The Zeus Blog: Application Delivery, Cloud Computing, Load Balancing, Virtualization

Deliver web apps across any combination of physical, virtual and cloud datacenter - Part 1

This is the first post of a two part piece covering a number of issues raised by James Urquhart in ‘Hedge your bets in Cloud Computing’.

Everywhere you look Cloud Computing subject matter is appearing all over the place. But who should you take notice of? Who do you listen to? Whose opinion really matters? James Urquhart is one individual who seems to be talking a great deal about Cloud Computing and making a lot of sense. Having read a post of his earlier this month (Hedge your bets in Cloud Computing) I believed it tackled a number of issues very well and want to add a few of my thoughts to the discussion.

Urquhart like many others sees there being three distinct environments the traditional datacenter (including virtualization), private and public Clouds. He also sees the emergence of the hybrid model. He also points out that depending on your where your priorities and concerns lie that this will greatly affect which Cloud you plan to deploy your IT resources and services in. I will run through Cloud definitions in a later post.

If a business already has an existing IT investment this should not stop it experimenting with Cloud. For example, a business that is concerned about sensitive data like medical records or credit cards details could consider using a private Cloud which adds a substantial security edge for complying with regulatory rules and government standards. A business might then decide to experiment with a public Cloud for other applications and services that might require scaling up and down very quickly. Ultimately, the type of Cloud you go for depends largely on the services you want to use and how effectively they can be integrated into your network infrastructure. But no matter which Cloud you choose, taking the first step towards the Cloud will no doubt lead to more streamlined and cheaper services. And in this day and age, who doesn’t want that?

I agree with Urquhart when he says that many businesses will actually deploy their resources across a mix of virtualized datacenters, private and public cloud environments. At this point he then highlights a number of key questions. How will a business achieve this? How does a modern IT organization formally change its ways to be flexible to the uncertain future of its operations model?

In my next post I plan to discuss some principles Urquhart highlights that will help businesses prepare for this change. I will also highlight how businesses can monitor, manage and deliver applications and services across any combination of those three environments with one point of control.

Mark Gyles

September Events - Zeus on the road and online...

Zeus will be attending and presenting at the forthcoming events in Sept, it would great to see you there or online if you can spare the time. Zeus staff will be on hand throughout the events should you have any questions about Zeus or our solution offerings.

If you would like to set up a meeting with a Zeus member of staff while you are at any of these events please email: info(at)zeus.com.

 

VMworld 2010 - Virtual Roads, Actual Clouds | 30 August - 2 Sept | Moscone Center, San Francisco

This years event sees the organizers having developed more than 170 unique breakout sessions and 30 lab topics offered across the four days. VMworld offers additional learning opportunities with its Knowledge Experts Program, numerous networking events and the Solutions Exchange.

You will find Zeus in the New Innovator Pavilion. We will be showcasing our latest Application Delivery Controller solution the Zeus Elastic Application Delivery platform and the components that make up the platform including the Zeus Traffic Manager, Zeus Multi-Site Manager and Zeus Global Load Balancer.

Further details and registration can be found here.

 

BrightTalk Online Webinar | Managing Cloud Environments Beyond The Datacenter | 14 September | Online

One of the key promises of Cloud Computing is its ability to free an application from a single, fixed data center and scale or migrate it across a range of environments. Whether you may wish to do this for performance reasons, availability or simply to optimize the opex profile of the application, the ability to manage how users interact with the service is key.

Owen Garrett will be presenting on behalf of Zeus. Owen will use several real-world examples to demonstrate how organizations have successfully used the Cloud to help their operations expand beyond the limitation of their first data center deployment.

Full details and registration can be found here.

 

3rd Cloud Circle Forum | 16 September | Park Plaza Victoria, London 

The Cloud Circle is the UK’s first independent Business and IT focused Cloud Computing Community.  It was formed in 2009 to provide a forum for its members to exchange ideas,  expertise and best practice on Cloud Computing.

The Cloud Circle Forums focus on the Cloud ‘reality’ through providing practical case studies and real-life examples of Cloud deployments. Invited experts and members are also encouraged to share their Cloud experiences, challenges and success stories in an open and relaxed environment.

