F5 Integrates With VMware vCloud Director To Provide Cloudbursting Solution For Enterprises

SAN FRANCISCO(BUSINESS WIRE) Today at VMworld 2010, F5 Networks, Inc., a global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), announced the demonstration of a new solution that enables enterprises to more easily augment the capacity of their data centers with external cloud resources. This use case, sometimes referred to as "cloudbursting," has traditionally required time-consuming manual monitoring and intervention. Developed in collaboration with VMware, the solution works closely with VMware vCloud Director and the VMware vCloud API to monitor application response times and apply business policies that can augment local resources with on-demand cloud-based resources when predetermined thresholds are met. This ensures that organizations can meet their Service Level Agreements (SLAs) despite unpredictable application loads, and with a minimum of capital investment.

The solution uses F5's advanced ADN technologies, including BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager??? (LTM), BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM), and BIG-IP's unique iSessions WAN optimization capability. These products have been tightly integrated with VMware vCloud Director via the F5 iControl and VMware vCloud APIs. To seamlessly expand application capacity, the solution also relies on GemStone SQLFabric for distributed synchronization of database objects between the sites. To see a demonstration of this solution, come to F5's booth (#1131) at VMworld 2010.

"This solution underscores the value of F5 as a strategic point of control at the intersection of the data center and the cloud," said Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5 Networks. "Organizations want to take advantage of the cloud to enhance application performance and availability, but also want to leverage their existing infrastructure investments, and they must retain internal control of their applications. This new solution offers a flexible, sensible approach to augment an existing application's infrastructure with cloud resources during periods of unexpected load."

Here is how the F5 and VMware cloudbursting solution works:
    * BIG-IP solutions monitor application performance with the F5 iControl API and report conditions to the enterprise's orchestration tool of choice. This tool then triggers actions to access cloud services via the VMware vCloud API, an interface for providing and consuming virtual resources in the cloud.
    * BIG-IP GTM automatically reconfigures the network according to pre-defined business policies to route traffic to the cloud, eliminating time-consuming and error-prone manual intervention.
    * SQLFabric allows the primary application database to be synchronized with a cached instance running in the cloud. BIG-IP's iSessions technology encrypts and optimizes traffic between the private data center and the cloud for those synchronization transactions, accelerating back-end database replication while reducing bandwidth consumption.
    * BIG-IP LTM Virtual Edition enables customers to upload BIG-IP LTM to the cloud as a virtual machine, offering the same ADN functionality in the cloud as in the private data center.

"The joint solution between F5 and VMware highlights the importance of an agile Application Delivery Network and illustrates the ability to deliver applications in a hybrid cloud built on the industry-leading virtualization and cloud platform," said Dan Chu, VP, Cloud Infrastructure and Services, VMware. "Together with VMware vCloud Director, F5 helps deliver the elasticity that organizations are looking for as they tap into hybrid cloud services. The integration and automation of this joint solution benefits customers by increasing application availability and operational flexibility while reducing costs to deliver IT as a service."All F5 products that comprise the cloudbursting solution are available today. GemStone SQLFabric is available today. VMware vCloud Director was announced during VMworld 2010 and is generally available.