KEMP Technologies' LoadMaster DR, available as a hardware or appliance or software download, aims to insure that DMB customers have reliable access to the business's servers. And introductory price in the appliance aims to insure that SMBs can afford it.For non-IT small and midsized businesses, KEMP Technologies co-founder and vice president of product management Peter Melerud feels, load balancing and traffic management may be obscure technical topics, particularly as hosting services and multiple beyond-the-perimeter data centers has grown.

"But all it takes is for a customer request to be unable to reach the business because of a server failure, and the importance of the issue becomes clear, whatever the nature of the business is."

KEMP's recently released LoadMaster DR is designed to overcome such problems, Melerud says.

"There are a number of chains that can break between the customer and the server," he says. "The LoadMaster doesn't worry about which one is broken or why -- that's addressed by the service provider of the business's IT department -- but is dedicated to directing customer requests to other available servers and data centers. The point is to keep the business operational and maintain the customers' access while the problem is repaired."

High availability and traffic management is a business continuity issue, Melerud points out, as well as a technical one.

While KEMP has found success marketing its load balancers to cloud and hosting providers, which in turn provide the traffic management and monitoring as a service, the company is currently undertaking a more direct approach to the SMB marketplace.

As part of that approach, the $2,990 hardware version of the LoadMaster DR, is being offered at an introductory price of $1,590, with features that include multi-site load balancing and the ability to handle up to 15,000 DNS queries per second, Web User Interface for remote administration and a console port for local administration.

The LoadMaster DR is also offered as a virtual load balancer, available for VMWare and HyperV, and priced at $1,990.

Pricing for both versions includes one year of service and support.

An online demo of the LoadMaster is accessible here (registration required).