f5 versus SAP Web Dispatcher

The two most common use cases for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and SAP Web Dispatcher are:

• Replacing Web Dispatcher with LTM for NetWeaver Portal for users not using SAP’s SAPGUI thick client. LTM provides superior Portal availability (LB and monitoring), far more scalable SSL offload, ADC (load balancer) HA (Web Dispatcher lacks redundancy such as active-standby), and the opportunity to improve user experience and security by adding BIG-IP modules such as APM (Access Policy Manager), AAM (Application Acceleration Manager), and ASM (Application Security Manager).

• F5.com (">http://www.f5.com/products/technology/sap/" target="_blank">">http://www.f5.com/products/technology/sap/) has several documents you may find useful. Especially the Deployment Guide that outlines how to configure LTM with NetWeaver Portal (">http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/sap-portal-iapp-dg.pdf" target="_blank">">http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/sap-portal-iapp-dg.pdf). Also check out the advanced monitoring sections in the Deployment Guide at ">http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/f5-sap-portal-dg.pdf" target="_blank">">http://www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/f5-sap-portal-dg.pdf.

• Enhancing Web Dispatcher deployments. We also see a fair number of customers that use LTM to provide automated HA to Web Dispatcher. Essentially, deploying multiple Web Dispatcher instances and using LTM to load balance them. F5 does not have a Deployment Guide for this use case, but the configuration is extremely straightforward.