:: News

2011-11-16 - F5 Teams with NetApp and VMware to Enable Live Migration for Applications:
VMware-validated solution combines BIG-IP products with NetApp and VMware technologies to help organizations improve deployment and migration of virtual machines

SEATTLE, November 16, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced improved live virtual machine migration capabilities for customers leveraging NetApp® unified storage and VMware virtualization solutions. Based on recent performance testing results, this new solution combines the companies’ technologies to help customers seamlessly migrate live virtual machines between data centers without any perceivable disruption to users or applications.



“Strong partnerships with industry leaders such as NetApp and VMware help us maximize the efficiency of customers’ virtualization and cloud deployments,” said Jim Ritchings, VP of Business Development at F5 Networks. “By implementing F5, NetApp, and VMware products in concert, our customers can dynamically and cost effectively scale application resources across data centers, providing higher availability and optimized performance for multiple scenarios—including geographically dispersed users, disaster avoidance, and consolidation efforts—to avoid planned downtime within data centers.”

F5 has continued its collaboration with NetApp and VMware to further simplify the migration of applications between data centers. Combining F5, NetApp, and VMware technologies, customers can optimize performance to improve the effectiveness of live migrations of virtual machines as well as applications that were not originally designed for distributed deployment.

The combination of VMware vSphere®5, VMware vMotion®, NetApp FlexCache®, and F5’s BIG-IP® products enables customers to seamlessly distribute application deployments and virtual machines across multiple data centers, bolstering business continuity/disaster avoidance efforts. Through F5’s broader BIG-IP portfolio of Local Traffic Manager™, Global Traffic Manager™, and WAN Optimization Manager™ solutions, F5 ensures that user requests can be redirected and optimized throughout the migration process, meaning that systems can stay online and users maintain access to applications and data. In addition, because the solution has been validated through joint testing efforts, customers can be confident of reliable performance and optimized availability.

Supporting Quotes

“With the combined solution, customers can extend the benefits of virtualization beyond traditional, siloed data centers,” said Patrick Rogers, VP, Corporate Alliances at NetApp. “Customers can enjoy more control over dynamic resources, including where applications reside and the physical resources they can access. With enhanced application mobility, organizations are in a better position to proactively address changing conditions, including potential disaster scenarios in which application resources need to be diverted quickly from a site or location under duress.”

“As many organizations build out their application deployment models using virtualization and cloud technologies, interoperable solutions are increasingly attractive,” said Parag Patel, VP, Global Strategic Alliances at VMware. “VMware partners with leading network and storage vendors to help customers get the most out of their IT investments. F5 solutions, combined with VMware and NetApp technologies, enable organizations to overcome network latency across broader distances, providing fast and powerful live migration capabilities with vMotion and now Metro vMotion. We look forward to jointly developing further technology enhancements through our strong technology partnership with F5.”

Availability

All F5, NetApp, and VMware products and technologies referenced in this announcement are currently available.

2011-11-15 - Solarflare Establishes Breakthrough MPI Latency Performance With Platform MPI 8.1:
has established industry-leading MPI latency for standard 10GbE server adapters using the standard, unmodified version of Platform MPI 8.1, without requiring the purchase of additional acceleration software -- while maintaining 100% POSIX sockets TCP compatibility

IRVINE, Calif.—November 15, 2011—Solarflare, the leader in application-intelligent 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) networking hardware and software has established industry-leading MPI latency for standard 10GbE server adapters using the standard, unmodified version of Platform MPI 8.1, without requiring the purchase of additional acceleration software -- while maintaining 100% POSIX sockets TCP compatibility.

Testing conducted by Solarflare1 with its low latency server adapter reveals that significant improvement in MPI performance can be achieved with commercially available TCP/IP Ethernet products. Solarflare 10GbE server adapters attained 4.5µs MPI send/receive latency, utilizing servers and processors commonly available for High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters today.

Solarflare's industry-leading 10GbE solutions require absolutely no host software modifications, specialized network stacks, or new network protocols, while operating over standard Ethernet and requiring absolutely no special hardware.

"This analysis illustrates the significant benefits Solarflare's 10GbE server adapters bring to HPC clusters," said Mike Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Host Solutions at Solarflare. "Solarflare server adapters deliver superior performance and are exceptionally easy to use, requiring no additional software purchases, no changes to customer applications, while leveraging industry standard Ethernet infrastructure."

Platform MPI 8.1 is a high-performance, production-quality implementation of the Message Passing Interface (MPI). It is widely used in the high performance computing (HPC) industry and is considered the de facto standard for developing scalable, parallel applications.

"We are pleased to have worked with Solarflare to demonstrate the performance that can be achieved using our MPI 8.1 software and 10G Ethernet," said Tripp Purvis, Vice President Business Development, Platform Computing. "Many of our customers use 1G Ethernet today for their compute clusters, and working with Solarflare to provide a seamless upgrade path to high-performance 10G Ethernet is key to maximizing the potential of the latest multi-core processors."

Solarflare 10G Ethernet enables HPC applications to leverage more compute cycles from multi-socket, multi-core servers. This results in dramatically accelerated run times and eliminates the need to rewrite applications or change existing Ethernet and TCP/IP infrastructures.

1Test configuration: 1x CPU i5-2500K @ 3.3GHz, 4 cores, SFN5122F, OpenOnload 201109, RHEL6 update1 64-bit, Platform MPI 8.1, Intel® MPI Benchmarks 3.2.2

2011-10-10 - F5 Helps Communications Service Providers Meet Unprecedented Growth in Mobile Traffic with New DNS Services:
F5’s intelligent Domain Name System (DNS) architecture enables CSPs to build flexible, secure, and scalable IP-based networks

SEATTLE, October 10, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that its intelligent, carrier-grade Domain Name System (DNS) services enable Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to scale their DNS infrastructures more efficiently, significantly reduce costs, and more quickly deploy critical new revenue-generating services. With these services, F5 continues to fulfill its vision of Service Delivery Networking (SDN), providing a unified platform for CSPs to deliver voice, data, and video services on a single IP-based network.





Additional Resources

DNS for Service Providers – Information Page
High-Performance DNS Services on BIG-IP Version 11 – White Paper
Scalable DNS for Growth of IP Data – Industry Solution Overview
CSP Carrier-Grade DNS Services with BIG-IP Devices – Solution Profile
F5 DNS Solution for CSPs – SlideShare Presentation
No DNS? No…Anything – DevCentral Blog Post
Carrier Grade DNS: Not Your Parents’ DNS – DevCentral Blog Post
Join F5’s Service Provider Community on DevCentral




“The landscape for communications service providers is shifting radically as data traffic grows relentlessly and traditional business models move from circuit-based voice to all-IP services,” said Akshay Sharma, Research Director at Gartner. “With these changes, DNS services, which have never before taken center stage for CSPs, are more important than ever. They must be rock-solid—secure, flexible, and sophisticated enough to enable CSPs to manage distributed traffic intelligently and scale in capacity while keeping the DNS footprint and infrastructure costs to a minimum.”




CSP Business Challenges



As the number and type of mobile devices increases and subscribers demand more sophisticated multimedia services, mobile traffic continues to grow at unprecedented rates. Gartner expects mobile data traffic to grow 26-fold worldwide between 2010 and 20151. Existing CSP networks are already feeling the strain, and the volume of traffic will only increase as voice services move to all IP-based networks.

To meet these challenges, CSPs’ IP networks—and the DNS infrastructures that support them—must evolve. If the DNS infrastructure fails, subscribers cannot access services. Because DNS services are the “first stop” for every mobile Internet connection—translating a user’s request for a website to the required IP address—CSPs need a stable, intelligent, scalable, and dynamic DNS infrastructure.

The DNS infrastructure must also stand up to escalating security threats such as DDoS attacks, hijacked websites, and mobile phone malware. These attacks can cause DNS servers to fail, jeopardizing the safety of applications and data, causing potentially devastating financial consequences, and making it more difficult for CSPs to deliver a quality user experience.

“It often comes as a surprise when CSPs realize their existing DNS infrastructures can’t sustain current traffic demand, let alone handle the increases from voice over IP and other new service offerings,” said Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5. “What’s more, they’re finding the traditional approach of adding more DNS servers no longer solves the problem—it’s prohibitively expensive, won’t scale linearly, and can’t deliver the capacity needed to handle millions of DNS requests per second. Today, the average high-performance DNS server only handles about 120,000 requests per second. With F5’s new DNS services, CSPs can efficiently manage this deluge of IP traffic.”




F5 Solution Highlights



With F5’s carrier-grade DNS services, CSPs can build out flexible, reliable, and secure IP networks that meet immediate and future traffic demands, reduce complexity and costs, and help them continue to deliver quality of experience for subscribers. Benefits include:
•High-performance DNS services – F5’s chassis-based systems deliver high performance, responding to more than 15 times the volume of requests handled by traditional DNS servers.
•Unparalleled scalability – By handling millions of DNS requests per second, F5’s DNS solution significantly offloads existing DNS servers. This enables CSPs to more efficiently use network resources and eliminates the need to continually add more DNS servers to meet increasing traffic demands. In addition, new services can be added to the network transparently without disrupting existing services.
•Policy-based global traffic management – User requests and application services can be distributed within and across data centers based on business policies, data center and network conditions, and application performance, enabling a more intelligent and responsive DNS infrastructure.
•High availability of applications and services – F5’s DNS solution provides global server load balancing to help ensure high availability of mission critical and revenue-generating applications and services. High availability helps improve quality of experience, which in turn reduces churn and protects average revenue per user (ARPU).
•Superior security – Because F5’s DNS services can handle an extremely high volume of requests per second, the DNS infrastructure is able to withstand DDoS attacks. F5’s DNS solution also helps protect users by blocking known malware sites and ensuring that DNS responses are delivered from valid or trusted sites.
•Reduced complexity and cost – Providing intelligence, high performance, and unmatched scalability, F5’s DNS solution helps CSPs simplify their DNS infrastructures and more effectively manage their capital expenditures.



Service Providers Cite Improved Scalability, Availability, and Cost Control with F5



TechValidate, an independent research organization, analyzed data collected from F5 CSP customers that have experience using F5® BIG-IP® solutions. The TechValidate findings below illustrate the value F5’s solutions bring to CSPs:
•F5’s DNS functions are essential in improving scale, availability, and user experience – A global 500 telecommunications services company reported that their F5 BIG-IP products play a crucial role in delivering intelligent load balancing and traffic steering, global load balancing of DNS services, and web acceleration to their customers. Source: Engineer, Global 500 Telecommunications Services Company. TechValidate, TVID: 5DE-29D-63
•F5 solutions provide high QoE for customers – “We are able to provide a redundant solution for various end customer products and spread them across geographic locations in order to provide a high quality experience for our customers.” Source: IT Director, Global 500 Telecommunications Services Company. TechValidate, TVID: 4EA-26E-819
•F5 cost-effectively manages mobile data growth while exceeding user expectations – A Global 500 telecommunications services company was able to scale to meet rapid data growth, control infrastructure costs, and meet/exceed demanding end-user expectations by using their F5 BIG-IP products. Source: Engineer, Global 500 Telecommunications Services Company. TechValidate, TVID: A91-F7B-CE9



Availability



F5’s DNS services are available today with BIG-IP® Global Traffic Manager™ (GTM™) and BIG-IP version 11 software.

2011-10-10 - Solarflare Showcases Leading Precision Time Stamping 10GbE Products at FIA Expo 2011:
the game-changing features of the SFN5322F dual-port 10GbE SFP+ precision time stamping adapter.

FIA Expo, Chicago, IL (booth #1612)–October 10, 2011–Solarflare, the leader in application-intelligent 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) networking hardware and software, will showcase its 10GbE server adapter with precision time stamping at the FIA Expo 2011, October 10-12, at the Hilton Chicago. Customers will be able to learn about the game-changing features of the SFN5322F dual-port 10GbE SFP+ precision time stamping adapter at Solarflare and Arista Networks' booth #1612, Northwest Hall. This new product enables a unique model for monitoring, auditing and analyzing high-frequency trading applications, extending the reach of precision time protocol to 10GbE networks. Solarflare's networking and hardware solutions provide a flexible, direct model for accelerating applications, while maintaining support for network and operating system functions.

Delivering the highest-performance, lowest-latency network results Solarflare's SFN5322F enables IT managers to extend the reach of clock synchronization with off-the-shelf 10GbE networking gear. The IEEE 1588 precision time protocol (PTP) is one thousand times more precise than previous generations, offering sub-microsecond timing accuracy, at a fraction of the cost of specialized network time appliances. The adapter participates in an automated time distribution and messaging scheme to accurately and consistently set time on all servers in the network to the correct time. By implementing Solarflare's PTP NIC, IT managers can improve the performance of high-frequency trading networks, while gaining greater transparency for internal compliance, and ensure conformance with external legal and regulatory requirements.

"Solarflare's solutions deliver extremely low latency and low jitter, at extremely high message rates, all without requiring the customer to modify their application," said Bruce Tolley, vice president of solutions marketing at Solarflare. "These features have helped us win banks, exchanges, trading firms and other scale out computing customers, providing a critical performance edge in a market where latency and performance matter."

Solarflare's application-intelligent 10GbE server adapters and OpenOnload middleware were recently deployed by CBOE Holdings and NYSE Euronext to enhance network performance. Implemented across CBOE’s all-electronic C2 Options Exchange, CBOE Futures Exchange and CBOE Stock Exchange, CBOE technologist collaborated with Solarflare and Arista to enhance the performance of its CBOE Direct trading platform. NYSE Euronext also implemented Solarflare's solutions to accelerate several billion daily transactions and quotes processed across its liquidity centers. A top-selling solution on Wall Street, Solarflare's 10GbE hardware and software provide a new level of network intelligence by tightly coupling high-performance trading applications to the network, delivering dramatic improvements in performance, bandwidth and response time.

To schedule a time to view Solarflare's showcase, please email solarflare@lewispr.com.

About Solarflare

Solarflare is the leading provider of application-intelligent networking I/O products that bridge the gap between applications and the network, delivering improved performance, increased scalability, and higher return on investment. The company's solutions are widely used in scale-out server environments such as high frequency trading, high performance computing, cloud, virtualization and big data. Solarflare's products are available from leading distributors and value-added resellers, as well as from Dell, IBM, and HP. Solarflare is headquartered in Irvine, California and has an R&D site in Cambridge, UK.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.
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2011-10-10 - F5 Introduces High-Performance Platforms to Help Organizations Optimize Application Delivery and Reduce Costs:
F5’s new BIG-IP solutions enable customers to accelerate applications, ensure FIPS compliance, and increase the efficiency of dynamic data centers

SEATTLE, October 10, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced new BIG-IP® platform offerings. Adding to F5’s broad range of Application Delivery Controller (ADC) solutions, the BIG-IP 11000 platform is specifically designed for high levels of throughput, making it an ideal solution to support application acceleration to improve user experience, and data center-to-data center replication to enhance disaster recovery efforts and overall business continuity.





Additional Resources

The Need for Speed: F5 Acceleration Portfolio – White Paper
F5 BIG-IP Platform Security – White Paper
Speed, Volume, and F5 – DevCentral Blog Post
Security, not HSMs, in Droves – DevCentral Blog Post
BIG-IP Hardware Datasheet
BIG-IP Hardware Updates – SlideShare Presentation




With today’s announcement, F5 is also introducing Federal Information Processing Standard-compliant Hardware Security Module editions of the BIG-IP 11000 and 11050 platforms to help government, healthcare, and financial services organizations meet demanding security requirements, including SSL encryption mandates. By enabling customers to manage FIPS security through the BIG-IP system instead of on individual servers, organizations are able to save up to 25 percent on compliance costs alone. In addition to the new 11000 series releases, F5 is expanding its 6900 series to include the BIG-IP® 6900S hardware platform to support applications that require high levels of SSL processing.

“F5 provides a broad portfolio of hardware and virtual ADC platforms to help organizations seamlessly and efficiently integrate application services within a scalable, dynamic data center framework,” said Karl Triebes, SVP of Product Development and CTO at F5. “The 11000 platform is particularly well suited to help organizations combine acceleration and optimization services with other application delivery functions, resulting in superior user experience, significant cost reductions, and streamlined management operations. By providing flexible deployment options for customers, organizations can grow their infrastructures on demand to take advantage of resource-based computing models, including cloud environments.”

