Heightening Web application performance and availability - Dell

Networking

Heightening Web application performance and availability

A

s Web applications come to play a central role for business and consumer functions, optimal performance can be key to

enterprise success. Many organizations need their Web applications to perform quickly and efficiently to achieve an excellent end-user experience, which can

By Melanie Christiansen, Andrew Walker, and Fred Johnson

lead to boosts in revenue, site use, and visitor retention. And for organizations that depend on Web applications to support

For many organizations, Web applications are critical in supporting business operations and driving sales. Consolidated application delivery networks built using F5® BIG-IP® platforms and Dell™ hardware help provide fast, reliable application access.

business operations, high performance is a necessity, heightening employee productivity and return on investment (ROI). Two main factors affect Web application performance: the time taken by the Web application server to generate an HTTP response and the time taken to deliver an HTTP response over the network. Generally, the main culprit of poor Web application performance is the time that it takes to deliver the HTTP response over the network. Slow applications may increase the attempts of end users to access the site, which in turn can result in additional network traffic and congestion. To help alleviate Web application performance issues, administrators can deploy the F5 BIG-IP WebAccelerator™ (WA™) product module in an application delivery network (ADN) comprising Dell servers and storage (see Figure 1). BIG-IP WA is designed to decrease page download times and offload compression, caching, and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption from Web servers—leading to lower bandwidth usage, improved application uptime, and fast application performance.

Robust foundation for application delivery BIG-IP WA is license key–enabled software that fits into an IT infrastructure as either a stand-alone appliance or as an add-on module. As a stand-alone appliance, it can run on either BIG-IP application delivery controller (ADC) hardware platforms 54

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Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 1. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

Mobile

product module, creating a consolidated ADC platform for advanced load balancing, security, acceleration, and high availability.

LAN

In both licensing configurations, BIG-IP WA sits in front of the origin Web servers to boost application performance. Although BIG-IP LTM provides some acceleration

WAN

capabilities such as caching, compression, and TCP optimizations, BIG-IP WA is designed to expand on these features

F5 BIG-IP

F5 BIG-IP

Dell PowerEdge application servers File storage virtualization and cloud storage

the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM®)

Dell PowerEdge Web servers

Application server virtualization, acceleration, and security

add-on module, it can be layered on top of

Web server virtualization, acceleration, and security

appliances. When implemented as an

Data center virtualization, acceleration, and security

or Virtual Edition (version 11 and later)

F5 BIG-IP

F5 ARX®

Dell Compellent™ Storage Center™ storage area network

Dell EqualLogic™ PS Series arrays

Dell DX Object Storage Platform

Dell PowerEdge servers (Microsoft Windows® file servers)

Figure 1. A unified application-access architecture based on F5 and Dell systems helps improve Web application performance

for an even higher level of acceleration. Accelerated application access enables an

firewall and a foundation for application

data they are accessing, which could have a

optimized end-user experience, creating

delivery services, having achieved ICSA

negative impact on application performance.

time savings for mobile and remote users

Labs certifications for Network Firewall,

Bandwidth, latency, congestion, and

who are far away from the data center. As

SSL-Transport Layer Security Virtual Private

packet loss can directly contribute to slow

an intelligent proxy, BIG-IP WA is designed

Network 3.0 (SSL-TLS VPN 3.0), and Web

Web application performance, and addressing

to analyze content to make decisions about

Application Firewall (WAF).2

one issue will not necessarily fix performance problems. Although additional bandwidth

caching, compression, and processing that

Factors affecting Web application performance

can boost a connection, the relationship

intensive processing, such as encryption

The BIG-IP platform helps improve the

is not linear. If end users are far from the data

or compression, from the servers to the

end-user experience by mitigating issues

center, adding bandwidth will not greatly

ADC’s specialized hardware and software.

related to slow application performance.

improve response times.

