Brocade ServerIron ADX Series
The Brocade ServerIron ADX Series of high-performance application delivery switches provides a broad range of application optimization functions to ensure the reliable delivery of critical applications. Purpose-built for large-scale, low-latency environments, the ServerIron ADX Series accelerates application performance and improves application availability–all while making the most efficient use of existing infrastructure.
The Brocade ServerIron ADX Series of data center-class switches enables low-latency, high-performance delivery of business-critical Web applications from BEA, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Siebel, and infrastructure services such as DNS, RADIUS, firewalls, and cache services. In addition, these switches deliver HTTP performance with up to 3 million connections per second and 70 Gbps throughput. Working in conjunction with the Brocade Application Resource Broker, the ServerIron ADX Series provides greater application visibility and elasticity in virtualized and cloud environments.
INDUSTRY-LEADING APPLICATION DELIVERY PERFORMANCE
The ServerIron ADX application delivery switches provide up to 3 million HTTP connections per second, and up to 70 Gbps of HTTP application throughput. The ServerIron ADX switch also acts as a high-performance proxy for DNS server farms, delivering up to 18 million DNS queries per second. Moreover, the ServerIron ADX Series provides reliable protection against many forms of Denial of Service attacks (DoS), such as DNS and SYN attacks, and offers industry-leading data rates of up to 120 million SYN attack preventions per second while servicing legitimate traffic.
The ServerIron ADX Series has demonstrated that it can support low-latency switching of application traffic–on the order of 20 microseconds–for response-sensitive applications. For many organizations, reducing latency is key to successfully delivering Web-based applications, improving the end-user experience, and ensuring customer satisfaction.
SEAMLESS TRANSITION TO IPv6
While the ubiquity of the Internet has created vast new opportunities for service providers and enterprises alike, the rapid growth of Internet-enabled devices and applications has led to IPv4 address depletion. This is forcing many organizations to begin serious adoption of IPv6. At the same time, many organizations face regulatory or governance-driven mandates to offer IPv6 services to their customers, but struggle with the cost of a complete network redesign.
The ServerIron ADX Series eases the migration to IPv6 by enabling service providers and enterprises to maximize their existing IPv4-based investments while communicating with the growing IPv6-based world–without requiring “rip-and-replace” upgrades.
IPv6 NAT64 Gateway: The ServerIron ADX Series enables IPv4 networks to interoperate with IPv6 networks via a simple and standards-based NAT64 gateway. This enables both IPv4 clients to communicate with IPv6 networks, as well as new IPv6-based clients to communicate with traditional IPv4 networks–all without requiring forklift upgrades to existing infrastructure.
IPv6 SLB Gateway: The ServerIron ADX Series also allows existing IPv4 applications to be advertised via an IPv6-based Virtual IP (VIP) service. Existing servers and applications can then be slowly migrated to IPv6 on their natural upgrade cycles. ServerIron ADX switches load-balance traffic destined to an IPv6 VIP among IPv4 application servers, enabling such application servers to be upgraded to support IPv6 at an evolutionary rate.
SIMPLIFIED ORCHESTRATION AND MANAGEMENT
Brocade Application Resource Broker is an infrastructure software component that simplifies the management of on-demand application resources within IT data centers. This solution helps ensure optimal application performance by dynamically adding and removing application resources such as Virtual Machines (VMs). The Brocade Application Resource Broker–working in tandem with the ServerIron ADX Series–provides these capabilities through real-time monitoring of application resource responsiveness and traffic load information, and capacity information from server infrastructures.
Brocade Application Resource Broker v1.5 delivers a range of capabilities to dramatically simplify management of public and private cloud environments, including:
- Increased flexibility in VM provisioning, policy management, and rules creation;
- Greater visibility into the relationships between VMs and the application delivery infrastructure that supports them;
- Enhanced monitoring and reporting for characterizing application performance in relation to VM activity and exporting this information for use with custom or third-party management tools.
