F5 Networks' Internet Traffic and Content
Management Products Help Power Dell
Computer Corporation's PowerApp
Strategy
Introduction
Increased market share, customer satisfaction, a positive company image - all are
closely related to the consistent availability of a company's web site. Concurrently, the
foundation behind these sites - the Internet infrastructure - must provide high
performance and high availability, as well as security and scalability.
Scalability is key here. Successful web sites, if they are to remain successful, must
scale to the demands of increasing traffic. Scalability, of course, can be accomplished
by adding more Dell servers into the infrastructure mix - either at the local area level or
at multiple distributed sites around the world. This has the benefit of providing
redundancy and failover protection should one site or set of servers temporarily go "off
the air".
But how can e-Business manage and control this multitude of Dell servers - with
groups of servers often literally serving a unique function? That is, a customer may
require a farm of Dell servers for myriad IP-based applications, including web (http), file
transfer (ftp), secure commerce (ssl), streaming media (UDP), DNS, mail (smtp), and
so forth, in sites distributed around the globe. The complexities involved with managing
such a vast and continually growing architecture are enormous, to say the least.
A final piece of the puzzle is required to hold it all together and manage the variances
of applications, devices, and content. These puzzle-pieces are commonly referred to
as Internet Traffic and Content Management (iTCM) products. They allow network
managers to gain control and predictability over the server farm to ensure the highest
levels of web site integrity, providing end users with access to the right information,
when they want it.
Dell and F5 Networks
Dell recently signed an agreement to license the software of F5 Networks' BIG-IP(R)
HA Controller, a high availability and intelligent load balancing product. Dell will include
BIG-IP software as the standard for a Dell-branded Internet traffic management
appliance within PowerApp, available the 3rd Quarter of 2000. This agreement also
permits Dell to resell all F5 iTCM products, including the 3-DNS(R) Distributed Traffic
Controller, the GLOBAL-SITETM Content Controller, and the SEE-ITTM Network
Manager.
In this paper, we'll discuss the market need for iTCM products (specifically the BIG-IP),
the overall benefits for Dell in adding F5 technology to their product offerings, and how
F5's entire suite of iTCM products provide a unique combination of availability and
performance for mission-critical servers and applications.
Intelligent Load Balancing and High Availability: A Brief History
Dell's e-Business customers (or potential customers) that wish to maximize their
return on investments made to capture Internet traffic and properly service Internet
users must include intelligent load balancing and high availability within the
infrastructure mix. Load balancing is a crucial component of building scalable
systems. High availability guarantees that end-users always receive the quality of
service desired. Without first determining availability, load balancing alone is of limited
value.
The first solutions that came to market to address these issues didn't solve both
problems completely. Most of these solutions provided only rudimentary load
balancing in order to address the issue of scalability and provide some degree of
increased availability. However, they were not capable of performing thorough
availability analysis before deciding where to send traffic, resulting in poor customer
service. Directing traffic to an overburdened or mis-configured server does not provide
customers with the quality of service they expect.
These devices were, in short, passive in nature and performed no active verification of
the availability of servers or content on those servers. Instead, they relied on the failure
of actual traffic to detect that a server was incapable of responding. While providing
adequate load balancing, these solutions fell short of providing the functionality
required by e-Business demanding 24x7 uptime.
Guaranteeing Availability with F5
To fully explain how BIG-IP software provides both intelligent load balancing and high
availability, it's important to understand what can cause a site to go down. There are
basically five things that can stop a site from being available:
Server failure - the server becomes unavailable due to a hardware or operating
system failure.
Software failure - Individual applications can hang up or stop responding even
though other applications are healthy.
Content failure - The server and application are working properly but are
responding to requests with "404 Object Not Found" or another response that
does not contain the right content.
Too much traffic - Servers have a well-defined response curve in relation to load.
As traffic increases, they are able to respond to requests promptly until the
server reaches a point at which it stops responding to any request. This
behavior can be viewed as binary in nature - the server is either on or it's off.
Network unavailable - If the link between the server and the outside world
becomes unavailable, the server becomes unreachable. This can be caused by
router failure, router mis-configuration or a cable cut.
F5 Solutions
The only way to guarantee that a site will always be available and provide customers
with the quality of service that they expect is to protect against the five possible points
of failure outlined above. F5 Networks' products protect sites against all of these points
of failure in the following ways:
Server failure. By using the BIG-IP solution in conjunction with 2 or more Dell
servers, traffic is automatically routed around the server that fails or becomes
unavailable. BIG-IP proactively monitors the servers to detect failures and keep
them transparent to customers visiting the site. Once a server begins
responding properly again, it is added back into the server farm.