Assigning these types of tasks to the ADC

Generally, Web pages are slower to load

helps reduce server workload and in

on mobile devices than on other devices,

organizations may use traditional methods,

some cases avoid the need for application

such as desktop and laptop computers. But

which include adding servers, adding

administrators to configure the tasks on

regardless of how end users access a Web

bandwidth, and recoding applications. Often,

each server. Offloading in this way enables

site, they expect a consistent experience

organizations will invest in a content delivery

improved efficiencies and reusable ADC

between devices. This consistency allows

network (CDN) to cache static objects.

functions across multiple applications. As

users to feel comfortable with the site,

However, this approach may not be cost-

a result, offloading makes it possible for

which encourages them to return regularly.

effective or feasible for some organizations.

can offload networks and servers. Server offloading moves computationally

administrators to decrease spending on additional bandwidth and hardware. Other acceleration and security

between bandwidth and connection speed

To address slow application performance,

Location is a primary consideration, because the end-user experience is generally

Optimizations to accelerate performance

correlated to the distance between the user

The BIG-IP device provides a cost-effective

technologies available, such as the F5

and origin Web server. With the evolving

alternative. Multiple applications can be

WAN Optimization Manager™ (WOM®),

complexity of Web applications, enterprises

managed and accelerated through a

F5 Application Security Manager™ (ASM™),

may consider adding data centers near their

single device, enabling high security and

(APM™)

customer bases. However, to reduce costs,

centralized management and avoiding the

product modules, can be combined on

many enterprises are actually consolidating

need to recode applications.

the same ADC platform.1 BIG-IP ADCs are

data centers. This consolidation may result in

well suited for building a robust data center

increased latency between end users and the

and F5 Access Policy

Manager®

BIG-IP WA can operate in symmetric mode at a remote office or data center

1 For

information on F5 WAN optimization technology for data center to data center replication, see “Accelerate and secure data replication with F5 WAN optimization,” by Fred Johnson, Ujjwal Rajbhandari, and Puneet Dhawan, in Dell Power Solutions, 2010 Issue 2, bit.ly/jlPEgQ.

2 For

more information about ICSA Labs certifications, visit www.icsalabs.com.

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 1. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

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Networking

or in asymmetric mode for use by a

such as optimized use of the browser

example, dynamic linearization allows

geographically disparate group of users.

cache and minimized round-trip time

end users to view individual pages of large

Organizations can deploy BIG-IP WA

(see the sidebar, “3 ways to optimize the

documents, such as PDF files, without

symmetrically with other F5 products to

end-user experience”). For example, BIG-IP

waiting for the entire document to download.

create an enterprise CDN that is designed

WA creates and inserts custom tags into

BIG-IP WA also provides document URL

to provide high Web site availability, denial

responses to the client. These tags can be

normalization, which enables the BIG-IP

of service (DoS) attack protection, and a fast

set to point clients to content cached in the

device to cache similar documents that are

end-user experience. (For more information,

local browser or on the BIG-IP WA system.

used by different Web applications so that

see the sidebar, “An enterprise content

The browser uses these tags to check the

the browser does not need to communicate

delivery network for fast Web site access.”)

age or expiration of the content.

directly with the origin Web servers.

BIG-IP WA includes other capabilities for accelerating Web application performance,

In addition, BIG-IP WA is designed to

Because acceleration results will vary

optimize and compress documents. For

by application, existing infrastructure, and

An enterprise content delivery network for fast Web site access Developers, administrators, and network professionals

one of the largest markets in the world, it was very important

worldwide participate in the social media site F5 DevCentral,

for F5 to support and grow the country’s user network. F5

accessing technical content, blogs, and discussion forums

considered several solutions, such as a content delivery network

related to application delivery networking. However, end users

(CDN) and the construction of a data center in China, but none

in China were experiencing average page load times of an

of these options were viable.

unacceptable 16 seconds when trying to access the DevCentral site located in the Seattle, Washington, area. Because China is

F5 decided to deploy F5 BIG-IP WebAccelerator (WA) symmetrically to create an enterprise CDN, which helped reduce average page load time to less than 3 seconds. The global impact and feedback for this approach was extremely positive and resulted in

Clients

increased use of the F5 DevCentral

Accelerated access

site in China. In addition, F5 used

BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager

BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager

BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager

Symmetric Web acceleration

BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager

F5 BIG-IP systems

Global Traffic Manager Local Traffic Manager WebAccelerator WAN Optimization Manager Application Security Manager Access Policy Manager Edge Gateway Link Controller