OPTIMIZED APPLICATION DELIVERY
The ServerIron ADX Series offers a wide range of functions for an optimal application experience, including:
- Enterprise applications: Provides uninterrupted, high-performance, and low-latency delivery of popular applications, including Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Lync Server (formerly Microsoft Office Communications Server), SAP, Oracle, BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, and Siebel, and financial services applications based on the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol;
- Infrastructure load balancing: Increases availability of infrastructure devices such as firewalls, caches, intrusion prevention appliances, Domain Name Server (DNS) and DNS Security Extension (DNSSEC) servers, and RADIUS servers;
- Efficient load balancing: Enables efficient distribution of traffic among application servers using load-balancing methods that monitor server connection load, server resources such as CPU and memory, application response time, and pre-assigned server weights;
- Application health monitoring: Conducts periodic checks of application servers and services through Layer 2 ARP, Layer 3 PING, Layer 4 TCP three-way handshakes or UDP queries, and Layer 7 application-level queries;
- Layer 7 content inspection: Advanced Layer 7 inspection of HTTP URL, cookie, host headers, and data for maintaining application flow persistence;
- SSL and server connection offload: Offloads Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) negotiation and connection management tasks from application servers, giving servers more cycles for critical application delivery and improving application response time. Provides comprehensive support for a variety of cipher suites and 1024- and 2048-bit SSL keys;
- Application infrastructure agility: Enables on-demand inclusion and removal of application instances using Brocade Application Resource Broker.
APPLICATION RESOURCE BROKER
Brocade Application Resource Broker is an infrastructure software component that simplifies the management of on-demand application resources within IT data centers. This solution helps ensure optimal application performance by dynamically adding and removing application resources (such as VMs). The Brocade Application Resource Broker–working in tandem with the ServerIron ADX Series–provides these capabilities through real-time monitoring of application resource responsiveness and traffic load information, and capacity information from server infrastructures.
A programmable decision engine compares application experience information to preconfigured threshold rules. When thresholds are exceeded, Brocade Application Resource Broker initiates provisioning actions to ensure that necessary and appropriate application resources are available to meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
The ServerIron ADX Series with Brocade Application Resource Broker also automatically associates various application services with their respective VMs. It collects historical application-centric performance statistics to enable true application-level operational visibility. Brocade Application Resource Broker directly supports VMware environments through a vSphere Client Plug-in, and can leverage real-time application response monitoring capabilities of any ServerIron ADX switch in the network to deliver immediate provisioning adjustments in response to fluctuating demand. This helps ensure consistent and reliable application responsiveness between end users and the application infrastructure.
FLEXIBLE CONTROL INTERFACES
The ServerIron ADX Series supports a range of flexible and powerful interfaces for system configuration and management, including:
- Command Line Interface: The ServerIron ADX Series supports an industry-standard Command Line Interface (CLI) for device configuration;
- Programmatic interface: A standards-based SOAP/XML application programmatic interface allows for tighter integration with third-party orchestration and automation tools. This provides greater application visibility and control over the application infrastructure;
- Web Graphical User Interface: Application and network administrators can also utilize a browser-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) for configuring and monitoring the ServerIron ADX switches;
- SNMP support: The ServerIron ADX controllers support SNMP v1, v2, and v3, enabling device monitoring through third-party network management applications;
- Role-Based Management: This capability of the ServerIron ADX Series allows organizations to create multiple administrative domains and assign different access privileges to users inside these domains.
- Brocade Network Advisor: Large numbers of ServerIron ADX switches can be managed from one central console through Brocade Network Advisor. Brocade Network Advisor provides additional simplification tools for SSL key and certificate management, and management of application services, such as Virtual IP (VIP) Manager and Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB).
SEAMLESS TRANSITION TO IPv6
While the ubiquity of the Internet has created vast new opportunities for service providers and enterprises alike, the rapid growth of Internet-enabled devices and applications has led to IPv4 address depletion. This is forcing many organizations to begin serious adoption of IPv6. At the same time, many organizations face regulatory or governance-driven mandates to offer IPv6 services to their customers, but struggle with the cost of a complete network redesign.
The ServerIron ADX Series eases the migration to IPv6 by enabling service providers and enterprises to maximize their existing IPv4-based investments while communicating with the growing IPv6-based world�without requiring �rip-and-replace� upgrades.
IPv6 NAT64 Gateway: The ServerIron ADX Series enables IPv4 networks to interoperate with IPv6 networks via a simple and standards-based NAT64 gateway. This enables both IPv4 clients to communicate with new IPv6 networks, as well as new IPv6-based clients to communicate with traditional IPv4 networks�all without requiring forklift upgrades to existing infrastructure.
