Content area
Full text
F5's new appliance with global traffic management capabilities is easy to use and has the extras you want BY SEAN DOHERTY
F5 Network's Big-IP 1500 gives small and midsize companies access to big enterprise technology that would otherwise be satisfied by niche players such as Coyote Point Systems. A standalone load-balancing appliance with global traffic management (GTM) on board, the successor to F5's 3DNS also can serve as a point solution for enterprises with load-balancing needs that do not require Layer 7 rate shaping, advanced routing or acceleration. The 1500 also affords a more cost-efficient solution than Cisco's AVS (Application Velocity System) and Citrix Netscaler.
The Big-IP 1500 is the little brother in the data center, compared with F5's larger appliances such as the 3400, 6400 and 6800, which run GTM as a module. But it's no small-fry, sporting four 10/100/1000-Mbps ports as well as two SFP GBICs (Gigabit Interface Converter) to attach systems for Layer 2 and virtual LAN (802.1Q) load balancing. It includes support for the STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) and enables LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol or 802.3ad) trunks to aggregate links.
The appliance provides the basic load-balancing services that many proxy servers offer, such as session-state persistence. It performs Layer 3 routing functions and off-loads critical processes from the host CPU. It has a Packet Velocity ASIC 2, which off-loads Layer 4 and Layer 7 tasks to increase application performance and throughput. The Big-IP 1500 also off-loads SSL to hardware for performance gains.
The hardware comes with a push-button transmission to set the IP address. As...