Details

F5 provides purpose-built hardware for the BIG-IP product family to help organizations address their most significant application delivery challenges. Along with the recent introduction of F5’s BIG-IP version 11, F5’s extensible hardware and software solutions integrate application delivery, security, acceleration, and optimization services to meet customers’ evolving needs. With the introduction of the BIG-IP 11000, 11000/11050 FIPS, and 6900S platforms, F5 is enhancing its flexible deployment options to help organizations implement dynamic data centers with hardware-based or hybrid application delivery architectures.

Combined with BIG-IP version 11, the new hardware platforms help customers:
•Integrate Application Delivery Services for Streamlined Operations

With the BIG-IP system’s TMOS® architecture, only F5 can provide truly integrated application delivery services, enabling organizations to accelerate applications, scale deployments, and consolidate infrastructures. Because of this unified approach, F5’s ADC platforms are uniquely positioned to help organizations deploy applications faster in traditional, virtual, or cloud environments to better serve globally dispersed users and devices. With the 11000 platform in particular, customers have a high-performance solution designed to support BIG-IP WAN Optimization Manager™ and BIG-IP WebAccelerator™ deployments, as well as other F5® product module offerings.
•Ensure Optimized Performance, High Availability, and Reduced Operations Costs

The 11000 platform enables enterprises to cost-effectively combine traditional ADC functionality with web acceleration and data replication capabilities, helping organizations optimize user experience and meet service level agreements related to business continuity. Boasting up to 20 Gbps of LAN-side throughput, 16 Gbps of hardware compression, and optional solid-state drives, the 11000 provides unmatched performance and reliability in its class. With optimized data center-to-data center replication, users enjoy high availability of applications and administrators benefit from shortened backup windows, improving business continuity overall. Moreover, deploying the 11000 with F5’s WAN optimization and web acceleration solutions can further reduce data center costs by offloading SSL, compression, and caching functions from application servers.
•Uphold Compliance and Security Standards to Protect Organizations

With today’s announcement, F5’s 11000 and 11050 ADC platforms are also being offered in FIPS-compliant Hardware Security Module editions to help customers meet the stringent security and compliance mandates their industries require. In particular, U.S. government agencies are required to use FIPS-compliant products to protect sensitive data. In combining FIPS capabilities with application delivery services on a single device, the BIG-IP 11000 series provides compelling price/performance advantages and protection for SSL-encrypted application traffic while simplifying compliance management. Capable of processing 50K SSL transactions per second, the 11000 and 11050 platforms offer the highest level of FIPS 140-2 Level 2 performance in the industry. Additionally, the new BIG-IP 6900S platform provides significantly enhanced SSL performance and encryption to help keep enterprise customers’ data secure as they transition to 2048-bit SSL certificates in line with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s recommendations.

Supporting Quotes

“F5 provides a unified architecture to consolidate services without sacrificing the flexibility and agility necessary to support virtualization and cloud deployments,” said Cindy Borovick, Program VP, Enterprise and Datacenter Networks at IDC. “By adding intelligence to the network, F5 ADCs can help organizations optimize applications and better address security and compliance concerns according to their needs.”

AccessIT Group is a premier provider of IT security and infrastructure technologies ranging from Security Policy and Solution Design to Security Solution installation and implementation. “We combine state-of-the-art products with advanced technical knowledge to deliver holistic security and acceleration solutions for our global clients,” said Joe Luciano, CEO at AccessIT Group. “As an IT security integrator, many organizations come to us to bring their systems in line with compliance mandates as quickly and efficiently as possible. With F5’s new set of ADC platform offerings, we can provide tailored application delivery solutions to meet stringent encryption, security, and disaster recovery requirements without compromising performance.”

Availability

The BIG-IP 6900S and 11000 hardware platforms, as well as FIPS-compliant versions of the 11000 and 11050 are orderable today and will be available by November 2011. For more information on F5’s BIG-IP solutions, please visit www.f5.com/products/big-ip.

2011-10-05 - F5 Networks’ BIG-IP System Achieves Oracle Database Ready and Oracle WebLogic Ready Status:
F5’s BIG-IP products tested, tuned, and ready to run with Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server

ORACLE OPENWORLD 2011, SAN FRANCISCO, October 05, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that its BIG-IP® solutions have achieved Oracle Database Ready and Oracle WebLogic Ready status through Oracle PartnerNework (OPN). This achievement recognizes that F5 has fully tested and supports its BIG-IP version 10 products on Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Release 1. F5 is a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork.

The Oracle Exastack Ready program recognizes partners like F5 for developing, testing, and tuning their solutions with the latest component products of the Oracle Exadata Database Machine or Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud engineered systems.

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and F5 solutions offer industry-leading performance, reliability, and scalability to power the most demanding business-critical applications. These technologies also help customers save money by lowering storage usage, reducing administration tasks, and enabling consolidation onto secure private database cloud environments. Oracle WebLogic Server, the number-one application server by market share and growth, provides a highly innovative, reliable, scalable, and performant cloud application foundation.

The BIG-IP product family consists of physical and virtual solutions that provide integrated application delivery services such as acceleration, security, access control, and high availability. With the BIG-IP system, customers can implement agile, scalable IT infrastructures to meet the evolving needs of their organizations. Having achieved Oracle Database Ready and Oracle WebLogic Ready status for its BIG-IP products, F5 will receive access to corresponding Oracle branding, logos, and related benefits to effectively differentiate its offerings in the market.

“With F5’s Oracle Database Ready and Oracle WebLogic Ready status, joint customers can be confident that the combination of BIG-IP, Oracle Database, and Oracle WebLogic Server will help them optimize application and database environments and provide incremental security at each layer in the Oracle technology stack,” said Calvin Rowland, VP of Application Partner Programs at F5.

“The Oracle Exastack Program enables partners to deploy their applications with a complete, integrated, and cloud-ready infrastructure that will help them accelerate innovation, unlock new features and functionality, and deliver faster, more reliable solutions,” said Kevin O’Brien, Senior Director, ISV and SaaS Strategy, Oracle. “By achieving Oracle Database Ready and Oracle WebLogic Ready status for its solutions, F5 has established a foundation to efficiently run with and leverage the latest features in Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server to deliver superior value to customers.”

About the Oracle Exastack Program


The Oracle Exastack Program helps enable Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and other members of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) to rapidly build and deliver faster, more reliable applications. Leveraging the Oracle Exastack Program, qualifying OPN members have access to Oracle performance experts and dedicated labs for testing and tuning their applications on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Customers can be confident when selecting Oracle Exastack Optimized applications that they have been tested and tuned to achieve optimal performance, scalability and reliability. Also part of the program, Oracle Exastack Ready is dedicated to helping ISVs run their solutions on the latest major release of Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic component products, including Oracle Database, Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux and Oracle VM. These products provide partners with a lower cost and high performance infrastructure for database and application workloads across on-premise and cloud based environments. To find out more, visit http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/exastack.

About Oracle PartnerNetwork

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle’s partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle’s growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise and proven success. To find out more, visit www.oracle.com/partners.

2011-09-14 - ARISTA NETWORKS PRODUCTS WIN BEST OF VMWORLD AWARD:
Arista Switch Family with VMTracer/VXLAN Support selected as Best Hardware for Virtualization by Customers, Analysts, and Editors

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — September 6, 2011 – Arista Networks, Inc. the leader in next-generation data center switching for cloud networking, today announced that it has been recognized by VMworld and TechTarget’s SearchServerVirtualization.com as the Best of VMworld 2011 in the Hardware for Virtualization category. The win was based on live demonstrations of Arista's VM Tracer, a capability that is natively integrated into the Arista Extensible Operating System (EOS) and works with the entire Arista 7000 Family of Cloud Networking Switches, and links the Arista switches to VMware's vSphere and vCloud Director creating an adaptive infrastructure whereby the network responds to sensed changes in the virtual machine network. This combination of VXLAN and VM Tracer expands the economic savings of virtualization network wide delivering seamless virtual machine provisioning regardless of compute or storage resource location.

The nominations for the 2011 Best of VMworld Awards were evaluated by a team of expert judges – consisting of editors, independent analysts, consultants and users of VMware. Over 250 candidates vied for Best of VMworld consideration in eight different categories and each year, winners prove to be the key players in the continuing evolution of virtualization technology. Arista’s Extensible Operating System, the world’s most advanced network operating system, is specifically designed to address demanding customer requirements for virtualization, cloud computing, and big data applications. EOS is built on an open framework enabling rapid API integration with Software Defined Networking (SDN) systems such as VXLAN and other controller based systems.

"Building upon the strong partnership between Arista and VMware that began with VM Tracer, Arista and VMware collaborated on the development of VXLAN," stated Allwyn Sequeira, vice president, security and networking solutions at VMware. "Arista's receiving the Best of VMWorld Award for 'Best Hardware for Virtualization' is a testament to innovation and engineering excellence at Arista and the collaboration between VMware and Arista to deliver customers data center networking solutions optimized for virtualization and cloud environments"

EOS with VM Tracer was demonstrated working with the new VXLAN capability that enables stateful VM mobility across Layer-3 router boundaries where Arista creates the links between the physical network and virtual network to automate the provisioning and simplify operations and troubleshooting in a VLAN tunneled environment. VXLAN support is built on top of Arista’s VM Tracer which supports native vSphere and vCloud integration providing VLAN auto-provisioning and enabling fully automated cloud deployments.

“Close collaboration on VXLANS with our customers and engineering team, focused on real-world operational problems always results in useful and practical innovations like VM Tracer and VXLAN,” commented Douglas Gourlay, vice president at Arista Networks. “By focusing on the customer Arista has created the best networking platform for virtualization and cloud computing.”

2011-09-14 - Solarflare and Arista Networks Complete Ultra Low Latency Switch and Adapter Testing With OpenOnload:
Conducted by Solarflare and Arista Networks in Solarflare's Cambridge, UK labs, the test results showed that single digit microsecond UDP and TCP application latency can be achieved with commercially available TCP/IP Ethernet products.

IRVINE, CA–September 14, 2011–Solarflare, the leader in application-intelligent 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) networking hardware and software, and Arista Networks, the leading vendor of ultra low-latency 10GbE and cloud networking solutions, today announced jointly the completion of low-latency switch and adapter testing. Technology partners since October 2009, the two companies collaborated to address the growing need for low-latency, high-performance 10GbE switch-to-server solutions for high frequency trading and other demanding applications, such as cloud networking and big data.

Conducted by Solarflare and Arista Networks in Solarflare's Cambridge, UK labs, the test results showed that single digit microsecond UDP and TCP application latency can be achieved with commercially available TCP/IP Ethernet products. Application performance of TCP/UDP messaging was measured using the Solarflare® SFN5122F 10GbE server adapter with OpenOnload® middleware and the Arista DCS-7124SX 10GbE switch. The testing used servers and processors available for clusters and data centers today. Running various scenarios, Solarflare and Arista Networks found:
•In half round trip testing, the Arista DCS-7124SX switch demonstrated mean application latency as low as 520 nanoseconds with 64-byte packets typical of messaging applications.
•With back-to-back servers, the Solarflare SFN5122F adapter achieved mean TCP latencies as low as 3.1 microseconds.
•In TCP testing, server-to-switch-to-server mean latency was as low as 3.6 microseconds.
•In UDP testing, with back-to-back servers, the Solarflare SFN5122F adapter achieved mean UDP latencies as low as 2.9 microseconds.
•The server-to-switch-to-server mean UDP latency was as low as 3.4 microseconds.

The complete test report will be available for download within 30 days from the Solarflare website, http://www.solarflare.com.

Solarflare's SFN5122F is the lowest-latency, lowest-power 10GbE server adapter on the market. When combined with OpenOnload, the Solarflare adapter can achieve ultra low TCP/UDP application latency and millions of messages per second. By improving the host CPU efficiency, OpenOnload enables applications to leverage more server resources, resulting in dramatically accelerated application performance without any need to rewrite applications or change the existing Ethernet and TCP/IP infrastructure.

The Arista 7124SX is the lowest latency L2/L3 Ethernet switch available today. It delivers 500 nanosecond latency, as demonstrated in these tests, and is purpose-built for financial services and other high performance applications. Arista's ability to lower latency increases CPU efficiency, ensures applications are waiting for data less often and allows the entire IT infrastructure to be more competitive.

"It is vitally important to Arista Networks to find the 10GbE server adapter vendor that matched the demanding performance requirements of high frequency trading, HPC and big data customers. This means not just low application latency, but also the ability to support and accelerate common layer 2 network protocols, such IGMP multicast and Arista's multi chassis link aggregation (MLAG) protocol," said Ed Chapman, vice president of business development at Arista Networks. "By using the Solarflare server adapter with OpenOnload and our DCS 7100 series switches, we have seen multiple customers design and deploy networks that support ultra low latency, high message rates and very low jitter."

"Low-latency 10GbE is becoming increasingly important to customers spanning different industries, as every microsecond counts for high performance applications," said Bruce Tolley, vice president of solutions marketing at Solarflare. "Arista switches not only deliver low latency, but also Layer 2/3 protocol features required by our customers, making Arista a perfect partner."

About Solarflare

Solarflare is the leading provider of application-intelligent networking I/O products that bridge the gap between applications and the network, delivering improved performance, increased scalability, and higher return on investment. The company's solutions are widely used in scale-out server environments such as high frequency trading, high performance computing, cloud, virtualization and big data. Solarflare's products are available from leading distributors and value-added resellers, as well as from Dell, IBM, and HP. Solarflare is headquartered in Irvine, California and has an R&D site in Cambridge, UK.

About Arista Networks

Arista Networks was founded to deliver Cloud Networking Solutions for large data center and computing environments. Arista's award-winning best-of-breed 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches redefine scalability, robustness, and price-performance. At the core of Arista's platform is EOS a ground-breaking new software architecture. Arista Networks markets its products worldwide through distribution partners, systems integrators and resellers.Additional information and resources on today's announcement can be found at: http://www.aristanetworks.com

Arista CloudVision is a registered trademark and Arista EOS is a trademark of Arista Networks. All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

2011-09-13 - BIG-IP Edge Gateway Earns 2011 Readers’ Choice Award from Information Security Magazine and SearchSecurity.com:
F5’s unified access and acceleration solution tops Best Secure Remote Access Products category

SEATTLE, September 13, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that the F5® BIG-IP® Edge Gateway™ solution has been recognized as part of the TechTarget® Information Security™ magazine and SearchSecurity.com™ 2011 Readers’ Choice Awards, highlighting the industry’s best security products. F5 was named a Gold Winner in the Best Secure Remote Access Products category, finishing above offerings from Juniper and SonicWALL.





Additional Resources

BIG-IP Edge Gateway Product Information
BIG-IP Edge Gateway Voted Best Secure Remote Access Product – F5 DevCentral Blog Post




“Recognition from industry experts and professionals provides further evidence of the compelling value proposition offered by F5’s security and access solutions,” said Mark Vondemkamp, Director of Product Management, Security at F5. “As enterprises seek to support a broader range of smartphones and tablets, they’re looking for scalable solutions like BIG-IP Edge Gateway that can integrate a number of application services to provide seamless access and an optimized user experience.”

An article announcing award winners on SearchSecurity.com noted that, “Readers gave BIG-IP Edge Gateway high marks for end-user transparency and ease of use. Authentication support was also rated highly by users of the product, in addition to BIG-IP Edge Gateway’s outstanding gateway functions and ease of management and support.”

Details

The 2011 Readers’ Choice Awards program was structured around extensive, in-depth discussions and interviews between TechTarget editors, security technology experts, and the TechTarget User Advisory board—made up ofchiefsecurityofficers from major U.S. corporations—to define the appropriate categories and criteria that encompass critical security technologies and functionality.

Following this determination, TechTarget then asked more than 1,500 readers—largely composed of information security executives and managers—to assess and rate products they deploy within their organizations from a listing of more than 360 products. Based on their cumulative responses, the judging panel selected Gold, Silver, and Bronze award winners in each of the 14 security product categories.

BIG-IP Edge Gateway combines remote access VPN, site-to-site VPN, SoftWOC, web acceleration, and WAN optimization services on a single, easy to manage device. The solution secures and accelerates application delivery to remote office and mobile users. BIG-IP Edge Gateway can scale to support more than 1,000 logins per second and up to 60,000 concurrent user sessions, with greater than 10 Gbps of SSL VPN throughput.

For more information on F5’s win in TechTarget’s Information Security magazine and SearchSecurity.com 2011 Readers’ Choice Awards, please visit: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/magazineContent/Best-secure-remote-access-products-2011

2011-08-30 - Brocade Revolutionizes IT Economics With Subscription-Based Pricing for Network Infrastructure :
Brocade Network Subscription Enables Customers to Align Network Investments With Actual Usage But Without Capital Expenditures

LAS VEGAS, NV -- (Marketwire) -- 08/30/2011 -- (VMworld 2011) -- Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced the availability of an innovative, subscription-based acquisition option for network infrastructure that allows organizations to align network capacity with fluctuating business demands. Brocade® Network Subscription is optimized to address the unique requirements of cloud-based IT environments and represents a viable new procurement alternative that offers customers the most flexible, open-ended network acquisition option available today.