Software failure. When an individual service stops running on a server, BIG-IP's
proactive monitoring will automatically detect the failure. Requests for that
service are sent to another server that has that particular service running
properly. For example, Dell servers are configured to support both FTP and
HTTP. If one server's FTP process stops, BIG-IP will continue to send HTTP
traffic to that server but will redirect FTP traffic to other servers. Once the FTP
process becomes available again, BIG-IP will start sending FTP traffic to it once
again.
Content failure. This occurs when a server and application are working properly
but are responding to requests with "404 Object Not Found" or another
response that does not contain the right content for end users. BIG-IP actively
queries individual servers at the application level to protect against this. If an
application is not returning the right content, BIG-IP will redirect requests to
applications that are responding properly. Once content failure is corrected,
BIG-IP will automatically detect that it is responding properly and begin sending
requests to it. This functionality allows BIG-IP to extend its protection to
backend applications such as databases.
Too much traffic. The ultimate measure of Quality of Service is how long a user
must wait for a response. BIG-IP protects against users waiting too long for a
response by setting thresholds for acceptable performance. If a server or
application is unable to respond within the configurable threshold, requests will
be redirected until response times return to below the acceptable threshold.
Network unavailable. By using F5's 3-DNS WAN high availability solution in
conjunction with BIG-IP, businesses can provide high availability and load
balancing over the wide area. End users see a single URL (www.company.com)
and are directed to the geographic site that is best suited to provide high quality
of service. This provides protection against network failures, failures related to a
single data center, Internet brown outs caused by slow interconnection points
and overloaded server farms.
F5 Networks Within Dell's PowerApp Strategy
Dell will include the BIG-IP software as the standard for the Dell-branded Internet traffic
management appliance within PowerApp.
Dell PowerApp (including BIG-IP high availability load balancing software)
within the local area network topology.
PowerApp with BIG-IP will enable network administrators to gain the control and
predictability of their Dell server farm, ensuring these servers are managed
efficiently and users receive the best possible web experience.
PowerApp with BIG-IP will provide high performance, reliability, speed, and
scalability
PowerApp with BIG-IP will maximize ROI and cost of ownership for Dell server
farm investments.
PowerApp with BIG-IP will provide e-Business with flexible and comprehensive
Dell server farm deployment options
PowerApp with BIG-IP will allow e-Business to cost-effectively manage their
Internet infrastructure
F5 Product Suite: Additional Benefits for Dell
F5 products distribute user traffic to multiple Dell servers within a site, enhancing the
complete server farm nfrastructure. They provide an unmatched combination of
availability and performance for mission-critical servers and applications. F5 delivers:
Easy Server Scalability - Successful web sites need to easily scale. More
Dell servers are required to scale, and BIG-IP provides a value-added solution
that allows e-Business to easily manage user traffic and ensure web site
reliability within their growing server farm. It intelligently directs traffic to the Dell
servers best able to handle user requests, while ensuring the applications are
returning the right content.
Manageability - As web sites grow and need to seamlessly scale with
multiple sites, the 3-DNS wide area high availability controller, along with
BIG-IP, allows e-Businesses to easily manage farms of Dell servers within
multiple distributed sites.
Content Distribution - F5's GLOBAL-SITE allows network managers to easily
distribute and replicate content to Dell server farms within multiple distributed
sites - distributing content globally to the right servers at the right time.
Forecasting and Planning - F5's SEE-IT is a network manager that provides a
graphical view into "real-time" metrics that BIG-IP and 3-DNS collect. SEE-IT
can be used to monitor traffic and provide network capacity forecasting and
planning.
Future Server Requirements - F5's SEE-IT provides forward-looking trending
and analysis to help predict future server needs. Using "what if" scenarios,
network managers can use SEE-IT to predict when additional Dell servers will
need to be added to the server farm, well in advance of traffic capacity limits
being reached.
Dell PowerApp within the wide-area network, along with the GLOBAL-SITE
content controller and the 3-DNS distributed traffic controller.
Summary
e-Businesses want their Internet infrastructure working for them 100% of the time. F5's
iTCM products enable network administrators to gain control and predictability of their
Dell server infrastructure, ensuring the highest levels of web site integrity. They
maximize ROI for the e-Business server infrastructure while enabling flexible and
comprehensive deployment options. And they ensure that e-Business web sites meet
end user expectations, protecting brand investments while ultimately increasing
revenue and market share. |
