Optimize Performance with Application Delivery Controllers

An Application Delivery Controller is defined as “a data center network device that helps manage client connections to complex Web and enterprise applications.” According to Gartner, Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) are “designed for data centre applications and improve the performance of Web-based and related applications by providing a suite of services at the network and application layers.” Usually enterprises deploy ADCs behind a firewall and in front of one or more application servers.

The ADCs came about to address the issue of improving the availability, scalability, reliability and security of web and network enabled application platforms while at the same time reducing internal costs and allowing the enterprises to focus on their core competencies. Hence, ADCs are often described as the next generation load balancers. ADC is a capable and powerful tool that

* Prevents crash and ensures continuous traffic flow

It monitors server traffic and if certain servers are busy with heavy traffic loads, it re-routes data to servers with less traffic thereby preventing crashes and keeping traffic flowing.

* Performs proper traffic management

ADCs understand the performance capacities of servers and distribute traffic loads according to the capacities of the servers.

* Assigns traffic according to application types

When requests come, ADCs examine the page content before assigning it to the appropriate server. Hence, it sends graphic and multimedia requests to high performing servers while other requests are sent to servers that handle transaction processing. This helps to increase performance and optimize resources.

The first generation ADCs mainly performed application acceleration and manage load balancing between servers. However, the latest generation of ADCs comes with advanced load balancing and acceleration, best-in-class performance and scalability, transformative next generation features, and best-in-class value and return on investment. The following are some of the features that today’s ADCs have.

* L4/L7 server load balancing

* Link load balancing (LLB)

* Global server load balancing (GSLB)

* TCP offload and connection multiplexing

* SSL offload and hardware acceleration

* Adaptive compression and dynamic caching

* Accelerate applications 5x or more

* Increased server efficiency 10x or more

* 64-bit multi-core architecture

* IPv6, 2048-bit SSL and 10GigE ready

* Multi-tenancy, application virtualization

* vAPV virtual edition (soft ADC)

* Virtual server integration

* Stateful TCP session failover

* L4/7 SLB rules engine

* Application-specific certifications

In today’s hypercompetitive business environment, there is the increased need to ensure uptime, speed, performance and scalability. And with Application Delivery Controllers, this can be easily achieved.

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