Benefits of load balancing Sophos Web Gateway

Implementing a load balancer enables multiple Sophos Web Gateways to be deployed in a cluster. This provides the following key benefits:

• Performance: For additional performance simply add more Web Gateways to the cluster
• High Availability (HA): If a Web Gateway fails, service is not interrupted
• Maintenance: Web Gateways can easily be taken out of the cluster for maintenance

About Sophos Web Gateway

The Sophos Secure Web Gateway appliance makes web protection simple. It provides advanced protection from today’s sophisticated web malware with lightning performance that won’t slow users down. And you get full control and instant insights over all web activity on your network.

Why Loadbalancer.org for Sophos Web Gateway?

Loadbalancer’s intuitive Enterprise Application Delivery Controller (ADC) is designed to save time and money with a clever, not complex, WebUI. 

Easily configure, deploy, manage, and maintain our Enterprise load balancer, reducing complexity and the risk of human error. For a difference you can see in just minutes.

And with WAF and GSLB included straight out-of-the-box, there’s no hidden costs, so the prices you see on our website are fully transparent.

More on what’s possible with Loadbalancer.org.

How to load balance Sophos Web Gateway

We recommend deploying in Layer 4 DR Mode – Direct Server Return Mode. In this mode, traffic from the client to the Web Gateway passes via the load balancer, return traffic passes directly back to the client which maximizes performance.

Direct routing works by changing the destination MAC address of the incoming packet on the fly which is very fast. This mode is transparent by default meaning that the Web Gateway sees the real client IP address and not the IP address of the load balancer. Due to its speed, overall simplicity and effectiveness, Direct Routing (DR) mode with source IP persistence is our recommended method and can be used in both Explicit Proxy Mode & Transparent Routed Proxy Mode.

For more information about how to deploy Sophos Web Gateway read our deployment guide below.

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