Brocade Network Subscription revolutionizes network acquisition by giving customers the flexibility to scale up and down according to actual network utilization with minimal risk and no capital outlay. With Brocade Network Subscription, customers pay for their network infrastructure on a monthly basis, allowing them to align network capacity with actual usage and thereby reducing costs and mitigating capital risk. Additionally, the open-ended structure of Brocade Network Subscription affords organizations a new level of flexibility in managing their technology assets, such as the ability to refresh network technology outside of traditional purchase cycles.

This unprecedented level of risk mitigation and flexibility makes Brocade Network Subscription an attractive option for enterprises, service providers and government entities that are faced with budget constraints or are looking for more predictable expense management.

"The challenge facing IT organizations today is that new technologies such as cloud computing are coming to the fore and are making it much more difficult to project and predict workloads. A flexible acquisition option like Brocade Network Subscription enables organizations to add and reconfigure resources in a much more compacted time frame," said Joe Pucciarelli, Program Director of Technology Financial and Executive Strategies at IDC. "As a result, IDC believes that offerings like Brocade Network Subscription will rapidly become an integral method for acquiring IT resources as organizations seek to introduce heightened levels of flexibility and variability into their network infrastructure and related capacity management strategies."

Leading Cloud Computing and Managed Service Providers Turn to Brocade Network Subscription to Increase Business Agility

Rackspace Hosting, a service leader in cloud computing that delivers enterprise business solutions and services to more than 140,000 customers worldwide, is using Brocade Network Subscription to quickly bring new services to market and to calibrate its network infrastructure costs with revenues. Coupling the new acquisition model with the advanced IPv6 capabilities of Brocade application delivery products, Rackspace recognizes the inherent value of working with Brocade to build out its portfolio of value-added services.

"One of the most important factors in our business is to be able to react immediately to our customers' unique networking requirements and deliver business agility to help them maximize their IT resources," said Paul Rad, vice president of Technology & Private Cloud at Rackspace. "Brocade Network Subscription perfectly aligns to our business model as it provides networking capabilities on a metered basis, as we need them, very much in the same way our customers utilize our own services. The pay-as-you go model reduces our capital outlay so we can invest in other growth areas of our business."

CSC, a global leader in providing technology-enabled business solutions and services, determined that the innovative new approach of Brocade Network Subscription is in perfect alignment with their own business model.

"CSC will add Brocade Network Subscription as a new cloud and managed hosting service solution. This allows us a unique way to differentiate our application service offerings with incredibly flexible terms to support the rapidly changing capacity requirements of cloud environments," said Nick Wilkinson, president of Market & Product Strategy, Managed Services Sector at CSC. "Working with Brocade helps us to be more responsive to our customers' IT requirements. Customer business infrastructure requirements demand immediate change through such events as merger and acquisition activity, season-based capacity requirements, and business activities such as cloud-based test and development of new software applications. CSC now has unprecedented flexibility to cost-effectively right-size the networking solutions we provide to our customers with OpEx billing that is consistent with our other cloud commercial terms."

Cloud-Optimized Network Acquisition

The pay-as-you-grow aspect of Brocade Network Subscription is particularly well-suited for the migration to cloud IT architectures, as it is the most agile option among acquisition models, such as capital purchases and leasing. While organizations of all sizes look to the cloud for different reasons -- from improving business processes and application availability to introducing new, value-added services -- they all view the ability to quickly address changing internal and external customer needs as a fundamental business requirement.

At the center of this transition is the network, which now must be cloud-optimized at all points to fully support cloud-based applications and services. In fact, IDC predicts that the migration to public and private clouds will shape network requirements and become a $1.4 billion market in 2011.(1) With so much at stake, organizations must find new ways to maximize existing IT investments and reduce costs, especially in light of budget constraints.

Building upon its heritage of developing high-performing data center fabrics, Brocade is continuing to drive innovative cloud-optimized networking technologies to help its customers transition smoothly to a virtualized, services-on-demand state. With the introduction of Brocade Network Subscription, Brocade is advancing cloud adoption by providing customers with a flexible acquisition option that helps them adapt to the demands of the cloud.

"As a leader in networking solutions that support virtualization and cloud optimization, we are pushing the innovation envelope on both the technical and business front," said John McHugh, CMO of Brocade. "Brocade Network Subscription is the 'virtualization' model for infrastructure procurement. With Brocade Network Subscription, customers can turn on vast amounts of networking capacity, from high-end routers to wiring closet switches, without any upfront capital costs. The monthly subscription is a small portion of what the purchase costs have been historically. Just like application virtualization, this innovative approach allows organizations to acquire network capacity with little risk, while helping them scale up and scale down in line with their month-to-month needs."

Availability and Additional Details

Brocade Network Subscription is now available for Brocade IP/Ethernet networking solutions, including the Brocade VDX™ family of products, directly from Brocade and through qualified Brocade Alliance Partner Network Elite resellers and Federal partners, as well as global systems integrators. Brocade will be showcasing Brocade Network Subscription at Booth #710 at VMworld 2011.

Brocade Network Subscription includes Essential Support from Brocade Global Services. Brocade Global Services delivers world-class professional services, technical support and education services, enabling organizations to maximize their Brocade investments, accelerate new technology deployments and optimize the performance of networking infrastructures.

For more information on Brocade Network Subscription, visit www.NoNetworkCapEx.com.

Video


Wesley Jess, VP of Supply Chain Operations and Rob Jackson, Product Development Manager at Rackspace, on the benefits of Brocade Network Subscription: http://bit.ly/p9LzsF
IDC's Joe Pucciarelli on flexible IT acquisition models in the cloud era: http://bit.ly/roGRTn
Brocade CMO John McHugh on VMworld 2011 announcements: http://bit.ly/qcNGII
Brocade Network Subscription two-minute explainer video: http://bit.ly/r8WJwo

Additional Resources


Brocade Network Subscription infographic: http://bit.ly/p3GZ8N

2011-08-30 - Brocade Advances Ethernet Fabric Innovation to Unleash the Power of Virtualization:
New Brocade VDX Switch Models and Zero-Touch Virtual Machine Discovery, Configuration and Mobility Enhance the Industry's Only Shipping Ethernet Fabric Portfolio to Increase Business Agility and Simplify Operations

LAS VEGAS, NV -- (Marketwire) -- 08/30/2011 -- (VMworld 2011) -- Today at VMworld, Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD), the leader in fabric-based data center networking solutions, announced it is delivering more choice, flexibility and automation to customers deploying virtualization and cloud IT infrastructures. Specifically, the company announced enhancements to the Brocade® Ethernet fabric portfolio that utilizes Brocade VCS™ technology. These enhancements are designed to increase scalability, improve virtual machine (VM) awareness, further simplifying management and significantly reducing operational overhead.

The new additions and enhancements include:


New VCS technology extensions that automate VM discovery, configuration and mobility within Brocade Ethernet fabrics
Increases in Ethernet fabric scalability by doubling the number of switches within a VCS fabric, allowing customers to easily and quickly scale out their data center networks
The new Brocade VDX 6730 Data Center Switch, a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switch that protects existing SAN infrastructure investments by seamlessly bridging VCS Ethernet fabrics to Fibre Channel SAN fabrics
The new Brocade VDX 6710 Data Center Switch, a high-density, 1/10 GbE switch that provides a low-cost entry point for VCS fabric technology by enabling 1 GbE servers to connect to Ethernet fabric environments as well as classic data center LAN deployments
Unified management of Brocade Ethernet fabrics with other data center LAN, SAN and application delivery infrastructures in a single enterprise-class application through Brocade Network Advisor

With these new enhancements, Brocade is delivering Ethernet fabric integration that uses Brocade Network Advisor to work with the VMware vCenter™ Server virtualization and cloud infrastructure management platform, reducing overall networking administration costs and unplanned downtime. Brocade VCS fabric uses Brocade Network Advisor to work with VMware vCenter Server so that VMs running within an Ethernet fabric are automatically configured based on information stored in VMware vCenter Server and automatically maintain their connectivity services as VMs move within the fabric. In contrast, configuring today's legacy networks for virtualized data centers can be an error-prone, time-consuming manual process for most organizations. This new VCS fabric enhancement offers a secure connection to VMware vCenter Server to eliminate those problems and ensure consistency between server and network configurations.

Brocade has also enhanced Brocade Network Advisor, the industry's only unified network management platform for IP and SAN environments, to improve operational simplicity by allowing all VCS nodes in a fabric to be managed as a single logical switch as well as enabling the ability to associate VMware port groups to port profiles across fabrics and VMware vCenter Server instances. These enhancements are designed to ensure successful VM migrations within and across Ethernet fabrics.

"Brocade is known for building efficient data center networks that just work. Ethernet fabrics based on Brocade VCS technology are highly differentiated, providing unmatched automation and simplicity compared to traditional, outdated network architectures," said Jason Nolet, vice president of Data Center and Enterprise Networking at Brocade. "Our differentiation is based on 15 years of expertise in building high-performance fabrics for the world's most demanding data centers. With this second major wave of Ethernet fabric capabilities, we are extending our lead in this important new technology category and delivering greater agility to our customers through superior simplicity, automation and reliability."

Expanding the Brocade VDX Data Center Switch Family

Brocade is expanding the award-winning Brocade VDX product family with two new switch models designed to deliver a comprehensive solution for future-proofing data center networks, cost effectively supporting 1 GbE server and storage environments and allowing Ethernet-based server access to all the data stored on Fibre Channel SANs. The Brocade VDX switches support VCS fabric technology, enabling enterprises to gracefully evolve their traditional network architectures to an Ethernet fabric in order to better support virtualized and cloud-optimized data centers.

According to Gartner research, "The ongoing cost and growth pressures on the enterprise data center continue to stress the data center network. The data center network is undergoing significant and, in some cases, radical changes, where network planners will have to consider and plan for several network and technology changes. As we see it, these changes will evolve the network from the traditional tiered-tree topology to a flat-meshed Layer 2 network topology architecture."(1)

Brocade's leadership position in Ethernet fabrics has been bolstered by rapid customer adoption for the Brocade VDX 6720 Data Center Switch, which began shipping in December 2010, and is now deployed globally in numerous production environments. Sales have continued to grow quarter-over-quarter, exceeding the company's sales expectations.

"By standardizing on Brocade and its Ethernet fabric technology, we have simplified management while increasing performance and agility by an order of magnitude," said Jorge Montoto, chief technology officer at Tissat, a Valencia, Spain-based cloud managed service provider that currently deploys Brocade VDX 6720 switches in its award-winning Class IV data center and will be the first company to deploy the new Brocade VDX switch models. "When building our new facility, we wanted to be able to provide both Ethernet and Fibre Channel support across a common network to support VM mobility, but at the same time radically simplify management and operational processes. Brocade Ethernet fabric technology has exceeded our requirements."

Brocade delivers highly differentiated features and functionality through Brocade VCS fabric technology, allowing organizations to enhance their classic hierarchical network architectures and deploy flatter scale-out fabrics for virtualized data centers to meet changing business requirements. Brocade VCS fabric technology provides automated VM mobility without manual port configuration and reconfiguration. Sharing intelligence automatically between fabric nodes enables the entire fabric to be managed more efficiently, significantly reducing operational overhead.

Agility and operational simplicity for data center networks architected with VCS fabric technology are further enhanced by the Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter, which is a new class of server adapter with each Brocade AnyIO universal port supporting Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Ethernet connectivity for flexible server I/O consolidation and long-term investment protection. The Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter delivers wire-speed performance for both 16 Gbps Fibre Channel and 10 GbE, and more than 1 million IOPS for storage applications. In addition, it unifies the management of adapter, SAN and LAN resources via a single interface with Brocade Network Advisor.

Availability and Pricing
The new Brocade Ethernet fabric solutions will be available beginning in calendar Q3 2011. For pricing information, please contact your local Brocade value-added reseller or OEM.

Partner Quote
"Cloud computing has caused a paradigm shift, which has profoundly changed the way in which IT supports business processes. Integration of Brocade Ethernet fabric technology into Fujitsu's Dynamic Infrastructures architecture will enable our customers to further enhance the reliability, flexibility and performance delivered by our solutions to enable them to achieve their key business objectives." - Jens-Peter Seick, Senior Vice President, Product Development Group, Fujitsu Technology Solutions.

Video


Jason Nolet, Vice President of Data Center and Enterprise Networking at Brocade
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adpYXjQWcpw

Photos


Brocade VDX 6710
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642%40N02/6089734491/in/photostream
Brocade VDX 6730
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642%40N02/6089815227/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642%40N02/6090300290/in/photostream
Brocade VDX Data Center Switch Family
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642%40N02/6089834801/in/photostream
Brocade Network Advisor (screen capture)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642%40N02/6090447412/in/photostream

2011-08-29 - F5 and VMware Solutions Streamline Live Migration and Desktop Virtualization:
F5’s BIG-IP products combine with VMware and EMC solutions to efficiently migrate virtual machines; deliver high availability and optimized performance for VMware View™ deployments

LAS VEGAS, August 29, 2011




Today at VMworld® 2011, F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, announced 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 cost savings for virtualization and cloud deployments.





Additional Resources

Improved Mobility for Live Migration Events Across Metro Distances – Solution Overview
Enable Single Namespace for VMware View Deployments – Solution Overview
Live Migration, iApps, and Single Namespace for View – SlideShare Deck
iApps Page on F5 DevCentral
F5 Solutions for VMware




“We have a great track record with VMware and enjoy strong partnerships with leading companies like EMC in developing powerful integration capabilities that customers can use to make their IT infrastructures agile and efficient,” said Jim Ritchings, VP of Business Development at F5. “With F5’s application control plane architecture, organizations can easily layer in application services on demand to support more cost-effective computing models. As customers look to reap additional savings from automation, virtualization, and cloud resources, they can be confident in the interoperability of solutions from F5 and its technology partners.”

Seamless, Efficient Live Migration Between Data Centers with F5, VMware, and EMC

Following its initial demonstration at VMworld 2009, F5 has collaborated with VMware and EMC to simplify the migration of virtual applications between geographically dispersed data centers. Since the technology’s original introduction, customers have been able to use F5’s BIG-IP® products in conjunction with VMware vSphere®, VMware vMotion®, and VMware Storage vMotion® to distribute application deployments across multiple data centers to increase infrastructure resilience, enhance availability, and improve end-user performance. However, one of the primary obstacles to broader adoption has been the requirement to also migrate the storage data associated with applications across the WAN. EMC VPLEX Metro provides a globally coherent active-active storage virtualization platform—meaning live migrations of virtual applications can now be performed without this requirement. This change enables organizations to perform reliable, secure, and accelerated live migrations over greater distances. Additionally, by making the process of migrating virtual machines more efficient, it brings the business benefits of a distributed mobile computing platform within reach for organizations with large amounts of storage data associated with their applications.

Streamlined, Optimized Virtual Desktop Deployments with VMware and F5

Building on its previously announced support for VMware View™, F5 is also introducing capabilities to help customers further accelerate virtual desktop environments. A new iApps™ template provides preferred configurations to optimize performance and enable swift deployments. With the built-in intelligence of F5’s detailed deployment guidance for VMware View, the customizable iApps template dramatically reduces the deployment time, thus helping organizations quickly implement virtual desktop solutions.

In addition, F5 is announcing enhanced single namespace capabilities to help customers manage user access to a globally distributed virtual desktop infrastructure supported by multiple data centers. With BIG-IP solutions, customers can access VMware View desktops from a single shared namespace—that is, without requiring a separate namespace for respective geographic locations, separate business units, or other access variables. The F5® solution also provides streamlined access to clients such as Apple iPad, Microsoft Windows 7, and even zero-client platforms. The integration between F5 and VMware solutions greatly simplifies access models and enhances management for IT staff by streamlining the administrative tasks typically associated with supporting desktop virtualization capabilities for users on the road.

“Our technology partnership with F5 continues to produce value for joint customers seeking to implement dynamic virtual desktop infrastructure solutions,” said Raj Mallempati, Director, End-User Computing Product Marketing at VMware. “Through focused integration efforts, we’re able to offer organizations the ability to perform live migrations between data centers and efficiently scale VMware View virtual desktop deployments. BIG-IP solutions extend the capabilities of VMware View solutions, helping customers further automate and configure application and desktop delivery infrastructures to ably support their cloud environments.”

