Today at VMworld 2010, F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV), a global leader in application delivery networking (ADN), announced the demonstration of a new solution that enables enterprises to more easily augment the capacity of their data centres with external cloud resources.
This use case, sometimes referred to as “cloudbursting”, has traditionally required time-consuming manual monitoring and intervention.
Developed in collaboration with VMware, the solution works closely with VMware vCloud Director and the VMware vCloud API to monitor application response times and apply business policies that can augment local resources with on-demand cloud-based resources when predetermined thresholds are met. This ensures organisations can meet their service level agreements (SLAs) despite unpredictable application loads, and with a minimum of capital investment.
The solution uses F5's advanced ADN technologies, including BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM), and BIG-IP's unique iSessions WAN optimisation capability. These products have been tightly integrated with VMware vCloud Director via the F5 iControl and VMware vCloud APIs. To seamlessly expand application capacity, the solution also relies on GemStone SQLFabric for distributed synchronisation of database objects between the sites. To see a demonstration of this solution, come to F5's booth (#1131) at VMworld 2010.
“This solution underscores the value of F5 as a strategic point of control at the intersection of the data centre and the cloud,” said Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5 Networks. “Organisations want to take advantage of the cloud to enhance application performance and availability, but also want to leverage their existing infrastructure investments, and they must retain internal control of their applications. This new solution offers a flexible, sensible approach to augment an existing application's infrastructure with cloud resources during periods of unexpected load.”
Details
Here is how the F5 and VMware cloudbursting solution works:
* BIG-IP solutions monitor application performance with the F5 iControl API and report conditions to the enterprise's orchestration tool of choice. This tool then triggers actions to access cloud services via the VMware vCloud API, an interface for providing and consuming virtual resources in the cloud.
* BIG-IP GTM automatically reconfigures the network according to pre-defined business policies to route traffic to the cloud, eliminating time-consuming and error-prone manual intervention.
* SQLFabric allows the primary application database to be synchronised with a cached instance running in the cloud. BIG-IP's iSessions technology encrypts and optimises traffic between the private data centre and the cloud for those synchronisation transactions, accelerating back-end database replication while reducing bandwidth consumption.
* BIG-IP LTM Virtual Edition enables customers to upload BIG-IP LTM to the cloud as a virtual machine, offering the same ADN functionality in the cloud as in the private data centre.
“The joint solution between F5 and VMware highlights the importance of an agile Application Delivery Network and illustrates the ability to deliver applications in a hybrid cloud built on the industry-leading virtualisation and cloud platform,” said Dan Chu, VP, Cloud Infrastructure and Services, VMware.
“Together with VMware vCloud Director, F5 helps deliver the elasticity that organisations are looking for as they tap into hybrid cloud services. The integration and automation of this joint solution benefits customers by increasing application availability and operational flexibility while reducing costs to deliver IT as a service.”
Availability
All F5 products that comprise the cloudbursting solution are available today. GemStone SQLFabric is available today. VMware vCloud Director was announced during VMworld 2010 and is generally available.
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F5 Networks
F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), focused on ensuring the secure, reliable, and fast delivery of applications. F5's flexible architectural framework enables community-driven innovation that helps organizations enhance IT agility and dynamically deliver services that generate true business value. F5's vision of unified application and data delivery offers customers an unprecedented level of choice in how they deploy ADN solutions. It redefines the management of application, server, storage, and network resources, streamlining application delivery and reducing costs. Global enterprise organizations, service and cloud providers, and Web 2.0 content providers trust F5 to keep their business moving forward. For more information, go to http://www.f5.com
F5, BIG-IP, Local Traffic Manager, LTM, and iControl are trademarks or service marks of F5 Networks in the US and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
GemStone, VMware, VMware vCloud, VMware vSphere, and VMworld are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.
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