WebAccelerator - web cache

Hi Jeff,

 

 

WebAccelerator has some advantages over LTM + RAMCache in that WebAccelerator does more than just caching, it also applies many application and protocol specific optimizations that provide additional performance benefits. WebAccelerator can also accelerate SSL encrypted pages, something that LTM + RAMCache cannot do. LTM + RAMCache requires less configuration, of course, but WebAccelerator's configuration time can be significantly reduced if you're trying to accelerate an application for which there exists a WebAccelerator validated application profile (Siebel, Sharepoint, Exchange, Oracle, etc...).

 

 

Another advantage of WebAccelerator is that if you are interested solely in improving performance of web apps or portals via the corporate intranet then you can take advantage of WebAccelerator's ability to be deployed in a symmetric fashion. This is similar to a WAN acceleration approach - using one WebAccelerator in the data center and one at each remote location. This deployment option specifically improves the performance of web apps and portals over the WAN for remote users.

 

 

HTH,

 

Lori

That is correct. WebAccelerator excels at deployments in Reverse Proxy Cache mode.

 

 

As an addendum to Lori's note, the 9.4.2 version of BIG-IP WebAccelerator places LTM FastCache "under the hood" of BIG-IP WebAccelerator. Now customers don't have to choose. If you buy BIG-IP WebAccelerator or BIG-IP WebAccelerator 4500 (stand alone), you get the benefits of FastCache.

 

 

This combination of capabilities results in a 2x to 15x performance capacity gain for WebAccelerator.

 

 

Joe

Hi Lori,

 

 

Seeing your comment, I have a problem with symmetrical configuration.

 

I have two WA4500 in DataCenter and remote site.

 

Since I am newbee for this product, I am following steps from the manual (version9.4.3).

 

However, I can't establish symmetric topology. Both WA4500 indicated "no heartbeats", and I also see red rectangle icon...

 

 

Does anyone know what is going on?

 

 

THanks

tomimma,

 

 

You may need to allow port 4353 through any firewalls or ACLs since that is the secure channel that WebAccelerator uses to transfer configuration. You can change that port and other characteristics of the deployment. Did you open a case? Is everything working well now?

 

 

Joe

Well, i guess i am a noob too! With symmetrical configuration, does this ONLY allow you to sync the WA policy? I am more interested in syncing the pv info from each of the F5's. Is there a different configuration for this?

 

 

Currently, we are setup with both F5's adjacent to each other (on the same LB network). So, if we have a true central and remote architecture (which sounds like the pv info is synced between the two F5's), why can we not sync when both F5's are on the same LB network? It sounds to me that when you have a true central/remote architecture that no configuration needs to be changed for the pv info to be synced. Does any one have any in site into how we can sync pv info while having both F5's on the same network?

Yes symmetric or clustered deployments only configure the policy and application settings. The caches are not synchronized across systems. In your configuration where you have 2 or more systems on the same network these can be configured in a cluster. In the WebAccelerator section all systems would be added to the same data centre. This would allow the applicaiton and policy information to be syncd across all units.

Thanks for your reply. I wanted to update just in case some one else run's into the same issue.

 

 

I did find out that in a "true" symettrical configuration/deployment that the remote WA has a virtual server that points to the central WA. In our case we point both F5's to the ows...and we still have symettical configured. This seems to allow us to sync WA policy, without the problem of the central WA outage.