F5 Networks at VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas

Visit F5 at booth #1131 in the main exhibition hall to learn how F5 solutions support desktop virtualization, live migration, and other virtualization and cloud deployment scenarios. More information about F5-related activities at VMworld 2011 can be found in this media alert.

Availability

All F5, VMware, and EMC products and technologies referenced in this announcement are currently available.

2011-08-24 - Solarflare's Low-Latency, High-Performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet Server Adapters and Software Are Now Available for IBM and HP Blade Chassis:
Users of High-Density Blade Systems Now Achieve Lower Latency and Higher Performance for High Frequency Trading (HFT), High Performance Computing (HPC), Cloud and Big Data Applications

IRVINE, CA—August 24, 2011—Solarflare, the leader in application-intelligent 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) hardware and software, announced today the release of its 10GbE mezzanine adapter family to address the high-performance networking needs of customers using IBM and HP blade servers. The SFN5812H dual-port and SFN5814H quad-port 10GbE mezzanine server adapters for IBM BladeCenter, and Solarflare's SFN5802K dual-port 10GbE mezzanine adapter for HP BladeSystem c-Class, expand Solarflare's ability to reach customers in scale-out computing environments such as HFT, HPC, cloud and big data applications.

"Many of our customers who use our dual-port PCIe server adapters need to deploy blade chassis in power or space constrained environments," said Russell Stern, CEO at Solarflare. "These are often the very same environments where low latency matters, such as co-located data centers built for high frequency trading and large, tiered, high-density server networks built to support big data, analytics and memory caching applications for Web 2.0 and social media. Now with the availability of Solarflare IBM and HP mezzanine cards, these customers can deploy their blade chassis in these environments where they need this lower latency."

Solarflare's networking hardware and software provides a flexible, direct model for accelerating applications, while maintaining support for network and operating system functions. Its new family of 10GbE mezzanine adapters reduces complexity and increases performance of high-density blade server environments. When combined with Solarflare's OpenOnload® middleware, the mezzanine adapters provide the industry's lowest TCP and UDP application latency. Designed to optimize application performance and maximize the use of network resources, while minimizing CPU utilization, the dual-port and quad-port cards deliver full bidirectional line rates of 40 Gbps and 80 Gbps respectively.

To relieve network I/O bottlenecks and deliver scalability in virtualized environments, Solarflare supports more virtual network interfaces (vNICs) and PCIe virtual functions (VFs) than competing solutions. The products feature SR-IOV to accelerate guest applications in Citrix XenServer and Redhat Linux KVM environments. Application performance is also upheld in VMware ESX and vSphere, and Microsoft Hyper-V environments.

The three Solarflare mezzanine cards are 100% driver compatible with the SFN5000 family of server adapters. The products consume fewer than 4 watts per port, half the power of competing solutions, increasing the power efficiency of the network and helping to save thousands of dollars of operating costs for a typical data center.

Availability
SFN5802K, SFN5812H and SFN5814H 10GbE mezzanine adapter products are sampling now and will be generally available in September. For more information, please contact sales@solarflare.com.

2011-08-24 - Solarflare Creates New Paradigm for Auditing, Monitoring and Analysis for High Frequency Trading Networks With Precision Time Stamping:
Solarflare SFN5322F Dual-Port 10GbE SFP+ Server Adapter Extends the Reach of the Precision Time Protocol for 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) Networks

IRVINE, CA—August 24, 2011—Solarflare, the leader in application-intelligent 10GbE networking hardware and software, today announced the industry's first high-performance, low-latency 10GbE server adapter with precision time stamping. The Solarflare® SFN5322F dual-port 10GbE SFP+ server adapter enables a new model for monitoring, auditing and analysis of high frequency trading and other types of networks. It is a thousand times more precise than the previous generation of network time products, and a fraction of the cost of specialized network time appliances. By leveraging Solarflare's new class of products, IT managers can improve the performance of high frequency trading networks by implementing precision time. Furthermore, precision time stamping gives businesses a tool for greater transparency for internal compliance, as well as conformance with external legal and regulatory requirements.

The IEEE 1588 precision time protocol (PTP) is deployed when a common clock is needed across networked servers for logging, auditing, instrumentation and analysis. The Ethernet PTP is more accurate than the widely deployed IP-based network time protocol (NTP), offering sub-microsecond timing accuracy compared to NTP's limited millisecond accuracy1. IT managers now have the ability to extend the reach of clock synchronization in their 10GbE Ethernet networks with off-the-shelf 10GbE Ethernet networking gear without having to deploy multiple, expensive, dedicated appliances.

"Time is the next utility for data centers," said Henry Young, an internationally recognized precision time expert and CEO, TS-Associates. "Having precision time available on high-performance servers enables compliance with internal auditing and external regulatory requirements. Solarflare's SFN5322F adapter saves valuable PCI slots and allows the deployment of precision time more broadly in high-density server environments."

The SFN5322F enables the server to participate in a precision time network via PTP or other precision time schemes. It can act as a PTP master clock or synchronize its clock with an upstream PTP master or grandmaster clock, usually sourced from GPS. The adapter participates in an automated time distribution and messaging scheme to accurately and consistently set time on all servers in the network to the correct time. Beyond high frequency trading, precision time is used in enterprise and service provider networks, and for applications as diverse as broadcasting, cellular networks, military, aerospace, national security and high performance computing.

Availability
The US list price for the SFN5322F is $1,999. It is sampling now and will be generally available in September. For more information, please contact sales@solarflare.com.

About Solarflare

Solarflare is the leading provider of application-intelligent networking I/O products that bridge the gap between applications and the network, delivering improved performance, increased scalability, and higher return on investment. The company's solutions are widely used in scale-out server environments, such as high frequency trading, high performance computing, cloud, virtualization and big data. Solarflare's products are available from leading distributors and value-added resellers, as well as from Dell, IBM and HP. Solarflare is headquartered in Irvine, California and has an R&D site in Cambridge, UK.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

1 NTP peak transfer error > 1 millisecond (10E-3 s) vs. PTP > 100 nanosecond (10E-7 s), http://www.en4tel.com/pdfs/NTPandPTP-A-Brief-Comparison.pdf

2011-07-25 - F5 Delivers on Dynamic Data Center Vision with New Application Control Plane Architecture:
BIG-IP® v11 software speeds provisioning of services, provides application-centric view of the network infrastructure, and offers coordinated protection against complex multilayer security attacks

SEATTLE, July 25, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced the release of its powerful BIG-IP® version 11 software. Building on F5’s vision of the dynamic data center, this new version speeds provisioning of services on an application-by-application basis, aligns IT functions and services more closely with business needs, and enables better visibility and reporting of IT resource utilization.





Additional Resources

BIG-IP v11 Information Page
BIG-IP v11 DevCentral Page
iApps Page on DevCentral
F5 iApps: Moving Application Delivery Beyond the Network – White Paper
Maximizing the Strategic Point of Control in the Application Delivery Network – White Paper
Introducing v11: The Next Generation of Infrastructure – DevCentral Blog Post




BIG-IP v11: Aligning Services with Specific Applications

BIG-IP v11 provides a comprehensive view of users, applications, and the network, enabling IT teams to deploy and provision application services on a per-application basis as rapidly as they can provision virtual machines. Aligning the right services—such as authentication, data protection, traffic management, and acceleration—to each application provides a consistent user experience, especially as new applications are deployed or as existing applications are deployed across virtual and cloud environments.

“As applications are virtualized and deployed in the cloud, the network becomes an integral part of the application delivery infrastructure and ultimately defines user productivity,” said Karl Triebes, CTO and SVP of Product Development at F5. “With the rise of virtualization, an organization can go from a bare metal server to a running application in just minutes. However, it might take days if not weeks to provision the underlying network and application delivery services to make that application production-ready and available to users. With BIG-IP v11, F5 changes the traditional network paradigm and makes it as simple to provision the Application Delivery Network as it is to create new virtual machines. BIG-IP v11’s application control plane architecture aligns application control, visibility, and manageability, and allows additional services to be added on demand as current conditions require.”

With BIG-IP v11, organizations can deploy applications up to 100x faster, enabling them to quickly react to changes in business needs. By managing application services as a whole rather than as individual devices and objects, IT teams can streamline operations and dramatically lower OpEx. BIG-IP v11 enables application-specific configurations to move with applications as new instances are created locally, virtually, or in the cloud. Additionally, F5® solutions now provide application-specific intelligence for a variety of popular applications from vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, and others.

Highlights of the New BIG-IP v11 Solution

BIG-IP v11 gives organizations the power to configure, monitor, grow, and secure their business applications independently to gain greater efficiency, increase agility, and reduce CapEx and OpEx.

Quickly Deploy and Optimize Applications with F5’s iApps Technology
BIG-IP v11’s powerful new iApps™ technology simplifies deployment of application service, enabling 10–100x faster provisioning and deployment. Individual iApps leverage easy-to-use templates to associate specific sets of services with single, per-application policies that are portable—even as the application itself moves beyond the walls of the physical data center. Now, for the first time, network services can be provisioned as rapidly as virtual machines, making the F5 Application Delivery Network the agile infrastructure that CIOs seek for their virtual data center and cloud architecture designs. As a complement to iApps capabilities, F5’s DevCentral™ community will provide technical expertise, guidance, and collaboration opportunities for developing, sharing, and customizing iApp templates.

Raise IT Efficiency with Enhanced Analytics and Management Capabilities
BIG-IP v11 provides IT teams with visibility into all infrastructure dependencies for particular application services. This gives them a business-centric view of the IT infrastructure and makes it possible to manage resource utilization on an application-by-application basis. Similarly, F5’s iApps™ analytics provides real-time visibility into application and user performance, allowing administrators to assess, isolate, and address problem areas and track the impact of adjustments. In addition, performance results can easily be captured and shared across IT teams, enabling different groups to view current conditions and make changes to optimize the overall application delivery infrastructure. Finally, based on the needs of individual applications, business leaders can work collaboratively with IT to make intelligent investment decisions and streamline operations.

Reduce OpEx and CapEx with Resilient and Elastic Pay-As-You-Grow Architecture
As a feature of the company’s innovative TMOS® architecture, F5 ScaleN(TM) functionality enables customers to seamlessly scale up or scale out on demand. The BIG-IP v11 release enables customers to take full advantage of F5’s previously announced Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (vCMP™) technology, combining virtualization and multi-tenancy capabilities to simultaneously run multiple instances of BIG-IP solutions on a single device. In addition, ScaleN technology enables multi-way clustering between devices to create a pool of application delivery services that is both elastic and highly resilient. For easy management, ScaleN allows multiple active devices to look like one solution, and also provides the ability to distribute load across Application Delivery Controllers on an application-by-application basis. With ScaleN, application delivery workloads can now to be moved as easily as virtual server workloads.

Protect Corporate Assets with Unified Network and Application Security Services
In traditional data center environments, security services are usually delivered as point solutions and applied universally across all users, devices, and applications without sensitivity to the specific requirements of individual applications. Additionally, traditional security approaches often involve combining various technologies that are unable to communicate and coordinate responses. Recently, this lack of coordination has opened the door to an onslaught of highly publicized attacks. F5 security solutions provide coordinated attack protection against complex multilayer attacks by integrating security services from layer 2 through layer 7, and by using intelligence and context to apply the appropriate set of security measures for each threat. BIG-IP v11 offers integrated access control services, an enhanced web application firewall, and new DNS infrastructure offload and scalability functions to automatically mitigate attacks. These new services work together to provide scalable security that matches the needs of the dynamic data center, protecting users, applications, and data. For a closer look at F5’s enhanced security capabilities, a separate press release has also been issued today.

Supporting Quotes

“CIO’s are increasingly focused on improving the success of the business—either through technologies to help drive customer growth and satisfaction or to make the business more efficient to drive further investments or bottom line growth,” said Mark Fabbi, VP, Distinguished Analyst, Gartner. “To support the requirement for a more agile IT organization that can operate at the speed of business, the most critical CIO strategy for 2011 is to develop a more flexible infrastructure.”

“We always strive to help our customers get more value out of their Unified Communications environments, whether it’s optimizing the user experience or streamlining IT staff deployment of the application,” said Kapil Sharma, Principal Group Program Manager of Lync Partner Engineering at Microsoft. “F5’s release of iApp for Microsoft Lync will enable our joint customers to more rapidly deploy Lync application services while increasing availability and performance for users. iApps’ unique ability to automatically apply all necessary application delivery services specific to Lync environments will also help reduce errors caused by manual configuration.”

“It’s no secret that dynamic infrastructures are necessary to effectively support applications—especially as organizations pursue the savings associated with cloud deployments,” said Marc Malizia, CTO at RKON. “With F5, customers have an intelligent, flexible solution that can take into account their organizations’ evolving mix of applications and overall goals. Specifically, F5’s innovative iApps technology provides an easy way for customers to simplify application deployment and automate configurations for optimum performance. We’re excited to offer F5’s latest solutions, and anticipate our customers will be eager to take advantage of the new capabilities in BIG-IP version 11 as well.”

“As an IT group that serves multiple school districts, counties, and states, it’s not feasible or efficient to continuously update and customize configurations to ensure high performance and availability,” said Jason Radford, System Administrator, IlliniCloud and Bloomington Public Schools. “With BIG-IP solutions and iApps, we can manage services from a central point, quickly deploy applications, and roll out any necessary configuration changes seamlessly throughout our entire cloud infrastructure. Because F5 can comprehensively address application delivery, we’re also able to capitalize on the products’ powerful orchestration and automation capabilities to efficiently scale IT services.”

Availability

BIG-IP version 11 software and virtual editions of F5’s BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager™, Application Security Manager™, and WAN Optimization Manager™ products will be available in the third quarter of calendar year 2011.

2011-07-25 - F5’s Enhanced BIG-IP Security Solutions Thwart Multilayer Cyber Attacks:
New BIG-IP® v11 software release provides dynamic security services for centralized application access and policy control; improves attack protection for network, applications, and data

SEATTLE, July 25, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced powerful enhancements to its application and data security solutions, providing customers with comprehensive security strategies to prevent loss of service and data. F5’s new BIG-IP® version 11 software—along with BIG-IP Application Security Manager™ (ASM™), BIG-IP Access Policy Manager™ (APM™), BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager™ (GTM™), and BIG-IP Edge Gateway™—delivers a unified platform that helps protect Web 2.0 applications and data, secure DNS infrastructures, and establish centralized application access and policy control. BIG-IP v11 continues to deliver on F5’s vision of a dynamic data center, giving IT staff the agility needed to innovate and drive business. It enables organizations to deploy high-performance, scalable services on demand while keeping applications and data secure.





Additional Resources

BIG-IP v11 Information Page
BIG-IP v11 DevCentral Page
iApps Page on DevCentral
Application Security in the Cloud with BIG-IP ASM – White Paper
High-Performance DNS Services in BIG-IP Version 11 – White Paper
Secure, Optimized Global Access to Corporate Resources – White Paper




Network Firewalls Alone Are Inadequate Protection for Today’s Cyber Attacks

As cyber attacks change and their frequency continues to rise, IT departments are finding it increasingly difficult to effectively address security concerns. Traditional point solutions such as network firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion detection/prevention systems focus on solving specific security issues and are often deployed on individual devices. This static approach hinders IT’s ability to enforce an integrated security policy and protect applications, users, and data.

Modern security attacks are sophisticated and multilayered, using several attack vectors that target the network as well as underlying applications and data. An attack might begin at the network layer with a denial of service (DoS) attack and then proceed to target application vulnerabilities through a web browser. Point solutions, such as traditional network firewalls, are simply inadequate to defend against these types of multilayer attacks because they offer no cross-layer visibility, detection, or protection capabilities.

“The latest rash of security attacks is catching many organizations by surprise because they mistakenly believe their siloed security solutions, such as network firewalls or IPS systems, offer enough protection,” said Karl Triebes, CTO and SVP of Product Development at F5. “While the attacks themselves cannot be prevented, most of the security breaches that result from these attacks can unquestionably be stopped. Defending against such multilayer attacks requires an integrated approach that combines network security, application security, and access control. This type of strategy will be even more critical as organizations begin to move their applications and data into the cloud.”