Owen Garrett,  Director of Cloud Solutions will be participating in the Big Cloud Debate at the close of the day, where members can take advantage of the opportunity to ‘grill’ him and other key solution providers on the product/solution/service offerings available.

The schedule and further details can be found here.

Mark Gyles

New MTV show to be broadcast online and online only

Reading The Guardian’s PDA Digital content blog,  MTV is about to broadcast a new ‘Skins’ like drama– the new show is also being talked about more and more on Twitter. The news comes with a twist however – it will only be broadcast online. Should the new programme, ‘Being Victor’, become as popular as Twitter is suggesting it will, MTV will need to ensure they have the technology in place to ensure the viewing experience is not compromised.

According to a story recently published story in New Media Age, the number of requests for the BBC iPlayer via computers rose 7m to 95m in May, according to the broadcaster’s latest figures. The success of BBC iPlayer and ITV Player comes as a result of a growing trust from viewers in web performance to support media rich content.

However, as requests for viewing programs continue to grow online for the major broadcasters, they will need to have the scalability and intelligence available within their IT infrastructures to continually ensure that all content streams seamlessly as viewers demand it.

Content Delivery Network (CDN) solutions are commonly used by organizations to ensure that rich media content is delivered to those requesting it. CDNs also concern themselves with the performance levels by which they are delivering the rich media content.  What we do here at Zeus and where we add value to the type of scenario that MTV might experience is by giving broadcasters an added level of intelligence to how and when they might put content out on the CDN and how the requests for the rich media are being handled. We work with one particular well known broadcaster who uses our solution (Zeus Traffic Manager) in conjunction with their CDN of choice. We provide the broadcaster with the intelligence to make decisions on when they need to start sending content onto the CDN for delivery to those requesting it.

Our solution also can be used to help when an infrastructure must scale to cope with demand for a particular service whether this additional IT resource be owned or controlled by a third party and could be another data centre, some virtual resource or even a cloud or out to a CDN. Zeus software allows you to react in different ways for different types of content for different types of users and can even allow you to put policies in place based on the geographic location of the user.

Historically the type of solution we offer here at Zeus has been hardware based, we only supply our solution as software or as a virtual appliance. Hardware based solutions do not offer broadcasters the option to grow in line with the popularity of online video – it’s neither cost effective to have all the infrastructure you might ever need nor to add expensive additional hardware resource each time the number of viewers exceeds server capacity.  Zeus Traffic Manager offers the opportunity to burst additional resource as and when it is needed, which can be scaled back when not required. This ensures web performance is maximised to maintain a constant online experience, while keeping the technology behind online broadcasts cost effective.

Mark Gyles

The practical benefits of cloud based infrastructures: responding to flash-crowd traffic and emergencies

Some of you may remember back in July we co-sponsored a live online summit run by BrightTalk focused around how to manage cloud services.

During the event I was particularly impressed with the topic, content and style that Martin Gill from HomeMade Digital a UK company conveyed during his slot. HomeMade Digital predominately support organizations in the voluntary sector, more information on HomeMade Digital can be found here.

During his slot he cites two particular organizations they work for – UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency) and NEF (New Economics Foundation). Martin shares the challenges associated with this sort of work and the ways Cloud Computing has helped make what used to be complex hardware-scaling problems into virtual scaling opportunities for each organisation.

Voluntary organizations tend to respond to events that are out of their control. Their web presences are often seen as trusted sources of information and for example can be used as the platforms for the digital collection of donations. Very often and very quickly news channels, social media platforms and word of mouth can pick up world events such as emergency situations or disasters and can lead to huge amounts of traffic (general public or other interested parties) descending on the voluntary organizations web presence looking to offer their support, offer donations or just generally find out information.

When it comes to the web infrastructures supporting these voluntary sector organizations efforts they will need to pay as little as possible for the solutions that they use to manage these peaks in traffic and the services they offer. HomeMade Digital’s challenge is to provide these organizations with the web infrastructures that are welcoming to the visitors in a scalable, secure and cost-effective environment. This tends to mean the infrastructures provided are quite dynamic with a number of different technologies being deployed from Amazon EC2 and Zeus through to PCI Compliant components hosted externally by WorldPay for example.