Remote data center

Traffic Management Operating System® (TMOS®) platform

Accelerated access

Clients

other BIG-IP products, such as the BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager™ (GTM™) modules, to round out the deployment (see Figure A).* The BIG-IP platform makes it possible to locally cache dynamic objects and

Primary data center

Application environments Dell servers, storage, networking, and services

Figure A. Software add-on modules for the F5 BIG-IP platform deliver consolidation and centralized management to enable fast, secure application access

policies and to use rules to push content closer to the users. For more information about how organizations are using BIG-IP WA, visit qrs.ly/qb1p6zb.

* For more information on directing end users to optimal data centers using F5 BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager, see “Intelligent Domain Name System resolution for application delivery,” by Andrew Walker and Fred Johnson, in Dell Power Solutions, 2011 Issue 2, bit.ly/jNK8OF.

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2012 Issue 01 | dell.com/powersolutions

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 1. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

organization, best practices recommend

implement application acceleration and

3 ways to optimize the end-user experience

availability projects—helping enterprises

Ideally, Web applications should be created using a design and architecture that optimizes

keep projects focused and on schedule.

deployment to remote users. However, this is not always possible. To help improve

Dell offers a wide range of customized

application performance, F5 BIG-IP WA incorporates three tiers of acceleration.

accurate sizing for BIG-IP WA deployments. Dell Services can collaborate with organizations to help plan, assess, and

consultation services offering robust design and implementation to help organizations

Tier 1 acceleration: Network offload

achieve successful application deployments.

BIG-IP WA helps accelerate network performance by offloading the network through a variety of capabilities:

Accelerated performance for enhanced productivity, satisfaction Organizations depend on Web applications to support business operations and drive sales. Long page load times may result in a frustrating end-user experience, diminished productivity,

• Use TCP multiplexing to help lower TCP turn rates • Leverage Intelligent Browser Referencing (IBR) to reuse and cache downloaded objects and repetitive content so that the browser does not need to return to the origin Web server • Compress content to help reduce the amount of data transferred

and possible loss of revenue. Infrastructures

Tier 2 acceleration: Web server offload

based on Dell and F5 BIG-IP products

BIG-IP WA helps reduce server load by caching and delivering content from the back-

and services help dramatically improve

end Web server, so that the browser does not need to access the server each time.

Web application performance for client

Other Web server offloading capabilities include the following:

devices and reduce IT costs by centralizing management and offloading networks and servers. In addition to boosting end-user productivity, enhanced Web application performance can act as a key enabler for data center consolidation initiatives.

• Create a single server-side connection using the F5 OneConnect™ feature and leverage spooling to reduce multiple connections to back-end servers • Perform rate shaping and connection limiting using rules to help reduce the overflow of connections to back-end servers • Offload Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and compression tasks to high-speed, hardware-based application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) in the BIG-IP

Authors Melanie Christiansen is a business development manager at F5 Networks focused on the Dell and F5 relationship. Andrew Walker is a solutions design engineer at F5 Networks focused on Dell Global Infrastructure Consulting Services.

platform for initial key exchange and bulk crypto for SSL transactions

Tier 3 acceleration: Application offload BIG-IP WA is designed to offload queries and computations to decrease the number of requests made to Web applications and increase the speed of Web applications: • Reuse downloaded objects and content through the IBR feature • Attempt to increase the number of concurrent connections a browser uses to download content through the MultiConnect feature

Fred Johnson is a partner engineer at F5 Networks dedicated to Dell Labs.

• Perform Edge Side Includes (ESI), compression, and dynamic linearization to help minimize the amount of content to process

Learn more F5 BIG-IP WebAccelerator: bit.ly/wacf7d F5 BIG-IP platforms and add-on software modules: bit.ly/xPYCcV Dell Services for networking: dell.to/nI4pd9

Protecting the enterprise An application delivery network is only as secure as its weakest link. Discover how F5 designs and tests its BIG-IP application delivery controllers to protect an organization’s valuable application assets. bit.ly/zxhQBf

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 1. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

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