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A10 Networks, a provider of Application Delivery Controllers, unveiled enhanced customer-driven capabilities with its new AX Series software release. The entire AX Series family received a range of feature enhancements, all without additional licensing fees. A10’s AX Series is a new generation server load balancer with a 64-bit shared-memory and multi-CPU Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS) architecture designed to improve performance, scalability, efficiency and flexibility. The AX Series enhancements are available for download in version 2.6 without additional charge and scheduled for release by end of this month.
Updates in the AX Series include virtualization technologies to enable cloud computing, such as aVCS (Virtual Chassis System), designed to enable organizations to scale as they grow by linearly scaling to eight AX Series appliances in a virtual cluster, which is operated and managed as a single unified device. Functionality includes support for Layer 2/3 topologies, more efficient high availability, and cluster resizing for seamless capacity provisioning/de-provisioning with upgrades/downgrades.
In addition, expanded capabilities within Application Delivery Partitions (ADPs) offer per partition granularity for Layer 2/3 network virtualization and hardware virtualization, and an upgraded beta version of SoftAX based on this release will be available for download. Dynamic traffic management and protection features include aFlow, which enables predictable performance without outages during peak traffic conditions. Instead of dropping valid requests or having non-responsive servers in the event of peak traffic conditions, aFlow queues end-users’ requests automatically. When the response time returns to an acceptable level, the AX device sends the queued requests to the servers.
“WWE operates a real-time Web voting system, which causes frequent and unpredictable ‘flash crowds’ during our wrestling events that result in peak traffic conditions,” said Phillip James, manager of digital media operations at World Wrestling Entertainment. “The aFlow feature in A10’s new AX Series software release will add another intelligent layer on top of the existing AX rate and limit controls to protect our servers from being overwhelmed, ensuring our viewers can continue to vote for their favorite wrestlers in real-time and uninterrupted.”
Geo-location based connection limiting per VIP provides the ability to mitigate DDoS attacks from specific countries or regions automatically. For example, connections limits would be based on expected geographic traffic patterns, ensuring localized anomalous traffic such as botnet attacks are neutralized, while other regional traffic flows unhindered. Selective DNS caching monitors for an excessive number of DNS queries, and when detected automatically enables granular DNS caching polices, for example on a per domain basis.
“With our new release, we delivered the first milestone on our Cloud Computing and Virtualization Roadmap by offering customers a wide range of virtualization options with our AX Series,” said Lee Chen, founder and CEO for A10 Networks. “This major enhancement to our feature set demonstrates why A10 is the natural alternative to legacy solutions, offering customers more innovation and better value. A10 is not just the fastest growing application delivery vendor, we are one of the fastest growing companies in America, and we see our growth only accelerating as we deliver on customer requirements.”