IPv6 SLB Gateway: The ServerIron ADX Series also allows existing IPv4 applications to be advertised via an IPv6-based Virtual IP (VIP) service. Existing servers and applications can then be slowly migrated to IPv6 on their natural upgrade cycles. The ServerIron ADX switches load-balance traffic destined to an IPv6 VIP among IPv4 application servers, enabling such application servers to be upgraded to support IPv6 at an evolutionary rate.
ALWAYS-ON APPLICATION AVAILABILITY
The ServerIron ADX application delivery switches maximize availability and provide non-stop delivery of business-critical applications through a range of capabilities, including:
High availability: The ServerIron ADX Series provides multiple high-availability options to suit varying infrastructure and business needs for overall enhanced application resiliency. Real-time synchronization of sessions between two peer ServerIron ADX units operating in high-availability mode provides protection against system outages. If one device shuts down, then the second device transparently resumes control of client traffic, with no loss to existing sessions or connectivity.
Site redundancy using GSLB: Organizations deploying multiple, geographically disparate data centers can benefit from Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB). This capability allows the ServerIron ADX switches to distribute client traffic among data center sites based on site availability, site load, and several other metrics. The ServerIron ADX switches determine client-to-server proximity by computing the round-trip delay between the client and the data center site. To provide the optimal user experience, the least-loaded, closest available sites to the client are selected to deliver application traffic.
The ServerIron ADX switches also continually monitor data center sites to detect any changes in servers or services due to varying health and traffic conditions. Configurable site load thresholds allow organizations to align health-checking parameters with the server and service capabilities of each site. All of these features work in conjunction with existing DNS as well as DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) servers to minimize service disruption and maximize application uptime.
Site redundancy using healthy route injection: The ServerIron ADX Series provides a site redundancy solution for non-DNS�based infrastructures by injecting network routes for healthy VIP from multiple data center locations. These network routes are propagated through routing protocols, such as BGP, IS-IS, and OSPF, enabling clients to connect to the closest available site.
HIGH-PERFORMANCE ARCHITECTURE
The ServerIron ADX application delivery switches provide up to 3 million HTTP connections per second and 70 Gbps of HTTP application traffic throughput. The ServerIron ADX switch also acts as a high-performance proxy for back-end DNS server farms, delivering up to 18 million DNS queries per second. Moreover, the ServerIron ADX switches provide reliable protection against many forms of Denial of Service attacks (DoS), such as DNS attacks and SYN attacks, and offer industry-leading data rates of up to 120 million SYN attack preventions per second while servicing legitimate traffic.
The ServerIron ADX Series has demonstrated that it can support low-latency switching of application traffic�on the order of 20 microseconds�for response-sensitive applications. For many organizations, reducing latency is key to successfully delivering Web-based applications, improving the end-user experience and ensuring customer satisfaction.
The ServerIron ADX Series' performance leadership is based on its scalable and flexible hardware architecture. Its multi-chip, multi-core, high-density architecture is designed to provide the industry's highest performance for application delivery. The design features complete physical and logical separation of data and management planes, and a switching fabric that provides high-speed interconnect among application, management, and interface modules.
Capacity On-Demand: All ServerIron ADX switches can be quickly upgraded in the field using software keys. This allows organizations to enable a full suite of hardware and software options when needed without opening switch cases, which can disrupt service. For example, on an entry-level ServerIron ADX 1000 fixed configuration platform, the performance can be doubled or quadrupled on the box through the simple addition of a software license fully supporting a �pay-as-you-grow� deployment strategy. Additional interface density and advanced software capabilities can also be obtained with license upgrades.
BROCADE APPLICATION DELIVERY INFRASTRUCTURE COMMUNITY
ServerIron ADX users now can find numerous support resources through the Brocade Application Delivery Infrastructure (ADI) community. This group focuses on Brocade ServerIron ADX products and related partner technologies, and provides a Web 2.0 social networking resource for application and networking professionals seeking discussions, solutions, information, education, and implementation guidance.
Brocade customers and partners can easily leverage the collective knowledge and experience of the Brocade ADI community to enable real-time resolution of current application delivery challenges. Resources include the latest information and use cases, along with configuration scripts and examples. Learn more at.