Details

F5® BIG-IP v11 enhancements enable enterprises to create a dynamic data center environment for managing and protect the network, data, and applications—whether deployed in physical, virtual, or cloud environments. A dynamic data center environment is highly scalable and ensures that applications are always available and running at peak performance. Version 11 enhancements to BIG-IP products and associated modules provide advanced security services, including:
•Protection for Interactive Web 2.0 Applications

With F5’s web application firewall, BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM), organizations can protect interactive web 2.0 applications, such as a real-time stock site that continuously updates pricing information. BIG-IP ASM secures the application and displays an alert in the event of a policy violation. The alert, in the form of a unique blocking page, includes a support ID so the user can contact the network administrator to resolve the issue.
•Unified and Dynamic Access Control

With a growing number of users accessing corporate resources from personal smartphones, tablets, and laptops, IT is now challenged to enforce common access and security policies across a vast range of devices, locations, and applications. BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) and v11 put IT back in control by providing enhanced support for endpoint inspection, multiple authentication methods, single sign-on, and external access control lists. With BIG-IP APM, administrators receive detailed information about users, applications, and the network, providing them the context they need to create network and application access policies—and the solution gives them a single point of control from which to enforce those policies globally. This centralized management capability can dramatically reduce IT costs and increase the productivity of users who are now able to access a much broader range of domains and applications.
•Enhanced Management and Reporting Capabilities

To provide application-level security and ensure adequate response time for users, administrators need powerful visibility and reporting tools. BIG-IP APM provides both, with its built-in and customizable reporting features and the industry’s first contextual user visibility tools. Now administrators can track information, such as who is online and when, what type of device and network they are using, and which applications and other resources they are accessing.
•Scalable DNS Infrastructure with DDoS Attack Mitigation

When DoS or DDoS attacks occur, DNS is just as vulnerable as the web application or service that is being targeted. To withstand attacks, it’s critical to have the ability to protect and scale the DNS infrastructure, and new features in BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM) provide both capabilities. With DNS Express™, a high-speed authoritative DNS delivery solution, DNS query response performance can be improved as much as tenfold. DNS Express offloads existing DNS servers and absorbs the flood of illegitimate requests during attacks—all while supporting legitimate queries. With this significant offload capability, customers can consolidate their DNS infrastructures by up to seventy percent.

With v11, BIG-IP GTM also integrates IP anycast, enabling queries to be received by multiple global traffic management devices that use the same IP address. This functionality provides linear performance scalability for BIG-IP GTM and DNS services with each F5 device that is added. Performance gains are even more pronounced now that BIG-IP GTM is able to take advantage of F5’s clustered multiprocessing technology.
•Flexible Application Security Across all IT Environments

With the introduction of v11, BIG-IP ASM will be available as a virtual edition (VE), providing organizations with more flexible deployment options. Using BIG-IP ASM VE, customers can test applications in virtualized and cloud environments before deploying them in production. BIG-IP ASM VE also automatically updates all synced pool members whenever policy changes occur. This can significantly reduce IT’s management burden by eliminating the need to manually update devices in multiple locations.

Supporting Quotes

“The most significant breaches of late have been through exploiting web applications. Web application firewalls have seen great advances, but single-layer solutions are no longer enough to fend off today’s sophisticated attacks,” said Greg Young, Research VP at Gartner. “It’s vital for organizations to take a dedicated approach to security—one that protects both the network and the applications.”

“The integration of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager with Oracle Access Manager 11g can give customers a holistic enterprise architecture that helps simplify authentication and reduces infrastructure costs,” said Marc Boroditsky, VP of Product Management, Oracle Identity Management. “With the new version of BIG-IP, Oracle Access Manager 11g customers can also benefit from layered security services that provide additional protection for applications and data.”

“When it comes to delivering secure applications, confidentiality, integrity, availability, and privacy are vital requirements for any organization,” said David Lesser, President and CTO of Nexum, Inc. “For years, F5 has embraced application security and control through BIG-IP’s comprehensive layered security architecture. Nexum has tested the new BIG-IP v11 release and its many security-related features—from DNS DDoS and interactive web 2.0 application attack protection to unified access control with a dynamic architecture for single sign-on. We’re pleased to see firsthand how F5 continues to stand out in the market by enforcing application security and delivery through one centralized control point. By protecting applications, networks, and data throughout the delivery lifecycle, BIG-IP v11 ensures applications are protected from multilayer attacks, highly available, and running at peak performance.”

“Our managed mobility offerings already deliver secure provisioning, as well as data protection and management,” said Chris Hagios, CEO at Airloom. “With v11 and the BIG-IP Edge Gateway product, we’re able to extend those services to include secure network access. Edge Gateway delivers the functionality we need to easily integrate advanced network connectivity into the SilverbackMDM product, a secure management solution for endpoint devices. Now we can meet our customers’ most stringent needs, ensuring that their data is secure and accessible—from the endpoint to the network to core enterprise applications.”

Availability

BIG-IP version 11 software and virtual editions of F5’s BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager, Application Security Manager, and WAN Optimization Manager™ products will be available in the third quarter of calendar year 2011.

2011-07-11 - F5’s New ARX Platforms Help Organizations Reap the Benefits of File Virtualization:
F5 extends the value proposition of its award-winning ARX® product line to a broader range of organizations, driving down CapEx and OpEx costs

SEATTLE, July 11, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced new hardware platforms for F5® ARX® file virtualization solutions. With the introduction of the ARX1500 and ARX2500 appliances, the ARX product line continues to offer compelling performance capabilities for enterprise organizations. Specifically, the new platforms provide small and mid-sized enterprises with advanced data management capabilities at attractive price points, along with superior scalability and performance levels.





Additional Resources

ARX Series Datasheet
ARX1500 and ARX2500 SlideShare Presentation
Success Strategies for Storage Data Migration – IDC Analyst Q&A




“In today’s rapidly digitizing economy, small and mid-sized enterprises are dealing with exploding amounts of digital content and a growing range of data management challenges,” said Richard Villars, VP of Storage and IT Executive Strategies at IDC. “Solutions like F5’s new ARX products take advantage of advanced file virtualization to help IT teams boost the performance and reduce the administrative burden of their file-based storage assets.”

Details

F5 ARX solutions enable organizations to simplify and scale their data management infrastructures by eliminating the static mapping between client and storage resources. With F5’s unique file virtualization capabilities, organizations can access and seamlessly migrate data between resources as demand dictates, and without impacting users or requiring downtime. In addition, ARX’s automated storage tiering and global namespace functions help enterprises develop a strategy that fits their storage growth requirements at the lowest possible costs.

F5’s new ARX platforms enable small and mid-sized enterprises to:
•Defer Costly Storage Purchases and Reduce Backup Windows

Traditionally, organizations have followed a model of adding more storage equipment as data management needs outgrew capacity. However, many organizations found that expensive, high performance storage devices would be required to expand their existing infrastructure models, due in part to the difficulty in identifying and separating high and low priority data files. With ARX’s storage tiering capabilities, organizations can designate high performance storage resources for their most important or most frequently accessed data. ARX’s ability to manage data across different devices in a unified storage environment enables organizations to utilize less expensive devices for general storage, maximizing the efficiency of existing systems and alleviating the need to purchase new devices as frequently. In addition, intelligently tiering important versus low priority data files delivers the ancillary benefit of reducing backup windows considerably. High priority data can be backed up daily while secondary and tertiary data can be done less frequently.
•Automate Time Consuming Data Management Tasks

In addition to providing storage tiering capabilities, ARX devices also enable IT administrators to automate labor-intensive processes for common data management tasks, including scaling storage infrastructures or performing data migrations. In addition, IT teams can implement a policy-based approach to data management, meaning that standard tasks can be configured, automated, and tailored in accordance with individual organizations’ storage needs.
•Deploy Powerful, Scalable Solutions to Support Growth

By enhancing the ARX series, F5 is strengthening the product line’s value proposition, accommodating organizations’ requirements today and supporting their data management needs as they grow.Small enterprises enjoy dramatically increased scale and performance capabilities with the ARX1500. For medium-sized storage environments, the ARX2500 platform includes support for 10 Gigabit Ethernet network infrastructures.

Additional Quotes

“Data growth in healthcare is explosive, and we realized some time ago the need to approach data storage differently,” said Wayne Keatts, Manager, Enterprise Security and Architecture at Methodist Health System in Dallas, Texas.“We chose ARX and now fully understand the data management benefits that ARX provides, from non-disruptive data migration to reduced storage costs and significantly shortened backup windows. With the new ARX2500 platform, F5 has provided an outstanding way for Methodist Health System to manage our rapid data growth for years to come with a highly scalable and cost-effective data management platform.”

“Our team has been using ARX for over two years now, and the value it can add for an organization’s storage infrastructure is immense,” said Michael Raposa, Sr. Director, Infrastructure at iN DEMAND. “By adding to its product suite with the new platforms, F5 now has a more complete set of offerings to help companies efficiently scale their storage systems alongside an organization’s overall growth. Judging from our experience, we’re pleased to see F5’s continued innovation and are confident that ARX will continue to support our needs looking forward.”

“The new ARX platforms address a real need in the storage market,” said David Hekimian, CTO at Trace3. “Previously, ARX products have been a more obvious fit for large enterprises, given the scale and performance capabilities of the solution. By offering F5’s substantial data management and file virtualization capabilities to a wider range of customers at an accessible price point, we expect to see a marked interest among smaller, growing organizations.”

“The combination of scale, performance, and price in the new hardware platforms will enable an expanded class of enterprises to leverage the data management benefits of file virtualization,” said Chuck Wood, Director of Product Management at F5. “ARX continues to be the industry’s only solution that provides true data mobility and automated data management policies for heterogeneous storage environments, and we’re excited to bring these new products to market.”

Availability

The ARX1500 and ARX2500 hardware platforms are available now.

2011-05-24 - Solarflare Showcases SR-IOV for Citrix XenServer at Citrix Synergy 2011:
An industry first, the company's hybrid architecture accelerates virtualized applications fivefold, while maintaining access to all the management functions of the hypervisor

IRVINE, Calif. – May 24, 2011 – Solarflare, the leader in high-performance, low-latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) server adapters and software, will showcase its 10GbE sever adapters with single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) for Project Boston, the latest version of Citrix XenServer® currently in beta, at Citrix Synergy 2011 in San Francisco, May 24-27, booth #640. Ideal for scale-out networking such as big data and social media applications, as well as cloud networking and server virtualization in next-generation data centers, Solarflare's 10GbE adapter and software solutions are engineered from the ground up to deliver high performance.

An industry first, Solarflare's SR-IOV solution offers IT and data center managers the ability to improve virtualized network I/O performance, while maintaining access to the flexibility and feature richness of the hypervisor. Solarflare has worked with Citrix to develop a unique hybrid approach to SR-IOV for XenServer that delivers unprecedented cut-through performance. As a result, servers that use the next version of XenServer for virtualization and Solarflare's 10GbE adapters will get both accelerated network performance and hypervisor services and management functions, such as virtual machine motion, clustering, high availability and VLANs.

"Solarflare has been dedicated to the innovation of advanced virtualization features and accelerated network I/O for Xen and XenServer. We welcome the company's support of Project Boston," said Simon Crosby, CTO of data center and cloud at Citrix Systems.

Leveraging Solarflare's SR-IOV solution, IT managers get the flexibility of 254 SR-IOV virtual functions (VFs), each of which can be mapped to multiple Solarflare DMA queue pairs, called virtual NICs or vNICs. The vNICs, in turn, can be exposed through the VF to a virtual machine (VM) or guest application. This allows each VM to have multiple transmit and receive queues. Solarflare's unique Smart Flow Management™ feature supports the management of these queues, allocating network traffic across the multiple guests to help scale performance over the available server CPU cores, enabling unsurpassed core-scaling capabilities.

Solarflare's Smart Flow Management and its scalable vNIC architecture are implemented with multiple patented inventions, including, but not limited to, a DMA engine, event batching of transmissions, management of deep queues and rate pacing, which enables Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning in hardware at Layer 2/3/4 for vNICs.

"Customers are dealing with numerous technical challenges in their networks, including traffic bottlenecks and inadequate performance in the server access layer, when they want to build scale-out networks for big data, virtualized data centers or cloud networking," said Russell Stern, CEO at Solarflare. "Solarflare's unique hybrid approach to SR-IOV enables IT managers to accelerate guest applications, while maintaining access to all the features provided by the hypervisor."

If you're interested in scheduling an appointment to view Solarflare's solutions at Citrix Synergy, please contact Brittney Wolff at solarflare@lewispr.com. Solarflare will also be running a drawing for attendees that stop-by booth #640 to win an Apple iPad 2.

2011-05-24 - IBM and Solarflare Achieve Lowest Latency and Highest Message Rates with the IBM-BNT 10G/40G Ethernet Switch:


IRVINE, Calif. – May 24, 2011 – Solarflare, the 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) pioneer, today announced the results of a recently completed multi-vendor benchmark test with IBM. The vendors used the STAC-M2™ Benchmark to measure the messaging performance of the solution stack. Once again, Solarflare was chosen as the preferred 10GbE server adapter. The company has now participated in more audited STAC M2 benchmarks than any other 10GbE adapter vendor.

Using standard Ethernet and UDP protocols, the mean latency of the solution did not exceed 10 microseconds, while the standard deviation of the latency was measured at zero microseconds. At the highest tested rate of 2.3 million messages/second, the mean latency of the solution was just 14 microseconds, while the standard deviation of latency was measured at 2 microseconds. These results are significant for IT managers and Linux engineers building high-frequency trading systems because they show that a low-latency, highly-deterministic system that achieves near zero jitter can be built with standard, off-the-shelf Ethernet and IP network equipment. Other recent tests have used special protocols to get low latency, but at the cost of higher jitter, which is a highly undesirable trade off for high-frequency trading applications that require predictability and low jitter over the course of the trading day.

Since 2008, Solarflare's OpenOnload® application acceleration middleware has proven its application transparency and protocol richness in 100s of demanding, mission-critical production environments in Chicago, Frankfurt, London and New York. IT managers designing high-speed, low-latency networks need compatibility with the control planes and data paths of TCP/IP, Ethernet and the Linux operating system. With OpenOnload, these customers get access to all the necessary Layer 2 and Layer 3 features, such as: virtual LAN trunking for the management, separation and security of IP traffic flows; link aggregation for failover and redundancy; address resolution protocol (ARP) caching for high-speed mapping of Ethernet to IP addresses; and Internet control message protocol (ICMP) notifications for network diagnostics and resiliency. Since Solarflare's middleware provides true transparency to POSIX sockets, designers of high-performance networks do not need to rewrite their applications to get the performance increase that the software provides. Solarflare's solution transparently supports the Linux networking functions required by high-frequency trading applications, such as poll, select, epoll, fork, exec, signals and comprehensive socket flags. The middleware also includes optimizations for concurrent socket access by multi-threaded applications, as well as support for fine-grained latency measurements, diagnostics and per-socket performance controls.

The tests were audited by STAC® (The Securities Technology Analysis Center). The highlights of the audited report are available to members with a premium subscription at www.stacresearch.com/node/8766 and are available to the public at www.stacresearch.com/node/8763.

The tested solution under test consisted of:
• Solarflare® SFN5122F 10GbE adapters with OpenOnload application acceleration middleware
• IBM WMQ Low Latency Messaging v2.4.0.2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 5.5
• 2x Quad-Core Intel Xeon X5570 2.93 GHz
• IBM x3550 M2 Model Servers
• IBM-BNT G8264 10Gb/40Gb Ethernet switch

All of the above products are available to financial firms today.

"In real world environments on Wall Street, the City of London and Frankfurt, Solarflare continues to win because we deliver protocol maturity, ease of use, application transparency and a rich Layer 2 and Layer 3 feature set, including support for VLAN trunking and high availability features, such as link aggregation control protocol (LACP) and multiple switch link aggregation (MLAG)," said Bruce Tolley, VP of solutions and outbound marketing at Solarflare. "We continue to look for opportunities to participate in STAC M2 Benchmark tests, so our customers can make informed decisions and build solutions with best-of-class elements, like Solarflare's 10GbE adapters and IBM messaging middleware, switches and servers."

About Solarflare Communications, Inc.

Solarflare is the pioneer in high-performance, low-latency 10GbE server I/O solutions. Our architectural approach combines hardware and software to deliver high-performance adapter products and application acceleration middleware for superior performance in a wide range of applications, including financial services, high performance computing (HPC), cloud computing, storage and virtualized data centers. Our products are used globally by many of the world’s largest companies, and are available from leading distributors and value-added resellers, as well as from Dell and HP. Solarflare is headquartered in Irvine, California and has an R&D site in Cambridge, UK.

