to deploy a VLM and the first configuration steps.

Download Virtual LoadMaster

Virtual LoadMaster can be downloaded for free from this website. A Kemp ID is required. Even though the download is free, most of the time a license has to be acquired to get support and paid features.

VLM is available for most of enterprise hypervisor available on the market. In this topic, I’ll deploy VLM on a VMware vSphere infrastructure. Select your hypervisor and download the image.

Deploy the appliance

From a VMware vCenter (here HTML5, version 6.7u1), right click on a cluster / hypervisor and Deploy OVF Template. Select the OVF and VMDK files:

Then specify a VM name and its location:

In the next window, choose the cluster / hypervisor to host computer resource:

Then just click on next.

Next choose the datastore where you want to store the VM.

Then specify the destination network:

Network: where your VLM will be reachable

Farm: For cluster usage (heartbeat etc.)

Finally click on Finish to deploy VM.

Initial configuration

First start the VM then open a remote console. The default login / password is bal / 1fourall.

Once logged, specify an IP address in CIDR format.

Next specify the gateway.

Specify the DNS servers separated by space:

Specify a HTTP proxy if required:

Select Yes

Now you can connect to Kemp through a Web Browser. Accept the license agreement.

Once you have accepted the license agreement, you have to specify your Kemp ID to select the license:

Choose to allow Call Home or not.

Specify a password for bal account.

Your VML is ready to be configured.

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Conclusion

A VLM appliance, either Hyper-V or VMware can be deployed quickly thanks to image. After the initial configuration, the Kemp LoadMaster is ready and can be configured to distribute traffics. It’s what I like with Kemp: the initial settings and advanced settings are accessible and don’t require to spend lot of time to learn and understand.

In this topic I deployed a standalone Kemp LoadMaster. Because LoadMaster distributes traffics for Exchanges, SharePoint, and other web applications, it is a highly critical component. Therefore, most of the time Kemp is deployed in cluster to ensure high availability. In a next topic, I’ll show you how to deploy an Active-Passive cluster and how-to backup restore the configuration.

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