NFWare Virtual
Load Balancer

The industry's fastest software Load Balancer designed for high-loaded deployments

- Software-based solution that runs on standard x86 servers
- High-Performance, up to 40M CPS
- Designed for virtual and cloud environments

Features Set

Case Study

NFWare Virtual Load Balancer is a next-gen software load balancer that significantly decreases network loads and prevents harmful DDoS-attacks. It demonstrates high performance while running on standard x86 servers. The speed ensures optimal hardware utilization, critical for high-load deployments. The NFWare Load Balancer could be easily integrated into any virtual and cloud infrastructure, or run as bare-metal.

240 Gbps

240 Gbps per VM - the fastest performance
among all existing solutions

40M CPS

40M CPS per VM, capable of being used for the most high-loaded deployments

>10x

10-20 times decrease in hardware utilization due to high-performance nature

Balance traffic faster on less hardware

A new way to build efficient networks in response to exponential traffic growth

Starting from scratch, we redefined the architecture for NFWare solution to design a high-performance software product that can handle the world's busiest websites.

Meet the fastest software network load balancer that provides reliable and sophisticated load balancing capabilities, can process a huge amount of traffic, and enables an ultimate economy due to the software's nature.

Performance and Scalability

NFWare Virtual Load Balancer demonstrates the worlds' highest performance: 40M CPS per one virtual machine. It provides linear scalability for more than 20 vCPU.

DDoS-Protection and Security

Achieve security protection with the use of multiple techniques such as SYN cookie, advanced connection live-time control, and drop entry mechanisms.

Long-Term Technical Support

Unlike software-based open source load balancers, NFWare provides long-term technical support according to industry standard's SLAs.

IPVS
compatible

The solution supports IPVSADM - Linux Virtual Server administration. Replace IPVS with NFWare with no integration issues.

“

We decided to deploy the NFWare product for load balancing. This made possible to increase the system's efficiency in dozens of times"

— Deputy CTO of OK.ru social network, Mail.Ru Group

See how it works

Load Balancing

The NFWare Load Balancer operates by routing network traffic through clustered front-end servers that distribute the traffic to a collection of back-end servers, thereby balancing the load on each server. It provides an even load on each server, delivering faster server responses and lower latency.

The solution removes the load from the servers and allows businesses to significantly increase their network speed.

Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol, VRRP

Reference Topology

The NFWare virtual Load Balancer functions as a cluster in active-active mode with a synchronization of sessions.

Virtual Load Balancer instances communicate through the Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) to provide redundancy so that a single failure does not affect the operation. If virtual Load Balancer instance fails, another instance begins to process its traffic seamlessly.

Load Balancing Methods, Round Robin, Weighted Round Robin

Balancing Methods 1-2/4

Round Robin
With this method, all served backend servers are logically organized into a circular queue. Every new connection is directed to the next server in the circle providing an even distribution of connections to the servers.

Weighted Round Robin
This method adds the ability to assign a "weight" to specific servers based on their capabilities as compared to other servers. This algorithm considers a server's "weight" when making balancing decisions. A server with a weight of X for example will accept X times more connections than a server with a weight of one.

Balancing Methods 3-4/4

Least Connections
The lifetime of each connection can be vastly different. Some connections close quickly while others may linger. The Least Connections algorithm of load balancing considers the number of active connections served by each backend server. New connections are directed to the server with the least number of connections served.

Weighted Least Connections
Weighted Least Connections is the same as Least Connections with the added ability to assign a weight to specific servers based on their capabilities as compared to other servers. This algorithm selects the server with the least number of connections served divided by its assigned weight.

DDoS mitigation

NFWare Load Balancer has several methods to protect application servers from DDoS attacks, including SYN cookies, advanced connection live-time control, and drop-entry mechanisms that allow the Load Balancer to drop older sessions during times of high volume connection requests (such as DDoS attacks).

SYN cookies are a method to repel SYN flood attacks. These attacks are carried out by sending thousands of TCP SYN packets over a very small period of time to a single server, resulting in overload of uplink bandwidth due to excessive TCP/IP sessions.