ClusterScale, an expert in load balancing, open source, traffic management and database clustering, today announced the launch of its new virtual appliance, ClusterLoad ESX VA. ClusterLoad ESX VA offers all the functionality of its hardware counterparts, while lowering demands on the data centre, with the added environmental benefits that come with this.

ClusterLoad ESX VA manages application traffic, inspecting, transforming and routing requests as it load balances them across the application infrastructure. The product has passed VMware's stringent VA Certification program. Built on a proven operating system base, the product has additional management tools to make installation and configuration quick and easy.

Malcolm Turnbull, Founder & Technical Architect for ClusterScale, comments: “Load balancers by their nature have fairly modest hardware requirements, so a virtual platform makes a lot of sense from a technical standpoint. Thanks to virtualisation, a new method is emerging that leverages all the advantages of hardware appliances without the hardware, while at the same time using a virtual platform lowers consumption in the data centre and reduces your carbon footprint - so this is a very interesting addition to our range, which we think will prove to be very popular.”

ClusterLoad ESX VA allows you to package a fully configured and optimised software stack in a virtual server format that can be quickly deployed on top of VMware ESX. The software is simple to install on Windows, Mac and Linux and does not have any adverse effects on the host operating system, providing greater flexibility and maximum system utilisation by consolidating multiple environments into a single server, workstation, or PC. With fewer systems required for the same tasks, ClusterLoad ESX VA delivers:

• Simplified resource management increasing IT efficiency.
• Decreased disaster recovery time.
• Greater systems reliability and availability reducing corporate risk and real-time losses from downtime.
• Lower hardware acquisition costs with increased utilisation of the machines you already have.

The VA version is almost identical to the widely implemented ClusterLoad hardware appliances, ClusterLoad Pegasys and ClusterLoad Nemasys, and comes with full layer 4-7 functionality, based on 64 bit Dell hardware. As ClusterLoad ESX VA is based on the same high performance 64 bit code as the other ClusterLoad products, it runs on true 64 bit processors with a VT (Virtualisation Technology) extension and is fully optimised for VMware ESX and VMware Server.

Prices for the product start from £3,995 for a single virtual appliance, £5,595 for the pair, with generous sales margins for resellers and distributors.