A10 Thunder ADC vs OpenELB
A10 Thunder ADC
a10networks.comOpenELB
openelb.ioSide by side
| Figure | A10 Thunder ADC | OpenELB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Load Balancing Software | 8.7 (#2) | 6.9 (#16) |
| Integrations | The product page names Terraform and Ansible for CI/CD integration, TKC and HashiCorp NIA with Consul for Kubernetes service discovery, and Prometheus/Grafana for monitoring. | The project lists installation guides for Kubernetes, K3s and KubeSphere. |
| Purpose | Thunder ADC is an application delivery controller and Layer 4–7 load balancer designed to protect critical applications, maintain server availability, and accelerate content delivery. | OpenELB exposes Kubernetes LoadBalancer services to external access in bare-metal, edge, and virtualization environments. |
| Support | A10 says its technical assistance center uses follow-the-sun support, and customers with a valid Thunder or AX Series support contract can download current software releases and receive product updates. | The project directs users to the KubeSphere Slack channel for support and discussion. |
Plans
In their own words
A10 Thunder ADC
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.
OpenELB
OpenELB exposes Kubernetes LoadBalancer services externally in bare-metal, edge, and virtualization environments. It assigns service addresses from Eip-managed IP pools and supports BGP, Layer 2, and VIP load-balancing modes. BGP mode uses GoBGP to publish routes to peer routers and supports ECMP, while BgpConf and BgpPeer custom resources configure BGP properties. Layer 2 mode requires infrastructure that permits anonymous ARP/NDP packets. VIP mode uses VRRP for high availability. OpenELB can be installed with kubectl manifests or Helm 3 in Kubernetes 1.15 or later, and guides are listed for Kubernetes, K3s, and KubeSphere. The project currently supports IPv4 only and is not a managed service. Layer 2 and VIP modes forward through one active node, so failover can briefly interrupt services and bandwidth is limited by that node. BGP requires a router supporting BGP and ECMP. OpenELB uses Apache License 2.0.