Can You Mismatch Hardware and Virtual Appliances for High Availability?

When might you want to do this?

What are your options if you want high availability but can’t afford a conventional load balancing solution?

Could you have a dedicated hardware load balancer for all of your load balancing needs, and then a separate virtual appliance to temporarily shoulder the load should you ever have downtime? The short answer is yes.

At the end of the day, we all know downtime can be costly, so does the end justify the means? We might know we need to migrate to virtual but not have the money in the bank right now to achieve this. So what do you do if you want to have a virtual machine as a backup because you’re worried your hardware is getting old? Flexibility will be critical for you to ensure you have the right appliance when you need it.

The good news is that with our Freedom License, you can mismatch hardware and virtual as a temporary fix, and then move to virtual for free when you’re ready to retire your hardware!

So, how exactly could you use one of our hardware appliances with a virtual appliance to achieve high availability?