A10 Thunder ADC vs AWS Elastic Load Balancing

A10 Thunder ADC is an application delivery controller and advanced load balancer for distributing workloads, maintaining server availability, protecting applications, and accelerating content delivery. It balances traffic at Layers 4–7, offers customizable service health checks, and supports aFleX scripting. Global Server Load Balancing can direct traffic across data centers and clouds for continuity and localized responses. Deployment options include hardware, virtual appliances, cloud, bare metal, and containers. Performance capabilities include caching, TCP optimization, and TLS/SSL offloading; security features include single sign-on, CAPTCHA, web and DNS firewalls, and DDoS protection. The REST-based aXAPI interface is described as providing 100% API coverage. Named integrations include Terraform and Ansible for CI/CD, Kubernetes service discovery through TKC or HashiCorp NIA with Consul, and Prometheus/Grafana monitoring. Pricing is on request. A 30-day trial license is listed for vThunder and public cloud offerings; container trial details require contacting A10 Sales. The container edition lists OpenShift 4.16 and minimum requirements of 4 vCPU and 16 GB memory.

AWS Elastic Load Balancing distributes incoming application traffic across targets and virtual appliances in one or more Availability Zones. It offers Application, Network, Gateway, and Classic Load Balancers, scales request handling with traffic, and runs configurable health checks on targets. Application Load Balancers support HTTP header-based routing, redirects, fixed responses, HTTP/2, and gRPC. Network Load Balancers support static Elastic IP addresses and AWS PrivateLink for TCP and TLS listeners. The service also supports SSL/TLS termination, certificate management, and client certificate authentication. CloudWatch metrics and logging are available for all four types. A single load balancer can distribute traffic across AWS and on-premises resources. Kubernetes support includes direct-to-pod routing for Application Load Balancers and private EKS clusters for Application and Network Load Balancers. AWS recommends different types for HTTP, transport protocols, third-party virtual appliances, and EC2-Classic applications. Usage charges vary by region; data transfer and public IPv4 address charges may be additional. New AWS customers receive a free tier for six months after account creation, with usage limits and up to $200 in credits.