[ednog] load balancer experiences?

[Jim Gogan]

We're looking here at moving away from an existing Nortel Alteon load 
balancer (content switch, whatever you want to call it) implementation 
serving various web systems and towards a larger-scale enterprise scale 
system and I was curious as to experiences and recommendations from 
other large universities.

At the present time, we're looking at F5 and Juniper, and wanted to hear 
from others utilizing these products for enterprise load balancing. 
Information on any problems, caveats, recommendations, suggestions and 
advice would be greatly appreciated, as well as success with product 
lines other than those two.  Information as to the sizing of your 
current implementation would be valuable.

Feedback as to support costs and FTEs associated with this service on 
your campus would also be greatly appreciated.   Thanks in advance!


Jim Gogan (gogan at email.unc.edu)
Director, ITS Telecommunications / Networking
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill