F5 Enters The Virtual ADC Market With LTM Virtual Edition

F5 Networks is dipping its toe into the virtual application delivery controller market with a free 90-day trial edition of their Local Traffic Manager, Virtual Edition (LTM VE). LTM VE is a VMware virtual appliance that is targeted at non-production developer use. F5 does plan on releasing a production version of LTM VE in the first half of 2010 and is withholding pricing until that product is available.

Following on the heels of Citrix Systems' May 2009 announcement of it Netscalar VPX virtual appliance, LTM VE, which currently only runs on VMware's vSphere ESX4, ESXi 4 and Workstation 7, is a fully functional LTM virtual appliance that is rate limited to 1Mbps throughput. The 90-day trial includes access to F5's support site and web-based support.

The first thing to note about LTM VE is that this current version is not to be used in a production deployment. The purpose is to provide developers and IT administrators a way to test web applications against an LTM deployment prior to installing a new web application or upgrading an existing one. The LTM VE runs all of the iRules--custom rules that manipulate IP traffic--that the hardware LTM runs. LTM VE supports F5's API, iControl as well. Developers can test web traffic in a mirror of their live environment. With the 90-day trial, using LTM VE is a good way to try out the product before buying.

Mandar Ghosalkar, application infrastructure manager for Byer California, a clothing manufacturer, is an F5 customer and is trialing LTM VE.  "Want to move the development environment. We have many projects that need to be tested with full environment. We'd like to get our developers off the BigIP hardware to keep them separate from production systems," Ghosalkar said in a phone interview.

What aren't available today are modules like the WEB Accelerator and Application Security Manager which enhance LTM. F5 is evaluating making those modules available in the future, and we think they should. Even though some of the modules have production value, some like Application Security Manager and Access Policy Manager do alter the application experience, and having a fully functional virtual test bed would be useful.There is potential beyond development uses. Ghosalkar said they are planning on implementing a disaster recovery plan.  Whether the DR site is hosted in-house or at a co-location provider, a virtual appliance is more flexible and less expensive than deploying redundant hardware. The requirement, of course, is whether the coming production version of LTM VE can support their processing demands. Packaging a virtual ADC is also a selling point that Citrix and Expand networks claims as an advantage with their virtual appliances.

The interesting  aspect of virtual ADC is that ADC processing can be split between hardware and software appliances. For example, CPU-intensive processes like compression and SSL termination can be performed on an hardware ADC, while application specific processing can be managed in a virtual appliance. Tightly coupling the ADC with the application--servers, databases, etc., makes application mobility much more robust.

I tested LTM VE on my development machine and I am pretty impressed with how well it ran. I installed LTM VE into VMware's Workstation 7 on a Dell Optiplex running Windows XP on a dual core CPU and 2 GB or RAM. You'll need 10GB of space--not all at once--for LTM VE as well. The virtual appliance comes with three interfaces defined. F5's suggestion is for the management interface on the LAN and the two other interfaces on the virtual network. I moved the interfaces around so I could host my web server and LTM VE on the Optiplex and access it from the LAN. Once the installation was complete, setting up LTM is straight forward. All of the templates and wizards available on the hardware version of LTM are available. I set-up a HTTP server using the Generic HTTP template. It took about five minutes, and I was load balancing through LTM VE.  LTM VE ships with templates for common applications like Sharepoint and Outlook WebAccess.

Editing iRules is fairly straightforward once you root around F5's DevCentral and locate the appropriate documentation. iRules uses TCL as the base scripting language and provides enhanced functions specific to BigIP and LTM. If you are familiar with scripting languages like Perl or PHP, picking up the basic syntax of TCL is going to be a snap. Obviously, I can't see the performance impact of various optimization options on an application, nor can I extrapolate performance numbers to a real deployment, but I wouldn't expect to do so with a development version of LTM VE.

If you are an F5 customer, LTM VE is worth checking out in your environment.  I suspect other ADC vendors will be coming out with virtual versions of their products. The application deployment benefit is compelling and the ability to try before you buy without having to invest in a test bed should help you make better purchasing decisions.