GEO offers the ability to move past the single data center, allowing for multi data center High Availability (HA). Even when a primary site is down, traffic is directed to the disaster recovery site. Also included in GEO is the ability to ensure clients connect to their fastest performing and geographically closest data center.

The GEO product is available in two forms:

  • A standalone GEO product
  • A Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) Feature Pack that is part of the Progress Kemp load balancer (LoadMaster) product
Note: Throughout this document, when we refer to the “GEO LoadMaster” we are referring to either the GEO LoadMaster or the LoadMaster with the GSLB Feature Pack enabled.

GEO has the same management interfaces as the LoadMaster appliances, including all the foundation technology such as syslog logging, email notifications, interface bonding, and Gigabit support. GEO provides advanced application health checking, to ensure that unavailable services or data centers are not visible to clients. Health checking occurs at the site level, allowing for flexible decision making on when traffic should be diverted per Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN).

GEO can be deployed in a distributed (active/active) high availability configuration, with multiple GEO LoadMasters securely synchronizing information. Introducing GEO into existing Authoritative Domain Name Services (DNS) requires minimal integration work and risk, allowing you to fully leverage the existing DNS investment.

GEO securely and seamlessly integrates with core LoadMaster functionality to offer Real Server Load balancing, in which GEO uses local data center metrics provided by the LoadMaster, allowing clients to connect to the most available target. This is supported in both the GSLB feature pack and the standalone GEO product.

GEO handles A (IPv4) and AAAA (IPv6) records. As of LoadMaster firmware version 7.2.53, a new Additional Records section has been added to configure records for a specific FQDN. You can add, modify, or delete additional TXT, CNAME, and MX records to/from an FQDN.