AWS LOAD BALANCER ALTERNATIVE

What is AWS Load Balancer

The AWS Load Balancer, commonly referred to as Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), is a fully managed service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) to distribute incoming application or network traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, or IP addresses. AWS Load Balancer operates at both Layer 4 (Transport) and Layer 7 (Application), depending on the specific type of ELB deployed: Application Load Balancer (ALB), Network Load Balancer (NLB), or Gateway Load Balancer (GLB). ALB is designed for HTTP/HTTPS traffic with advanced routing capabilities, NLB focuses on high-performance TCP/UDP traffic, and GLB provides third-party virtual appliances for traffic inspection and security. These services ensure fault tolerance, scalability, and optimized performance for modern applications hosted on AWS.

One of the standout features of the AWS Load Balancer is its seamless integration with the AWS ecosystem, enabling users to automatically scale their infrastructure to handle variable traffic loads. ELB also offers robust security features, including SSL/TLS termination, integration with AWS Certificate Manager, and support for AWS WAF to protect against web application vulnerabilities. With built-in health checks, the AWS Load Balancer continuously monitors backend targets and redirects traffic to healthy instances, ensuring high availability. Its pay-as-you-go pricing model makes ELB a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes, providing flexibility, reliability, and ease of management for cloud-native and hybrid architectures.

What is RELIANOID Load Balancer

RELIANOID Load Balancer is a modern, open-source Application Delivery Controller (ADC) that provides a cost-effective and flexible alternative to proprietary solutions like the AWS Load Balancer (ELB). While ELB is fully integrated into the AWS ecosystem, making it an ideal choice for AWS-hosted workloads, RELIANOID offers greater adaptability by supporting deployments on a wide range of environments, including on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud infrastructures. Unlike ELB, which incurs ongoing costs based on usage and traffic volume, RELIANOID’s open-source nature eliminates licensing fees, offering significant savings, particularly for organizations managing high-traffic applications or operating outside the AWS cloud.

A key advantage of the RELIANOID Load Balancer over AWS Load Balancer is its customizability and independence. RELIANOID allows administrators to fine-tune configurations and integrate with third-party tools and platforms, offering more control over traffic management and application delivery. Additionally, RELIANOID supports advanced load-balancing features such as complex health checks, persistence mechanisms, and modern protocols without being tied to a specific cloud provider. While ELB excels in auto-scaling and seamless integration within AWS, it lacks the flexibility to extend to non-AWS environments. For organizations seeking a high-performance, budget-friendly solution with broader deployment capabilities and the freedom to tailor features, RELIANOID stands out as a superior choice.

Amazon Web Services Strengths

The vendor has deeply integrated its suite of ADC services with AWS cloud offerings.

It has cultivated a substantial community of developers who possess a high level of familiarity with its API and comprehensive range of functionalities.

It holds the title of being the market’s fastest-growing major vendor.

Has demonstrated a progressively growing commitment to the development and delivery of enterprise-oriented features.

RELIANOID’s Strengths

Expert and skilled R&D professionals accomplished in Zevenet and Zen Load Balancer, departing from an Open Source technology with no vendor lock-in and broad platforms integration (hardware, virtual, bare metal and cloud), bringing security, performance and readiness.

Cost-effective solutions with no constraints on products and services, tailored to the needs of midsize companies as well as large enterprises.

Protocol Versatility adapting and managing diverse network environments and protocols (UDP, TCP, HTTP/S, HTTP/2 SCTP, SIP, T/FTP).

High Performance Reverse Proxy managing over 140K concurrent users at Layer 7, while at Layer 4, it efficiently handles more than 10 million concurrent users, all with just 2 dedicated cores.

High Availability witha automatic real time stateful cluster replication.

Security and WAF improved as it incorporates an Intrusion Prevention and Detection System (IPDS) and also an integrated Web Application Firewall (WAF). It actively safeguards web applications against specific threats while providing real-time IP blacklisting, Denial of Service (DoS) protection, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and support for black and whitelisting.

User-friendly interface designed for both DevOps and SRE professionals, ensuring ease of use in managing and configuring systems.

Automation thanks to its fully programmable and robust REST+JSON API.

Amazon Web Services’s Weaknesses

Not capable of providing complete ADC solutions for workloads that are not hosted within the AWS cloud.

Falls short in terms of several critical Level 7 enterprise features when compared to other ADC vendors.

In situations involving fluctuating usage and high traffic demands, customers may find it necessary to proactively contact AWS to ensure the vendor can prewarm the system.

RELIANOID’s Weaknesses

Emerging brand, challenging the ADC and Load Balancing market, operating as an open-source company.

Still in the process of building a significant presence. It must expand its partnership network more extensively.