F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) announces enhanced capabilities for data center-to-data center live migration and desktop virtualization deployments. Through F5’s integration efforts with VMware, EMC, and other organizations, customers can maximize the value of technology investments and enable costs savings for virtualization and cloud deployments.
2. Announcement Highlights F5 adds to its portfolio for VMware solutions Metro vMotion with VMware vSphere 5 and EMC VPLEX Metro iApps for VMware View with BIG-IP v11 Single Namespace solution for VMware View
3. Metro vMotion Solution history F5 1st company to do long distance live migration in concert with vMotion BIG-IP v10 enabled significant performance improvements Customer challenge Disaster avoidance or disaster recovery, data center maintenance, capacity planning Migration of live virtual machines between data centers Previously (vSphere 4.x or older) only migration between data centers based on 5 ms max, stretched L2 network Migration of large amount of associated storage challenging
4. Metro vMotion Alternative approaches Migrate only short distances (5 ms) over stretched L2 network Don’t migrate between data centers F5 solution F5 GTM, LTM, and WOM provide accelerated, global connectivity to ensure live migration at higher latencies EMC VPLEX Metro provides synchronous active/active data replication (eliminating need for Storage vMotion event) vSphere 5 adding support for inter-data center vMotion events (up to 10 ms)
6. BIG-IP v11: F5 iApps Revolution Optimizing the network for specific applications takes weeks and can be frustrating F5’s unique application deployment guides helped–now just days F5’s new iApps capability reduces process to hours and minutes and it’s portable like virtual machines
11. iApps for VMware View Customer challenge Implementation and configuration of network centric settings Manual configuration time consuming and prone to mistakes Changes difficult to manage across multi data center Alternative approaches Homegrown scripts Manual configuration
12. iApps for VMware View F5 solution BIG-IPv11 provides iApps framework for rapid deployment of application centric environments iApps for VMware View implements F5 Deployment Guide Configuration takes minutes instead of hours Errors are minimized/eliminated Changes easily be replicated across multiple data centers
13. Single Namespace for VMware View Customer challenge Connecting end users to preferred data center location Based on geographical location (lowest latency) Based on business unit or customer Alternative approaches Manual configuration and maintenance of multiple namespaces
14. Single Namespace for VMware View F5 solution F5 GTM, LTM, and APM work in concert to provide a Single Namespace solution for VMware View For example, https://mydesktop.example.com Users automatically connected to the preferred data center Authentication and Authorization policies automatically applied No manual configuration of multiple namespaces
15. Summary F5 continues technology leadership with VMware solutions Server, application, and desktop virtualization Cloud computing (private, hybrid, and public) F5 offers best-of-breed innovation Security, access, automation, and traffic management