F5 Networks is continuing its push to help enterprises extend
their data center infrastructures into cloud computing environments.
At the Interop 2010 show in Las Vegas April 26, F5
officials unveiled an architecture they are calling the Dynamic
Services Model, which touches on a host of the vendor’s technologies
for all types of environments, from physical and virtual data centers,
facilities in different locations, and in private and public clouds.
F5 unveiled the latest version of its Big-IP
software—Version 20.1—which includes new ADC (application delivery
controller) hardware, an upgraded operating system and a virtual ADC
platform.
The goal is to make it easier for enterprises to take
advantage of the benefits offered through the on-demand cloud computing
model, and to do so in a holistic way, according to Ken Salchow,
manager of technical marketing for F5.
“There’s more value to be had through the process of
virtualizing services and moving to cloud than with the way it’s
architected now,” Salchow said in an interview.
Enterprises now tend to view virtualization and cloud
computing projects as individual efforts, such as consolidating
resources or making their data centers more power efficient.
A goal of F5’s efforts is to enable IT administrators
to instead look at these initiatives in a more integrated fashion,
according to company officials.
“The cloud is evolving as the next generation of IT,”
Erik Giesa, vice president of product management and marketing, said in
a statement. “Whether a business is planning to deploy a private cloud
or take advantage of external public cloud services, it need to put its
enterprise requirements first and leverage an integrated architecture
for on-demand mobility, orchestration and automation.”
The new ADC series features the BIG-IP 11050 platform
and the new 8950 appliance. The 8950 offers 20 Gbps of throughput; the
11050 42 Gbps. They also support 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.
F5 also is rolling out production and lab versions of
its Local Traffic Manager Virtual Edition, which when combined with the
physical offerings, gives enterprises and service providers a hybrid
way to build a scalable and adaptable application delivery network.
The production version offers throughput of up to
10Gbps. The lab version is best used in non-production environments,
according to F5.
The LTM VE can work with other F5 products as well as
with solutions from other vendors, such as VMware, the company said. F5
is integrating the product with Hewlett-Packard’s Operations
Orchestrator, Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Manager and VMware’s vCenter
Orchestrator, with the goal of making it easier, faster and more
automatic to provision virtual machines.
In addition, F5’s new Big-IP Edge Gateway simplifies
the management of such services as access, security and optimization in
both traditional data center and cloud computing environments.
Brian White, an analyst with Ticonderoga Securities, applauded the moves by F5.
“In our view, these announcements highlight F5
Networks' continued product innovation, which is driving increased
market share and positioning the company well for the trend toward
virtualization, data center consolidation and cloud computing,” White
said in an April 26 report.
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