Deliver Resiliency and Scalability with Dell vWorkspace and F5's Local Traffic Manager
Recently, there's been some "buzz" around how to configure Dell vWorkspace components behind BIG-IP's Local Traffic Manager. A few months back, I had the opportunity to work with Stephen Yorke from the Dell vWorkspace team to put together a configuration that helps provide availabilty and resiliency for vWorkspace, including the Secure Access components. Kelly Craig has graciously taken the good work between Dell and F5 and posted the configuration steps to get this up and running. You can check out his blog post here: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/virtualization/vworkspace/b/vworkspace-blog/archive/2015/05/21/vworkspace-and-f5-bigip-ltm
F5 Synthesis: F5 brings Scale and Security to EVO:RAIL Horizon Edition
The goal of F5 Synthesis is to deliver the app services that deliver the apps business relies on today for productivity and for profit. That means not just delivering SDAS (Software Defined Application Services) themselves, but delivering them in all the ways IT needs to meet and exceed business expectations. Sometimes that's in the cloud marketplace and other times it's as a cloud service. Sometimes it's as an integratable on-premise architecture and other times, like now, it's as part of a hyper-converged system. As part of a full stack in a rack, if you will. EVO:RAIL is a partnership between VMware and Dell that offers a simplified, hyper-converged infrastructure. In a nutshell, it's a single, integrated rack designed to address the headaches often caused by virtual machine sprawl and heterogeneous hypervisor support as well as providing the means by which expanding deployments can be accelerated. Converged infrastructure is increasingly popular as a means to accelerate the deployment and growth of virtualized solutions such as virtual desktop delivery. Converged infrastructure solutions like EVO:RAIL abstract compute, network and storage resources from the CPUs, cables controllers and switches that make them all usable as a foundation for private cloud or, as is more often the case, highly virtualized environments. By validating F5 VE (Virtual Edition) to deliver app services in an EVO:RAIL Horizon Edition the infrastructure gains key capabilities to assure availability, security and performance of the applications that will ultimately be deployed and delivered by the infrastructure. Including F5 brings capabilities critical to seamlessly scaling VMware View by providing Global Namespace and User Name Persistence support. Additionally, F5 iApps accelerates implementation by operationalizing the deployment of SDAS with simple, menu-driven provisioning. You can learn more about Dell's VMware EVO:RAIL solution here and more on how F5 and VMware are delivering the Software Defined Data Center here.F5 Synthesis: Now with more VMware than ever!
Whether you've bought into DevOps or NetOps or SDN or SDDC (or all of them) as a way to operationalize the data center, one thing is clear: organizations are desirous of ways to deliver applications and their infrastructure faster with fewer disruptions and with greater consistency. Automation and orchestration frameworks offer IT operations groups of all kinds - from storage to compute to network to security - a means to accomplish that task. That means every one who provides enterprise solutions in one of those four IT areas needs to support those efforts through APIs and, more importantly, pre-validated integration with the frameworks and tools customers want to use. When we asked over 300 customers about the tools and frameworks they use and want to use to automate and orchestrate their application infrastructure deployment experience the overwhelming answer was VMware. That was a pleasant result to hear, given that we've been partnering with VMware for many years, bringing to market architectures, automation packages and integration with our F5 Synthesis architecture. So it's probably no surprise that this post brings news of new and expanded offerings with VMware available in VMware's vCloud Marketplace. Availability and security services delivered through BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager ™ , Global Traffic Manager ™ , and Application Security Manager ™ software are now available, having achieved vCloud Air “Elite” certification for all three. With F5 Synthesis Simplified Business Model, customers can take a "bring your own license" approach when deploying VMware vCloud with F5's Good, Better, and Best packages. F5 also continues its history of contributing at VMware industry and partner events by sponsoring and exhibiting (booth #209) at this year's VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) conference. We'll also be participating in a variety of activities including: Providing Automated Failover and Reliable Business Continuity with F5 and VMware vCloud Air vCloud Air Product Line Manager Yatin Chalke and F5 Business Development Manager Matt Quill discuss how F5 brings advanced application services to vCloud Air to automate disaster recovery/business continuity, hybrid cloud application deployments, cloud bursting, and global application availability. F5 and VMware’s Horizon – Perfect Together In this breakout session, F5 Sr. Solution Architect Justin Venezia explains integration methods between F5 and each of VMware's End User Computing products. The program includes a deep-dive into sample BIG-IP configurations and a demo of combined load balancing and remote access solutions with VMware Horizon. Boost Your Opportunity by Selling Integrated Solutions with VMware and F5 F5 Regional VP of Channel Sales Keith McManigal and VMware Channel Sales Director Troy Wright outline the ways that F5’s BIG-IP application delivery platform and VMware solutions complement each other. Real-world examples are used to clearly demonstrate the benefits of combining F5 with VMware products such as NSX, Horizon, AirWatch, vRealize, and vCloud Air. If you're attending VMware PEX be sure to stop by (that's booth #209). If you aren't (or even if you are) you can follow along on Twitter @f5networks for live updates
F5 Networks - Dell Storage Forum 2012