2011-05-11 - F5 and EMC Speed Deployment of Cloud Services:
F5 Data Solutions products add support for EMC’s Atmos to provide simplified, automated, secure data mobility across the data center and to the cloud

EMC WORLD, LAS VEGAS, May 11, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced enhancements to its F5® ARX® Cloud Extender™ solutions that add EMC Atmos to its growing list of supported cloud storage providers and object storage platforms. Working in concert with F5 ARX file virtualization solutions, ARX Cloud Extender enables data to flow automatically, securely, and non-disruptively from file-based storage platforms to EMC Atmos, accelerating both public and private cloud deployments so organizations can more quickly realize the benefits of cloud storage.





Additional Resources

F5 ARX and EMC Atmos – Application Ready Solution Guide
ARX Series Datasheet
ARX Cloud Extender Datasheet




With this solution, organizations are not required to change their current storage architecture or strategy to integrate object-based storage solutions like Atmos. F5’s ARX and Cloud Extender solutions provide enterprises with an easy way to automatically identify and move appropriate files to cloud architectures based on the Atmos platform. The combined solution presents a unified view of data stored across local file storage and remote object storage in a private or public cloud.

“The integration of F5 ARX Cloud Extender and EMC Atmos allows users to seamlessly bridge their onsite and cloud-based file storage environments,” said Terri McClure, Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Users should be able to realize significant operational benefits by leveraging simple policies to store appropriate, less active data to the cloud while keeping critical or sensitive data within the four walls of IT.”

F5 ARX solutions now support a broad array of EMC products aimed at addressing the challenges associated with burgeoning data growth, including Atmos, Celerra, Data Domain, and Isilon. Companies worldwide are effectively managing rapid data growth by using F5 ARX devices to virtualize file-based storage assets, maximizing their efficiency, simplifying overall data management, and reducing operational expenses.

F5’s interoperability with the EMC product portfolio is on display this week at EMC World 2011, booth #911, in Las Vegas. F5 experts will be conducting regularly scheduled demonstrations of ARX and Cloud Extender, highlighting intelligent storage tiering policies that move data between all of the supported EMC platforms.

“Cloud storage has tremendous potential to address many of today’s storage challenges, but as with any new technology, organizations need to assess how to most effectively integrate it into their existing processes,” said Kathleen Ferraro, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5. “Care must be taken to minimize risk and disruption, and to clearly identify data sets and workloads for which the cloud model is most appropriate at this point in its evolution. Our ARX and Cloud Extender solutions are designed to ease this transition, automating the classification and movement of data to the cloud and making deployment seamless.”

“EMC is committed to delivering innovative storage solutions that address the growing needs of our partners seeking to leverage cloud infrastructure,” said Mike Feinberg, General Manager and SVP of EMC Cloud Infrastructure Group. “We believe this is an opportunity and approach that delivers financial and functional benefits to both our partners and the customers they serve. By making our cloud infrastructure accessible and allowing easy API integration, we enable our partners to respond to customers’ fast growing demand for cloud-based solutions with greater scalability, elasticity, and lower costs.We are pleased to work with F5 to embrace and deliver these benefits to our joint customers.”

Availability

F5’s ARX Cloud Extender for EMC Atmos is available for evaluation immediately.

2011-05-09 - F5 Introduces Midrange VIPRION Platform and Industry’s First Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing Technology:
VIPRION 2400 uses vCMP to allow logical separation of BIG-IP software instances on a single device, enabling enterprise IT to scale on demand and be more agile in addressing changing business conditions

INTEROP, LAS VEGAS, May 09, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced the VIPRION® 2400, a midrange chassis-based hardware platform. Adding to the successful F5® VIPRION product line, the new Application Delivery Controller (ADC) provides significant price/performance advantages for enterprises. In addition, F5 is announcing its new Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (vCMP™) technology that combines virtualization and multi-tenancy capabilities to help customers consolidate and efficiently manage application delivery services. Building on F5’s previously announced Clustered Multiprocessing (CMP™) technology, vCMP enables multiple instances of BIG-IP® software to run on one device. VIPRION hardware platforms will support F5’s unique vCMP capabilities.





Additional Resources

Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (vCMP) White Paper
VIPRION 2400 and vCMP SlideShare Presentation
VIPRION 2400: Quantum Performance – Video
vCMP: License to Virtualize – Video
VIPRION Datasheet
BIG-IP Hardware Datasheet




With the VIPRION 2400’s chassis-based architecture, customers enjoy enhanced availability features and the flexibility to scale their ADC infrastructures without changing network, application, or device configurations, leading to dramatically reduced OpEx. VIPRION running vCMP gives enterprises the unprecedented ability to have complete, logical separation of software versions and instances on a single, highly scalable device. This capability is critically important for large enterprises and cloud and service providers who need on-demand scalability and the ability to ensure that each group’s resources and network traffic are fully isolated from one another.

“The new VIPRION 2400 provides industry leading performance at an attractive price point for enterprises,” said Karl Triebes, SVP of Product Development and CTO at F5. “VIPRION customers will be able to take advantage of F5’s vCMP technology, which enables IT staff to create independent and isolated virtual ADCs for each department, business unit, or client they need to support. This has a huge business impact because ADC resources can now be allocated to each group based on its unique requirements.”

Details

The VIPRION 2400 is a midrange platform that enables a broader range of customers to take advantage of the inherent capabilities of the VIPRION architecture, including on-demand throughput, SSL processing, compression, and CPU resources. In addition, VIPRION solutions act as a SuperVIP™—a virtual IP that can span multiple blades—enabling applications to harness the processing power of all the blades within the system. Because of this unique capability, VIPRION solutions with vCMP technology provide customers with carrier-class scalability and reliability.

Highlights of the New VIPRION 2400 Platform:
•Scalability to Support Growth without Disrupting Access

Like all VIPRION platforms, the VIPRION 2400 enables customers to scale their ADC deployments without installing additional hardware devices, because new blades can be added to the chassis as needed. This provides a higher level of device resiliency because blades can be removed or taken offline without disrupting traffic. Customers can scale their infrastructures and respond to varying conditions without requiring the costly and time consuming network changes associated with other vendors’ solutions. The VIPRION 2400 also includes integrated onboard management and I/O for each blade instead of requiring separate blades for management and I/O.
•High Performance, Energy Efficient Footprint for Lower TCO

The VIPRION 2400 offers industry leading Layer 4 performance of 160 Gbps at a highly competitive price. VIPRION solutions offer significant performance advantages over competitors’ solutions by forming a virtual processing fabric that utilizes all the available CPUs across every blade in the system. To achieve comparable performance with other vendors’ solutions, IT teams would need to deploy additional devices, taking up valuable resources in the data center and increasing the management burden. With VIPRION solutions, each additional blade linearly increases resources and processing power and is immediately incorporated into the virtual processing fabric without any additional management overhead. In addition, the VIPRION 2400 is the first ADC to achieve 80 PLUS Gold Certification for energy efficiency.

Advantages of Combining VIPRION and Clustered Multiprocessing Technologies:
•Superior Flexibility to Support Varying Business Needs

vCMP can run multiple instances and versions of BIG-IP, each completely isolated from the others, so individual groups in an organization have the flexibility to run the version of BIG-IP software that’s most appropriate for their needs. In addition, they can upgrade their software and schedule downtime when it’s appropriate for them rather than according to another groups’ requirements.
•Superior Reliability and Fault Tolerance

When different BIG-IP instances are striped across blades, CMP load balances traffic across each blade. In the unlikely event a blade goes down, the application continues to run and traffic continues to be processed on other blades without any disruption in service. This is not possible with other vendors’ ADC solutions.
•A True “Pay as You Grow” Model

With the ability to easily add blades to the VIPRION chassis, organizations no longer need to purchase a “throttled down” ADC and then pay for an additional license when their traffic needs increase. Instead, the VIPRION platform enables customers to transparently allocate the appropriate amount of resources by adding a new blade.

Additional Hardware and Virtual Edition Enhancements from F5

F5 is also introducing the BIG-IP® 8950S platform. Expanding on the previously announced 8950 platform, the 8950S provides enhanced capabilities for organizations whose applications require extensive SSL processing. This is increasingly important for enterprise customers as they transition to 2048-bit SSL certificates, in line with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s recommendations.

In addition, F5 is expanding the hypervisor support available in its virtual appliances beyond VMware vSphere Hypervisor to include the addition of production and lab versions of Citrix XenServer 5.6 and the lab version of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. These new virtual solutions provide increased deployment flexibility, offering customers freedom to combine physical and virtual appliances in an integrated application delivery architecture for optimal efficiency, scalability, and reliability. Along these lines, F5 will continue to build out its growing portfolio of virtual appliances.

Supporting Quotes

“The industry’s movement toward a virtual data center model requires that the infrastructure provides a higher level of resiliency than ever before,” said Zeus Kerravala, SVP of Enterprise Research at Yankee Group. “An increasing number of enterprise IT teams are expected to deliver non-stop operations, which requires virtualizing and automating many of the compute functions needed to support the rapid evolution of data centers. F5’s innovative vCMP technology coupled with the VIPRION 2400 provides a critical building block that will help more enterprises meet the current and future challenges of data center operations.”

“I’m excited to see F5 has extended its high performance VIPRION platform to a broader range of enterprises with its new midrange chassis offering, the VIPRION 2400,” said Patrick McFadin, Director of Systems and Architecture at Hobsons, a global solution provider for the education market. “The ability to add a blade to the VIPRION 2400 and instantly get more CPU resources without requiring any configuration is extremely attractive, because downtime is just not an option for us. In addition, the linear performance increase you get with each blade you add to the 2400 is very impressive. You just don’t get that with symmetric multiprocessing.”

“We’re pleased to see that F5 is making its powerful VIPRION platform a viable option to more enterprises with its aggressive price/performance,” said Vince Conroy, CTO at FusionStorm. “It’s clear that F5 is listening to the needs of customers and partners. The VIPRION 2400 combined with F5’s flexible vCMP technology will open up more business opportunities for IT-as-a-Service and cloud offerings, with the solution providing true virtualization and the ability to isolate ADC resources.”

Availability and Additional Product Information

The VIPRION 2400 solution, which will be available in June 2011, will be on display at the Interop Las Vegas 2011 conference at F5’s booth (#2027) in the main hall. With the introduction of the VIPRION 2400, the previously announced VIPRION hardware platform will now be branded as the VIPRION 4400. F5’s Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (vCMP) technology will be available early in the third quarter of calendar year 2011. The BIG-IP 8950S will be available in June 2011. Expanded hypervisor support for BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM®) Virtual Edition and BIG-IP Access Policy Manager™ for LTM Virtual Edition will be available in June 2011.

2011-05-09 - Brocade Demonstrates 100 Gigabit Ethernet Service Scalability for the Cloud at Interop 2011:
In Collaboration With Ixia, Brocade Will Demonstrate the Performance, Reliability and Advanced Feature-Set of the Industry's First 100 GbE Terabit-Trunk Router

LAS VEGAS, NV -- (Marketwire) -- 05/09/2011 -- - INTEROP 2011 -- Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced that it will work with Ixia (NASDAQ: XXIA) to replicate mission-critical service provider environments and test high-capacity Brocade® Ethernet network solutions designed to help service providers become cloud-optimized. The demonstration creates a true-to-life service provider infrastructure scenario for increasing IPv4/IPv6 routing scalability within the core Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network while retaining high service levels for end customers. The demonstration will be held in the Brocade booth (# 833) during Interop Las Vegas 2011, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

As service providers evolve to become destinations offering cloud-based services, rather than just basic data delivery, the performance and scalability demands on their networks have increased significantly. The Brocade MLXe Core Router is a 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE)-ready solution that enables service providers and virtualized data centers to support these demands by efficiently delivering cloud-based services that use less infrastructure and help reduce expenditures.

In this specific demonstration, Brocade and Ixia will test the IPv4/IPv6 traffic flows, MPLS and throughput capabilities of the Brocade MLXe multiservice router over 10 and 100 GbE connections. By leveraging Ixia's leading test solutions, attendees will be able to view the following:


Ixia IxNetwork application emulating a large-scale Layer 3 virtual private network (VPN) topology surrounding the Brocade MLXe router
Brocade MLXe router maintaining forwarding information and peering relationships
IxNetwork generating line-rate traffic sourced and destined over K2 100 GbE ports and Xcellon-Flex™ 10 GbE ports to fully load the Brocade MLXe router, showcasing the forwarding plane performance
IxNetwork's real-time flow statistics and detailed reporting tools validating the scalability of the Brocade MLXe peering sessions and control plane scalability
Brocade MLXe forwarding low-latency traffic to all destination routes
Repeatable and scalable testing using Test Composer automation built into IxNetwork

Video


Brocade and Ixia Test Overview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zXXM6L1GQY

Solution Details


Brocade Service Provider Solutions http://www.brocade.com/solutions-technology/industry/service-provider/index.page
Ixia Data Center Solutions http://www.ixiacom.com/solutions/testing_data_center_nems/index

2011-05-03 - Brocade Unveils Vision for the Virtual Enterprise :
Brocade Introduces Brocade CloudPlex(TM), an Open, Extensible Architecture for Virtualization and Cloud-Optimized Networks

SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 05/03/2011 -- Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today introduced a new technology architecture that outlines the company's vision and the technology investments it will make to help its customers evolve their data centers and IT resources and migrate them to the "Virtual Enterprise."

Brocade intends to deliver on this vision through the Brocade CloudPlex™ architecture, an open, extensible framework intended to enable customers to build the next generation of distributed and virtualized data centers in a simple, evolutionary way that preserves their ability to dictate all aspects of the migration. What is unique about the Brocade Cloudplex architecture is that it is both the foundation for integrated compute blocks, but it also embraces a customer's existing multi-vendor infrastructure to unify all of their assets into a single compute and storage domain.

Brocade CloudPlex meets the goal of the Brocade One™ strategy, designed to help companies transition smoothly to a world where information and applications can reside anywhere by delivering solutions that deliver unmatched simplicity, non-stop performance, application optimization and investment protection.

"Virtualization has fundamentally changed the nature of applications by detaching them from their underlying IT infrastructure and introducing a high degree of application mobility across the entire enterprise," said Dave Stevens, chief technology officer at Brocade. "This is the concept of the 'Virtual Enterprise' that we feel unleashes the true potential of cloud computing in all its forms -- private, hybrid and public."

Through the CloudPlex architecture, Brocade will help its customers scale their IT environments from managing hundreds of virtual machines (VMs) in certain classes of servers to tens of thousands of VMs that are distributed and mobilized across their entire enterprise and throughout the cloud. According to Gartner, the expansion of VMs not only improves automation and reduces operational expenses, it is the primary requirement for IT organizations to migrate to cloud architectures.(1)

Gartner advises that, "IT organizations pursuing virtualization should have an overall strategic plan for cloud computing and a roadmap for the future, and should plan proactively. Further, these organizations must focus on management and process change to manage virtual resources, and to manage the speed that virtualization enables, to avoid virtualization sprawl."

CloudPlex Components
The Brocade Cloudplex architecture will define the stages and the components from Brocade and its partners that are required to get to the Virtual Enterprise. The stages comprise three main categories -- fabrics, globalization and open technologies -- with some of these components being available today while others are in development or on the roadmap of Brocade's engineering priorities.

The currently available components are:


Networks comprised of Ethernet fabrics and Fibre Channel fabrics as the flat, fast and simple foundation designed to scale to highly virtualized IT environments;
Multiprotocol fabric adapters for simplified server I/O consolidation;
High-performance application delivery products necessary for load balancing network traffic across distributed data centers;

The components on the roadmap are:


Integrated, tested and validated solution bundles of server, virtualization, networking and storage resources called Brocade Virtual Compute Blocks. An integral element of the Brocade CloudPlex architecture, Brocade will enable its systems partners and integrators to deliver Virtual Compute Block solutions comprising servers, hypervisors, storage, and cloud-optimized networking in pre-bundled, pre-racked configurations with unified support;
Powerful and universal fabric and network extension delivered through a new platform capable of supporting a number of IP, SAN and mainframe extension technologies including virtual private LAN services (VPLS), Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) and FICON;
An advancement of Brocade Fabric ID technology called "Cloud IDs" that enables simple and secure isolation and mobility of VMs for native multi-tenancy cloud environments;
An open framework for management, provisioning and integration designed to promote multi-vendor and system-to-sytem interoperability specifically for cloud environments. These include Brocade products supporting OpenStack software for storage, compute and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) capabilities enabled through OpenFlow;
Unified education, support and services delivered through Brocade and partners to help customers manage this highly distributed "Virtual Enterprise" environment.