HomeMade Digital’s work provides some great examples of how Zeus software is used to effectively manage the traffic to the voluntary organizations web presences. Further functionality used includes content compression, content caching and in the case of the UNHCR, GeoIP detection to serve different sites and different content to people from different geographic locations. Zeus is also being used in the Cloud Computing environment to detect when resource/servers need to be scaled up or scaled down dependant on demand for a particular service. This all helps to ensure the infrastructure being used is the most cost effective and these savings are passed on to the likes of NEF and UNHCR. Cloud Computing allows them to only pay for the resources their efforts are using and are not having to pay for under-utilized or idle resource.

Cloud Computing has given HomeMade Digital the opportunity to provide infrastructures that have the capability and flexibility to scale up very quickly if needed to cope with demand for services that are placed upon them by circumstances beyond their control.

More detail around each of the infrastructures and components used by NEF and UNHCR can be found within the webcast recording and are great examples of how Cloud Computing has enabled these organizations to achieve their operational objectives.

A recording of the webcast can be found here. You will be asked to register your details to view the webcast.

Mark Gyles

Web performance on Friday

Last Friday, a colleague was trying to buy Secret Cinema tickets, a meet-up for all that love ‘challenging and groundbreaking cinema’. Yet as she went to buy her ticket from wegottickets.co.uk, she found that the website performed badly. It was slow and in turn, did not result in a positive customer experience – in the end she chose not to buy the tickets, pointing to the frustration such online issues can cause.

We see a number of these web performance issues affecting brands on a Friday. As people unwind ahead of the weekend over lunch in front of their computers, it is of little surprise that sites fall victim to web performance issues at this time. Where a customer has put up with online difficulties once, they are unlikely to return in case they face similar problems again.

There are solutions for sites like wegottickets.co.uk and our platforms put businesses in the position to stop web performance issues. Managing resource behind a campaign will better position a site to be fast, offering a positive experience to the end user. This will encourage consumers to come back again, trusting that brand’s online presence to consistently offer a high level of service.

Film Buff

Zeus 7.0 - An independent view

In previous posts Zeus' Nick Bond has highlighted and discussed features and functionality from Zeus 7.0, the latest version of our softADC (Application Delivery Controller, Application Traffic Manager). Well, now it’s time for a voice outside of the four walls of Zeus to have their say.

Jim Metzler from Ashton Metzler and Associates agreed to take a look at Zeus 7.0 and give us his view of the technology. He also gave us his thoughts on some of the industry issues surrounding Virtualization and Cloud Computing and how these movements are impacting the demands organizations are placing on their current and future deployments of Application Delivery Controllers. Below I have outlined some of his thoughts on our lastest software. The full review gives more details and highlights some of the issues surrounding Cloud Computing and its adoption, and how the latest version of our software can help alleviate these.

Jim welcomes the latest software version that allows IT organizations to manage global application traffic management configurations and policies from a single site. He sees this particularly relevant to organizations that want to take advantage of what is known as 'Cloud Bursting'. This is, for example, where an organization may wish to use resources from a public Cloud provider as demand for their own services increases and their current capacity is being stretched. To take advantage of this organizations would need utilise the capabilities of the Zeus Multi-Site Manager and Zeus' auto-scaling capabilities (part of Zeus 7.0). Zeus' auto-scaling capabilities allows for dynamically increasing or decreasing system capacity based on demand and works on multiple hypervisors and not just VMware : )

If you would like to read the review in full you can get a copy here.

Mark Gyles

Ovum warns of retail jumping online without the right infrastructure

Really interesting to read the Ovum report written by Christine Bardwell discussing the growth of retail websites in Computer Weekly’s IT Management section. The content points to the fact that a buoyant online retail market has driven many businesses to set up websites, but increased demand is overwhelming retailers' platforms.

It’s crucial all retailers make sure they have a highly performant website in place  when planning to compete in the digital retail space. There is nothing worse than planning the perfect promotion and generating a surge in online interest, but to then not have the technology in place because no-one warned IT.

A smooth user experience online requires an appropriate traffic management solution to be in place, so that there is a solid basis to run successful campaigns online. Customer loyalty online is weaker than on the high street but consumer expectations about the level of service they expect is higher. Although a huge flash flood of visitors to a website is desirable for any brand, if that flood results in disappointment for customers, the negative consequences can be far reaching and long-lasting. Consumers today want brands to be online and available 24/7.