W. Curtis Preston spricht auf dem Dell Storage Forum in Paris, Frankreich mit Mark Govan, EMEA Storage Manager von F5 Networks. Das Thema ist F5‘s ARX (Adaptive Resource Switch), eine Lösung, die es Kunden ermöglicht, mehr Kostenkontrolle über Ihre File-Server zu erhalten und deren Wachstum zu managen. Die Lösung unterstützt eine breite Palette von heterogenen NFS, CIFS und Multi-Protokoll-File-Servern. ARX bietet non-destructive Migrations- sowie Stub-free File-Tiering-Fähigkeiten. Stubs gibt es schon länger, aber sie waren nicht sehr beliebt, weil sie die Fähigkeit haben, auf überwältigende Größe anzuwachsen und Backup-Prozesse stören können. F5 ARX verwaltet die Zuordnung mit einem Switch und platziert die Auswirkungen somit nicht auf die Back-End-Dateiserver. Die Lösung verarbeitet Backups durch Trennung der Backup-Aufgaben aus der Datei. Es gibt dem Benutzer die Möglichkeit, verschiedene Container für jede der Dateien zu erstellen und es virtualisiert Snapshopts in der Nutzer-Basis. Durch die Trennung in verschiedene Elemente, kann das Backup-Fenster verringert werden. Darüber hinaus verbindet die Lösung verschiedene Snapshot-Technologien und präsentiert sie den Nutzern in einem konsistenten Format, das auf einfache Weise zurückgewonnen werden kann. Hier geht es zum Video: http://truebittv.truthinit.com/media-gallery-media/mediaitem/230-f5-networks-dell-sf-2012
F5 Friday: CSG Case Study Shows Increased Performance, Less WAN Traffic With Dell and F5
When time and performance mattered, CSG Content Direct turned to Dell and F5 to make their replication faster while reducing WAN utilization. We talk a lot in our blogs about what benefits you could get from an array of F5 products, so when this case study (pdf link) hit our inboxes, we thought you’d like to hear about what CSG’s Content Direct did get out of deploying F5 BIG-IPWOM. Utilizing tools by two of the premier technology companies in the world, Content Direct was able to decrease backup windows to as little as 5% of their previous time, and reduce traffic on the WAN significantly. At the heart of the problem was WAN performance that was inhibiting their replication to a remote datacenter and causing them to fall further and further behind. Placing a BIG-IP WOM between their Dell EqualLogic iSCSI devices, Content Direct was able to improve performance to the point that they are now able to meet their RPOs and RTOs with room for expansion. Since Content Direct already deployed F5 BIG-IP LTM, they were able to implement this solution by purchasing and installing F5 BIG-IP WAN Optimization Manager (WOM) on the existing BIG-IP hardware, eliminating the need for new hardware. The improvements that they saw while replicating iSCSI devices is in line with the improvements our testing has shown for NAS device replication also, making this case study a good examination of what you can expect from BIG-IP WOM in many environments. Since BIG-IP WOM supports a wide array of applications – from the major NAS vendors to the major database vendors – and includes offloading of encryption from overburdened servers, you can deploy it once and gain benefits at many points in your architecture. If you are sending a lot of data between two datacenters, BIG-IP WOM has help for your overburdened WAN connection. Check out our White Papers and Solution Profiles relevant to BIG-IP WOM for more information about how it might help, and which applications have been tested for improvement measurements. Of course BIG-IP WOM works on IP connections, and as such can improve many more scenarios than we have tested or even could reasonably test, but those applications tested will give you a feel for the amount of savings you can get when deploying BIG-IP WOM on your WAN. And if you are already a BIG-IP LTM customer, you can upgrade to include WOM without introducing a new device into your already complex network. Related Blogs: F5 Friday: Speed Matters F5 Friday: Performance, Throughput and DPS F5 Friday: A War of Ecosystems F5 Friday: IPv6 Day Redux F5 Friday: Spelunking for Big Data F5 Friday: The 2048-bit Keys to the Kingdom F5 Friday: ARX VE Offers New Opportunities F5 Friday: Eliminating the Blind Spot in Your Data Center Security ... F5 Friday: Gracefully Scaling Down F5 Friday: Data Inventory Control
Exchange 2010 with F5 BIG-IP and Dell Article Published
Yesterday my esteemed colleague, Fred Johnson, posted a great article on Dell’s Enterprise Technology Center about some joint F5 & Dell testing on Exchange 2010 that recently took place. There are some architectural changes within the way Exchange 2010 is deployed that make having a hardware load balancer even more critical when trying to scale and provide high availability. This article discusses those changes, discusses the testing that was done, and also goes into depth on the results and finding from the testing. I highly recommend the article for anyone looking at migrating to Exchange 2010. http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/Exchange+2010+with+F5+BIG-IP+and+Dell Great job Fred!Dell Buys Ocarina Networks. Dedupe For All?
Storage at rest de-duplication has been a growing point of interest for most IT staffs over the last year or so, just because de-duplication allows you to purchase less hardware over time, and if that hardware is a big old storage array sucking a ton of power and costing a not-insignificant amount to install and maintain, well, it’s appealing. Most of the recent buzz has been about primary storage de-duplication, but that is merely a case of where the market is. Backup de-duplication has existed for a good long while, and secondary storage de-duplication is not new. Only recently have people decided that at-rest de-dupe was stable enough to give it a go on their primary storage – where all the most important and/or active information is kept. I don’t think I’d call it a “movement” yet, but it does seem that the market’s resistance to anything that obfuscates data storage is eroding at a rapid rate due to the cost of the hardware (and attendant maintenance) to keep up with storage growth. Related Articles and Blogs Dell-Ocarina deal will alter landscape of primary storage deduplication Data dedupe technology helps curb virtual server sprawl Expanding Role of Data Deduplication The Reality of Primary Storage Deduplication