Brocade Partner Endorsements
"We are excited to be working with Brocade to develop highly-scalable virtualized computing and storage configurations, providing superior cost-performance solutions today for our customers while at the same time establishing a clear path to cloud IT architectures in the future. Specifically, Brocade switches coupled with Dell PowerEdge servers and EqualLogic or Dell Compellent storage provide the scalability, flexibility and efficiency our customers demand in the virtual era."
-- Dario Zamarian, Vice President and General Manager, Dell Networking

"Fujitsu's global cloud strategy is built on our real experience in working with customers on the delivery of both Services and Infrastructures for Cloud computing across the world. We believe that common processes, holistic management of infrastructure elements and the use of industry standards are fundamentally helping customers to ease the transition and to migrate their largest and most complex IT environments smoothly to join 'any mode' of the cloud consumption of their choosing. Brocade shares these views and has laid out a compelling vision through its CloudPlex architecture that Fujitsu Technology Solutions fully endorses and will support. This architecture provides compelling added value to Fujitsu's Cloud offerings by defined standards and holistic management."
-- Jens-Peter Seick, Senior Vice President, Data Center Systems, Fujitsu

"Hitachi is helping customers deliver IT services through the cloud by using open, standards-based technologies that let them build and scale their virtualized data centers at their own pace. With Brocade's CloudPlex architecture, both Hitachi and Brocade address our mutual customers' IT needs and protect their existing IT investments by migrating their legacy devices to cloud deployments -- preventing cloud from becoming just another IT silo."
-- Sean Moser, Vice President, Storage Software Product Management, Hitachi Data Systems

"Recent advancements in cloud and virtualization are making it possible for enterprises to deploy an intelligent infrastructure that enables workloads to move around the enterprise and around the world in a transparent, fluid way. We believe that enabling flexible application deployment is imperative to mainstream adoption of cloud computing. VMware and Brocade share a common vision of offering customers the ability to accelerate IT by reducing complexity while significantly lowering costs and enabling more flexible, agile services delivery."
-- Parag Patel, Vice President, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware

Unveiling at Brocade Technology Day Summit
Brocade CTO Dave Stevens will discuss more details about the CloudPlex architecture at the annual Brocade Technology Day Summit taking place on its San Jose campus on May 3 and 4. To participate in the event via a live webcast, please visit the following page on Brocade's Facebook page or simply register for the event at:

http://live-webcast.com/events/brocade/summit2011/.

2011-05-03 - Brocade Enables Service Provider Business Model Transformation via Breakthrough Public Cloud-Optimized Networking Solutions:
Innovative Technologies Enable Service Providers to Scale Cloud Infrastructures and Evolve Their Service Models Profitability

SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 05/03/2011 -- Brocade Technology Day Summit -- Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced innovative new cloud-optimized networking solutions to enable the next evolution in public cloud infrastructures. These advancements will help service providers leverage their existing infrastructures to create a broad set of new revenue-generating services, such as virtual private cloud services, for enterprise customers. As a result, service providers around the globe can minimize their infrastructure expenditure and raise their revenue to increase profitability.

At its annual Technology Day Summit, Brocade unveiled the solutions that support the expansion of emerging service provider public cloud infrastructures, including:


Significant software advancements to the entire family of Brocade® Internet core, metro and edge routing products, including a clear migration path from today's IPv4-based networks to IPv6
A new set of carrier-grade 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 100 GbE blades for Brocade MLX Series routers to enable massive scalability for highly virtualized and cloud-based networks
Enhanced IPv4/IPv6 and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) routing capabilities and scalability for the Brocade NetIron® CER 2000 Series compact routers to expand the service provider cloud in metro networks
The Brocade 6910 Ethernet Access Switch, a new metro network solution designed to cost-effectively deliver advanced services to businesses

Today's networks must be cloud-optimized at every critical point as they will define the application performance and the customer experience within the cloud. Service providers are able to leverage Brocade data center networking leadership in high-performance Brocade ServerIron® ADX application delivery switches, as well as market-leading storage fabric and innovative Ethernet fabric technologies to build out their cloud infrastructure. Specifically, the Brocade Ethernet fabric technology enables a completely virtualized environment in which service providers can offer compute, storage and network resources to their customers on-demand. In addition, Brocade Ethernet fabrics simplify data center network management and operations, improve network efficiency and utilization and thus reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) dramatically.

According to a recent report by Gartner(1), the global market for cloud services is expected to grow to nearly $150 billion by 2014. This enormous market opportunity is transforming how service providers will deliver information technology services to their customers. It is a catalyst that will ultimately alter how services are delivered and consumed by nearly everyone worldwide, driving a fundamental shift in business and revenue models.

"Over the past decade, bandwidth and basic connectivity services have been moving rapidly toward commoditization," stated Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst, Service Provider and Data Center Networks, Infonetics Research. "At the same time, service providers must make significant investments in their networks just to keep up with escalating bandwidth demand. Adding cloud services enables service providers to offer a variety of additional revenue-generating services while leveraging those network investments. Making the right network investment choice means that necessary infrastructure expenditures can also increase revenue opportunities."

By actively working with industry consortiums on standards for open network environments, Brocade delivers a standards-based cloud infrastructure in which high-value applications and services can flourish. In 2010, Brocade became the first public networking vendor to endorse OpenFlow, an emerging standard for delivering software-defined networking capabilities, and the company is now actively involved in the OpenStack Compute and OpenStack Storage standards. Today Brocade leads the way in solving the real-world challenges of managing hyper-scale data centers, network virtualization and dynamic flow management by contributing to these open standards initiatives.

Advancing Service Provider Public Clouds through Hardware and Software Enhancements
Guided by the Brocade One™ strategy that aligns to key customer imperatives, Brocade introduced the following solutions targeted at service provider customers globally:


Brocade protects existing network infrastructure investments while simplifying operational management with the general availability of the two-port 100 GbE and eight-port 10 GbE (8×10G-X) blades for the Brocade MLX Series. These carrier-class blades help reduce operational expenditures and promote service provider expansion. The new 100 GbE blades cost just a fraction of competitive offerings, helping promote mass adoption of high-performance, scalable networking technology. When installed in the Brocade MLXe router, the 100 GbE performance can power a half-million high-definition video streams over a single managed connection. This provides more than twice the operational efficiency of competitors at a fraction of the cost, resulting in massive gains in profitability.

"With nearly 1.3 Tbps of peak traffic, aggregated from 415 member networks, the foundation of our success must be built on high-performance networking with massive scalability and carrier-grade resiliency," said Henk Steenman, chief technology officer for Amsterdam Internet Exchange. "Our network traffic doubles every 18 months as a direct result of the proliferation of Internet-enabled mobile devices and online video consumption, making it vital for our Brocade routing infrastructure to efficiently scale to support ongoing expansion. The new Brocade 100 GbE blades provide us with a simplified path to remain ahead of this bandwidth growth curve by enabling massive network scalability and capacity as we proactively plan for our future."


Brocade also introduced the Brocade NetIron 5.2 software release with enhanced capabilities to support IPv6 interoperability with IPv4 networks. By providing a smooth, secure transition to IPv6, Brocade will help service providers transform their networks toward a more scalable infrastructure for the future. Through this advanced software release, Brocade has expanded its set of dual-protocol networking solutions with embedded support for high-speed routing of IPv6 traffic over an MPLS network. The software release also significantly increases MPLS scalability and features for large networks.


Brocade also introduced enhanced capabilities for the Brocade NetIron CER 2000 Series of compact 1U routers designed for high-performance Ethernet edge routing and MPLS applications. Newly introduced models of this router provide significant scalability enhancements to accommodate future growth of IPv4 and IPv6 route tables. With its expanded capabilities, the NetIron CER 2000 enables a wide range of services and applications to help service providers deliver advanced cloud-optimized routing throughout the metro edge. The target applications include provider edge routing, data center border routing and enterprise border routing.


Finally, the new Brocade 6910 Ethernet Access Switch is a compact MEF compliant solution that extends wire-speed Ethernet services to the network edge without compromising performance. This helps service providers expand their cloud-based network services to customers in the "last mile." The target applications are metro access for enterprise customers, mobile backhaul for cellular 4G/LTE, public safety networks and managed customer premises devices for enterprise customers.



"For service providers, their network is the cloud. Service providers want to provide network services to their enterprise customers and, on top of that, they want to deliver application-level services from the data center," said Ken Cheng, Vice President, Service Provider Products, Brocade. "Since Brocade has both data center as well as service provider networking expertise, we are uniquely qualified as a strategic partner to help service providers build out their cloud infrastructures and deliver profitable cloud-based services."

Video


Public Cloud Overview Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy3jVL6clfQ
Service Provider Product Overview Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXvHnmMZV2o

Product Details


Brocade Service Provider Solution http://www.brocade.com/solutions-technology/industry/service-provider/index.page
Brocade NetIron CER 2000 Compact Router http://www.brocade.com/products/all/routers/product-details/netiron-cer-2000-series/index.page
Brocade 6910 Ethernet Access Switch http://www.brocade.com/products/all/switches/product-details/6910-ethernet-access-switch/index.page

Photos


Brocade 100 GbE Blade http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642@N02/4988497298/
Brocade NetIron CER 2000 Router http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642@N02/4101039893/
Brocade 6910 Ethernet Access Switch http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642@N02/5659321268/

Brocade Global Services
Brocade Global Services delivers world-class professional services and technical support to maximize investments in Brocade service provider network solutions. Brocade Professional Services offers assessment, design and implementation services to optimize networks to meet increasing bandwidth demands. Brocade Premier levels of Technical Support offer proactive support, enabling service providers to achieve non-stop networking and maximum return on investment. For more information, visit www.brocade.com/globalservices.

2011-05-03 - Arista Advances Extensible Operating System for Cloud Networks and Creates Open Developer Community:
Arista today announced the expansion of Arista EOS – the world’s most advanced network operating system.

SANTA CLARA Calif., May 03, 2011 – Arista Networks, Inc., Arista today announced the expansion of Arista EOS – the world’s most advanced network operating system. Building upon the open, widely deployed, and resilient foundation of Arista EOS this adds an open development platform, a developer support site, multi-system management capabilities, and new operational features for cloud networking.

Arista EOS is the first network OS to enable native third party development. This is possible because it is built upon a stable, open source, Linux core with a central state database that makes EOS inherently self-healing, in-service upgradeable, and extremely robust.

Two Tier scale, One View Management

Arista is delivering the largest networks with a simple two-tiered cloud network that scales to over 18,000 10Gb attached hosts. The introduction of Arista EOS 4.7 sets a new standard for scale with a single management view, and lays the foundation for future innovation as well. EOS 4.7 simplifies manageability with features such as Arista CloudVision®, Latency Analyzer (LANZ) for congestion management, and Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) for rapid deployment of dense computing.

To extend the open source development models and create a repository for ongoing developer support, Arista is also introducing a DevOps community site called EOS Central. EOS Central houses projects like CloudVision®, Chef, Puppet, and Wireshark which can be downloaded and integrated into Arista EOS either natively, or in a local virtual machine.

“With a radically different software architecture, management system, and philosophy around standards based development this is the crown jewels of Arista,” said Douglas Gourlay, Arista’s vice president of marketing. “We can’t wait for Arista users to experience its stability, openness, and artistry.”

EOS Central and Developer Support

Many applications for Arista EOS are available today, with many more to come later in 2011. Cloud stack developers, big data companies, academics, and independent software developers around the world are working on EOS applications, including Cloud.com, Cloudscaling, Kyoto University, Morphlabs, Nimbula, and Solace Systems. You can read here what our partners are saying about the EOS architecture, EOS Central, and CloudVision®.

EOS Central is an online community created by Arista for customers, developers, engineers, and technology professionals to learn from each other, track development projects, and contribute to new and innovative software developments. Featuring developer forums, programming tips, and a growing reference library of scripts and APIs, EOS Central is designed to support and nurture the growing EOS development community.

Pioneering CloudVision®

As part of EOS Central, Arista is showcasing a downloadable extension called CloudVision®. CloudVision® combines web-scale message passing platforms with the EOS architecture to deliver a management capability that is extremely flexible: topology agnostic, in-band or out-of-band, featuring a publish/subscribe architecture, and supporting orders of magnitude more devices than competitive offerings.

Unlike enterprise focused fabric-based systems, Arista offers an open, automated, and scalable model preferred by cloud computing providers. Arista CloudVision® is built with open-standard protocols and open source software - all modifications have been checked in on GitHub to continue to fuel innovation in message-bus architectures.

"Customers recognize that legacy enterprise vendors have failed to deliver cost-effective, simple, and scalable cloud solutions. Now they are turning away from closed, inefficient, slow, complex, and overpriced systems,” stated Randy Bias, chief technology officer at Cloudscaling. “Arista EOS offers our customers an open environment with a modern software architecture enabling automation, scalability and overcoming the network challenges for cost-effective cloud deployments."

Pricing & Availability

Arista EOS 4.7 is available immediately for download. CloudVision® is a downloadable extension for all Arista switches and requires Arista EOS 4.6 and higher. EOS 4.7 is a free upgrade for all Arista products under maintenance.

2011-05-02 - Solarflare Accelerates Memcached Big Data Applications by 51 Percent:
Leading 10 Gigabit Ethernet networking company announces new OpenOnload enhancements, targeting social networking and other data intensive applications

IRVINE, Calif. – May 2, 2011 – Solarflare, the pioneer in high-performance, low latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE), server adapters and software, announced today new updates to its OpenOnload® and EnterpriseOnload™ middleware, geared toward accelerating big data applications. By using Solarflare OpenOnload middleware in combination with Solarflare SFN5122F 10GbE SFP+ server adapters, customers can improve response times by 51 percent for memcached queries at 212,000 transactions per second.

Memcached is a high-performance, distributed-memory, object-caching system that can accelerate dynamic web applications by alleviating database load. By using Solarflare OpenOnload application acceleration middleware, users can reduce the overheads associated with memcached access, increasing the aggregate transaction rate and reducing application response time, particularly for cloud and other scale-out infrastructures.

Earlier this year, Solarflare augmented its middleware portfolio by releasing Solarflare EnterpriseOnload that included bundled service and support for large enterprise customers. The latest releases of OpenOnload 1.1 and EnterpriseOnload 1.1 include new features that provide performance enhancements in a variety of application environments. New features include an affinity driver to map applications to specific server cores, PCIe bus optimizations to reduce latency by up to 300 nanoseconds, acceleration of the Linux Pipe command that speeds communication between two processes on a server, and a socket and stack control API that enables customers to control and fine tune acceleration options on a per-socket basis. OpenOnload leverages the adapter's scalable vNIC architecture that provides up to 2,048 protected interfaces to map applications directly to the NIC hardware. OpenOnload uses queue pairs made available by Solarflare's scalable vNIC architecture to create faster, more direct connections with applications. It bypasses the OS kernel and enables applications to increase their network load, while increasing their performance.

Solarflare's server adapters and OpenOnload are designed for high-performance networks that are uniquely suited to handle the server access network requirements of big data environments. The trend toward big data is being fueled by the availability of high-performance servers, lower-cost 10GbE connectivity and scale-out storage. IT managers designing social media applications, Web 2.0 and other data- intensive applications are using such technologies as memcached, Hadoop and MapReduce to enhance the performance of search and analytics of big data.

Customers who are dealing with big data are faced with several technical challenges in their networks, including traffic bottlenecks and inadequate performance in the server access layer in the links between their servers and access switches. Solarflare's 10GbE adapter and software solutions are engineered from the ground up to deliver high performance and application acceleration in the server network, including:
•Lowest-latency and highest-throughput Linux kernel and Microsoft Windows performance
•OpenOnload application middleware for even lower latency and higher performance
•40 Gigabits per second of bi-directional bandwidth
•Support for Layer 2 cut through, TCP/IP stateless off loads to enable low contention and high performance
•Support for the latest Layer 2 resiliency protocols, including multiple switch link aggregation (MLAG) and IEEE 802.1AD Link aggregation
•Support for 1G/10G speed shifts

"Customers dealing with big data and social networking environments are experiencing the advantages of Solarflare's unique server adapter hardware and software. They can dramatically decrease response time for their end users and improve server utilization, lowering business costs and increasing end customer satisfaction," said Russell Stern, CEO at Solarflare. "Last year, Solarflare led the transition of the high-frequency trading industry to low-latency, 10GbE networking because our products delivered superior performance, the lowest latency and ease of use. Today, big data customers are achieving huge gains in performance with our low-latency, cut-through hardware in combination with our OpenOnload application acceleration middleware. Because our solutions are easy to adopt and deploy, customers can move from the proof of concept test to a full production deployment in a matter of days which speeds up their time to revenue and service velocity."