Here at Zeus we are able to make this as cost-effective as possible too. Working with the Cloud allows for our resource to be scaled up and down at a rate that is in line with the needs of the retailer. Gone are the days when infrastructure is built to be as big as it ever need to be and this puts us in a much stronger position that our hardware-based competitors.

Curing the multi-location environment headache

Adoption of cloud based services is clearly on the up. Further to this, recent news from V3.co.uk  reports on new figures from Gartner that found that worldwide software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenues in the enterprise application software market will surpass $8.5bn (£5.6bn) this year.

Businesses however will need to make sure that they have a strategic approach to multi-location environments. Research we conducted last month reveals some of the challenges companies are already facing in managing applications across multiple environments.

A massive 95 per cent of IT professionals surveyed now look after complex multi-location environments, so it comes as little surprise that 66 per cent of respondents have concerns about how websites will perform in Virtual environments compared with Physical. This is even more worrying given that the majority (68%) of respondents are challenged by a lack of understanding of how their websites are performing at all.

In response to this, we are helping our customers via our new Zeus Elastic Application Delivery platform. This provides businesses with the ability to deliver fast, secure and available web applications across multiple datacenters and Clouds seamlessly, while providing deep, real-time performance visibility. We are confident that this development will ease the concerns connected to these issues and put our clients in a position to create, manage and deliver exceptional online services that give companies that essential competitive edge.

Fly Traffic Management

It’s been great to see such good traction with the media around our appointment by STA Travel. We have started working with the company to provide their users with a much faster and highly accessible website. Given that STA Travel told us their site is subject to 5,000 hits per minute (and that’s just in EMEA), it’s hardly surprising that the site was getting pretty busy for their users at peak times.

The travel sector may have been hit hard during the recession, but recent research has suggested that online holiday bookings are still growing. A report from the European Travel Index from the Centre for Economics and Business Research says that the Internet remains a strategic driver for holiday spending and continues to be the biggest area of growth within the travel industry. Some 54 per cent of all web users across Europe research and book travel related services through the Internet. The findings go on to say that online travel spend across Europe has climbed from €58.4bn in 2008 to €66.9bn in 2009, and is predicted to reach €74.3bn by the end of 2010.

So with the online travel industry continuing to grow, the post recession consumer is still looking to book holidays this year. However, travel companies should note that a poor online experience may cause them to turn to competitors if a website fails to deliver the services it ought. When faced with the prospect of extra traffic, this can lead many companies to believe that the only way they can afford to cope with busy periods is to have the necessary hardware in place just in case the site becomes overloaded.

STA Travel chose Zeus over alternative hardware-based products, because our software solution allows STA Travel to quickly scale up the resource they needed as and when required.  This is far more cost-effective than investing in hardware that is only used at busy times. By putting the software solution in place to deal with peaks in visitors, the company can also be rest assured that customer loyalty issues do not come as a  result of poorly managed traffic.

Concerned about application performance if you virtualize your Application Delivery Controller?

For those of you that were unable to attend a webinar (Virtualization and Application Performance) we co-hosted earlier this month you will be pleased to hear that we recorded the event and are now offering it as an on-demand webcast. The webinar was co-hosted with Jim Metzler from Ashton Metzler and Associates and discussed the impact of Virtualization in the datacenter on application performance.

One topic touched on during the webcast that particularly interested me was how many individuals still have concerns over application delivery controller virtual appliances, and how they believe particular functions are still performed better in hardware. Research highlighted on the webcast suggests that two thirds of IT organizations are more concerned about web application performance in the virtual environment than in the physical environment, why? During the webcast Owen Garrett highlights some benchmark testing undertaken by us at Zeus. It shows, that those concerned about web application performance should not see Virtualization of application delivery controllers as a road block.

Viewing the webcast will also enable you to gain an understanding of what the benefits are of running network services inside the virtual fabric and how you can deliver fast, secure and available applications across any combination of physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures.

So, if you can spare some time and would like to learn more about the benchmark results and hear some examples of customers who have virtualized their application delivery controllers, take a look at the on-demand webcast. You will be asked to register your details to view the webcast.

The time has come to put the concerns of web application performance in the virtual environment behind you.

Mark Gyles