Pricing and Availability

OpenOnload 1.1 is open source and available for download this month from openonload.org. EnterpriseOnload 1.1 will be available this quarter. For Enterprise pricing, contact sales@solarflare.com.

2011-04-04 - F5 Broadens Management Solution Portfolio with New Virtual Appliance:
Enterprise Manager offers enterprises, service providers, and cloud providers a flexible and cost effective platform for managing physical and virtual BIG-IP solutions in an integrated application delivery architecture

SEATTLE, April 04, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced F5® Enterprise Manager™ Version 2.2, a centralized management solution that enables enterprises, service providers, and cloud providers to effectively monitor and manage multiple F5 BIG-IP® Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs). With this release, the Enterprise Manager solution is also now available as a virtual appliance, giving customers greater flexibility in building hybrid physical-virtual environments to maximize efficiency. The Enterprise Manager Virtual Edition offering represents F5’s commitment to provide customers greater choice and flexibility when deploying both physical and virtual solutions.





Additional Resources

Enterprise Manager Product Overview
Enterprise Manager Datasheet
Enterprise Manager Version 2.2 – SlideShare Presentation
Enterprise Manager Version 2.2: In 5 Minutes or Less – Video
Application Delivery Network Platform Management – White Paper
TechValidate Enterprise Manager Portal – Customer Quotes and Statistics




Details

Enterprise Manager gives customers a single-pane view of their entire application delivery infrastructure in real time, and provides monitoring and management tools for optimizing performance and scaling the infrastructure to meet business needs. Version 2.2 of Enterprise Manager includes the following enhancements:
•Flexible Deployment Options with the New Virtual Edition – In an effort to scale virtualized infrastructures, limit IT costs, and keep up with rapidly growing demand, many organizations deploy multiple BIG-IP solutions—both physical and virtual—to intelligently optimize applications and network performance. Whether organizations are managing these solutions within the corporate firewall or off premises as part of a managed service or cloud solution, they need a flexible management platform that enables them to manage multiple ADCs. With Enterprise Manager Version 2.2, customers now have the choice of deploying a virtual or physical appliance. The virtual edition can help customers reduce upfront costs, enable faster deployments, save space in data centers, and alleviate the need for hardware certifications for IT personnel.
•Enhanced SSL Management and Reporting – As customers migrate to 2K SSL keys and begin to realize the resulting performance impact on their application servers, they need a way to easily track and evaluate transactions per second information for their ADCs. Enterprise Manager Version 2.2 adds new reporting features to capture current and historical SSL transactions per second data, enabling customers to analyze and compare average and peak usage against maximum thresholds. With this information, customers are better equipped to plan for capacity increases by upgrading SSL licensing or hardware platform capabilities to meet their application needs.
•Auto-Tracking of Service Contract End Dates – Enterprise Manager Version 2.2 automatically tracks service contract end dates, includes them in reports, and can send alerts to administrators prior to service contracts ending. This feature eliminates the need for manual tracking, helping administrators ensure that there is never a lapse in service coverage for critical BIG-IP devices.
•Support for External Databases – Enterprise Manager traditionally stores performance data in an internal MySQL database. Although external databases and reporting services could access the MySQL database, external databases could not store performance data directly. For customers that prefer to store performance monitoring statistics in an external database, Enterprise Manager Version 2.2 now provides that option. This gives customers the ability to configure and dedicate as much storage as they need to collect performance metrics for analysis.

Supporting Quotes

“Many of the world’s largest global organizations rely on F5’s BIG-IP solutions to ensure that their physical and virtual infrastructures can keep pace with rapidly growing application delivery demands,” said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. “Enterprise Manager Virtual Edition not only helps customers cut costs while improving their overall IT agility and scalability, it also gives them the flexibility to choose how they want to configure their infrastructures, with whatever mix of physical and virtual devices they’re comfortable with.”

“F5 demonstrates its commitment to customers by enhancing and adapting its solutions to meet changing market demands, while keeping an integrated and repeatable architecture in place for optimal efficiency,” said Zeus Kerravala, SVP of Enterprise Research at Yankee Group. “By providing virtual editions of its BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager, Access Policy Manager, ARX, and now Enterprise Manager, F5 is giving customers the flexibility to choose the type of solution that best suits their particular business needs without sacrificing performance, reliability, or scalability.”

“Enterprise Manager provides customers managing multiple F5 ADC devices with critical visibility of all network traffic and device performance in a central location, which significantly reduces complexity and cost,” said Toby Penn, Solutions Director at Accuvant. “Version 2.2’s expanded SSL management and reporting features reinforce that criticality. I believe that companies are really going to like the additional deployment options they get with the new virtual edition. As an F5 partner, we’re looking forward to offering our customers this essential visibility with a virtual solution.”

Availability

Enterprise Manager Version 2.2 and Enterprise Manager Virtual Edition are currently available.

2011-03-28 - New Arista 7050 Series Optimized for 10GbE Data Centers, Big Data, IP Storage, and Dense Virtualization:


SANTA CLARA Calif., March 28, 2011 – Arista Networks, Inc., Arista Networks today introduced the Arista 7050 Series, a 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switching system that delivers 1.28 Terabits of switching performance at under 2 watts per 10GbE interface – making this the most efficient Ethernet switching system ever. The Arista 7050 Series also offers double the scale and faster performance than competing platforms while complementing the existing Arista 7100 Series of ultra-low latency switches with new switches purpose-built for broad data center deployments.

With virtualization and the live migration of virtual machines increasing, the Arista 7050 Series supports increased uplink capacity while still meeting the demands for density within the rack. Dynamically allocated deep packet buffers and support for Data Center Bridging make the Arista 7050 Series an ideal choice for interconnecting storage devices and big data applications such as Hadoop. As these applications scale the Arista 7050 can connect up to 18,000 10GbE attached servers through a single Arista Leaf/Spine network architecture.

"The new 7050 Series delivers the lowest power draw per port of any 10GbE switch, uses the latest in silicon technologies, delivering the highest-density with twice the routing scale of competing products, in our one rack unit networking platform," stated Jeff Hirschman vice president of hardware engineering and manufacturing at Arista. "With the 7050, our customers can continue to meet and exceed the demands of 10GbE data centers, dense virtualization, and big data warehousing deployments."

Today's announcement creates more choices for customers and continues to raise the bar on scale, power efficiency, density, simplified management, and automation. Arista's new 7050 Series delivers the highest 10GbE port density in one rack-unit and continues to set new standards for low-latency and multicast efficiency all while reducing capital expenditures by up to 50 percent.

The Arista 7050-64 is the first Arista switch to utilize the latest Broadcom Trident+ switching silicon. In a compact 1RU form factor with reversible cooling options, the Arista 7050-64 supports 48 wirespeed 10GbE SFP+ interfaces while providing increased uplink density with 4x40Gb QSFP connectors that can work as either 40GbE or 4x10GbE providing a total of 64 10GbE ports in one switch. Consistent with the entire Arista portfolio the Arista 7050 Series runs the same Extensible Operating System (EOS) image as all Arista products.

With virtualization and the live migration of virtual machines increasing in enterprise networks, the Arista 7050 supports increased uplink capacity while still meeting the demands for density within the rack. This improves virtualization performance, enables faster live migrations, and simplifies provisioning and capacity planning. The IP Host table and routing table support 16,000 entries concurrently to handle the increased demands virtualization places on the scaling of network tables. The Arista 7050 supports front-to-rear and rear-to-front cooling for better power/cooling economics.

“Virtualization has transformed every part of IT except the network. For companies to maximize the ROI of virtualization technology, the network now must transform to keep up,” commented Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president at Yankee Group. “Using the Broadcom Trident+ ASIC coupled with Arista EOS and VM Tracer, the Arista 7050 Series optimizes the network for virtualization and mainstream 10GbE deployments.”

2011-03-22 - Brocade Leads OpenFlow Adoption to Accelerate Network Virtualization and Cloud Application Development :
OpenFlow Enables Service Providers to Build Highly Scalable Networks and Foster Rapid Innovation of New Services

SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 03/22/2011 -- Brocade® (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced it is taking a leadership position to help define standards to enable scalability and manageability in hyper-scale cloud infrastructures. Brocade has become an initial member of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting a new approach to networking called Software-Defined Networking (SDN).

SDN involves several components, one of the most important being standard-based OpenFlow, an emerging standard delivering service providers granular control of their network infrastructures. Brocade will leverage its work in developing OpenFlow across its high-performance service provider portfolio to enable customers to build high-value applications across their networks with greater efficiency and unparalleled simplicity.

Today's service providers and network operators face a number of challenges that require multiple solutions in order to ensure highly efficient and profitable operation. Brocade's goal in working with the Open Networking Foundation is to alleviate the burden of operational complexity for service providers by leveraging OpenFlow to manage and operate their networks.

Brocade has developed an OpenFlow enabled IP/MPLS router as part of its service provider product portfolio for application verification and interoperability testing with its partners and customers. Brocade plans to make additional OpenFlow strategy and product announcements later this year. Brocade will initially focus its efforts on delivering solutions that enable the scalability and manageability required in hyper-scale cloud infrastructures.

"Stronger definition of network behavior in software is a growing trend, and open interfaces are going to lead to faster innovation," said Nick McKeown, ONF board member and professor at Stanford University.

"In June 2010, Brocade was one of the first major networking vendors to publicly endorse OpenFlow," said Ken Cheng, vice president, Service Provider Products, Brocade. "Our goal is to leverage OpenFlow to build compelling cloud networking solutions for service providers and network operators worldwide, while lowering the cost associated with operating their networks."

2011-03-15 - Blogs Jayshree Ullal Andy Bechtolsheim Testimonials Customer Analyst Press Room In the News Press Releases Arista 7500 Press Kit Events Webinar Archive Careers Contact Us :


SANTA CLARA Calif., March 15 2011 – Arista Networks, Inc., the pioneer of next-generation data center switching for cloud networking, today announced the Arista 7124SX, the fastest switch in the world with standard SFP+ interfaces. With sub-500 nanosecond latency, the Arista 7124SX is ideal for financial trading and ultra low latency applications as a leaf or access top-of-rack 10Gigabit Ethernet switch.


Arista also introduced Latency Analyzer (LANZ), a new software capability to monitor and analyze network performance, generate early warning of pending congestion events, and track sources of bottlenecks. In addition, a Solid State Disk (SSD) is available as a factory-option and can be used to store packet data captures, LANZ generated historical data, and take full advantage of the Linux based Arista Extensible Operating System (EOS).


"We already have 7124SX switches running in our production environment and are quite pleased with the state-of-the-art design and financial services targeted feature set" said Jamison Chong, CTO of Montreal based Vigilant Futures. “In our experience, the record low latency and jitter characteristics of the 7124SX put it well ahead of its competition.”


The Arista 7124SX is a wire-speed, 24-port, L2/L3 switch supporting 100Mb, 1GbE and 10GbE SFP+ based optics and cables in one rack unit. Ideally suited for data center applications, LANZ and the 7124SX are supported on the same binary EOS image across the entire Arista 7000 Family of switches. Other recent EOS additions include Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) and VM Tracer, which ease set-up and overall manageability of networks in virtualized data center environments.


"The addition of the Arista 7124SX not only improves network latency dramatically by 20% (over 100 nanoseconds), but also represents a highly efficient and more compact design” stated Anshul Sadana, vice president of customer engineering at Arista Networks. “Customers can now run a whole new suite of applications that are well integrated with their low latency network.”

2011-02-24 - IBM, Juniper and Solarflare Achieve the Lowest Latency and Highest Message Rates With 10 Gigabit Ethernet:
Vendors Achieve Record-Breaking STAC Benchmarks With Their Best-of-Breed Ethernet Products

IRVINE, Calif. – February 24, 2011 – Solarflare, the 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) pioneer, today announced the results of a recently completed multi-vendor benchmark test with Juniper and IBM. The vendors used the STAC-M2™ Benchmark to measure the messaging performance of the solution stack. With a traffic load, the mean latency of the solution did not exceed 10 microseconds, while the standard deviation of the latency was near zero. At the highest tested rate of 2.3 million messages/second, the mean latency of the solution was just 14 microseconds. These low latency and high message rate results beat any previously published STAC-M2 test using 10GbE. The tests were audited by STAC® (The Securities Technology Analysis Center). The highlights of the audited report are available to the industry at http://www.stacresearch.com/node/8495.

The solution under test consisted of:
• Solarflare® OpenOnload® Application Acceleration Middleware
• Solarflare® SFN5122F 10GbE Adapters
• IBM WMQ Low Latency Messaging v2.4.0.2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 5.5
• 2x Quad-Core Intel Xeon X5570 2.93 GHz
• IBM x3550 M2 Model Servers
• Juniper Networks QFX3500 10Gb Ethernet Switch with Junos 11.1


All of the above products are available to financial firms today. Solarflare's OpenOnload middleware, IBM's multi-threaded WLLM, and Juniper's low-latency switch contributed significantly to increasing the application-messaging rate, while maintaining low latency and very tight jitter.

"To date we have participated in more STAC M2 Benchmark tests than any other 10GbE server adapter vendor. These results beat anything we have seen before on 10GbE by anyone, including us," said Bruce Tolley, VP of solutions marketing at Solarflare. "The results empirically prove the dramatic contribution our OpenOnload application acceleration middleware with the SFN5122F server adapter make to the low latency, tight jitter and high message rates of the solution stack."

The STAC-M2 test measures the ability of a solution to handle real-time market data in a variety of configurations. "Leading trading firms on the STAC Benchmark™ Council approved the STAC-M2 Benchmark specifications as the meaningful, transparent way for vendors to demonstrate the performance of a high-speed messaging stack," said Jack Gidding, associate director at STAC. "Achieving both low latency and high throughput in these benchmarks is not easy. The test harness involves large market data messages, usage patterns ranging from black-box trading to enterprise distribution, and real-world challenges, such as slow consumers. We are pleased that IBM, Juniper and Solarflare subjected their products to these tests."

For this STAC-M2 Benchmark, Solarflare's server adapters were installed in the servers along with Solarflare's OpenOnload application acceleration middleware. OpenOnload speeds up messaging and other types of applications, while reducing the processing work required of the host server. OpenOnload thereby simultaneously reduces the application's latency, while increasing its performance; all while maintaining complete compatibility with standard TCP/IP and Ethernet protocols. In addition, because of the unique tuning features of OpenOnload, the participating vendors were able to configure the multi-core IBM System x3550 M2 Model 7946 servers so that all interrupts and background processing tasks were run on a single core. OpenOnload was used to enable the application threads to run without contention with each other. This left all other cores in the IBM server completely free to run application code without any interruption, cross talk or congestion. This elegant division of labor among the cores achieved by OpenOnload contributed significantly to the very low latency and very low jitter of the total solution stack.

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About Solarflare
Solarflare is the pioneer in high-performance, low-latency 10GbE server I/O solutions. Our architectural approach combines hardware and software to deliver high-performance adapter products and application acceleration middleware for superior performance in a wide range of applications, including financial services, high performance computing (HPC), cloud computing, storage and virtualized data centers. Our products are used globally by many of the world's largest companies, and are available from leading distributors and value-added resellers, as well as from Dell and HP. Solarflare is headquartered in Irvine, California, has an R&D site in Cambridge, UK and sales offices in Taiwan and China.

2011-02-15 - Arista Unveils Powerful Automation Capabilities for Cloud Networking:


SANTA CLARA Calif., February 15, 2011 – Arista Networks, Inc., the pioneer of next-generation data center switching for cloud networking, today announced breakthrough network automation capabilities that simplify and accelerate the creation, migration and deployment of multi-tier network infrastructures. The Arista Zero Touch Provisioning capability empowers IT organizations to rapidly expand the capacity of a public or private cloud – adding thousands of servers and storage devices to the network in a matter of minutes.

Arista Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) fully automates the deployment of cloud networking capacity. With no human intervention, ZTP can completely configure the network to enable thousands of servers and storage devices to be added to the cloud in minutes. This automation capability builds on the Arista Extensible Operating System (EOS) architecture, an open and extensible modular operating system that delivers unparalleled stability and flexibility.

“Today’s rapidly expanding cloud computing environments are driving a new wave of innovation in the network,” stated Ken Duda, founder and vice president of software engineering at Arista Networks. “Today’s networking capabilities are measured not only by performance and scale, but also by programmability, APIs, and automation. Arista ZTP is the first in a series of automation capabilities we are bringing to the cloud network.”

Arista ZTP enables a switch to boot, identify the proper IP address for itself, upgrade its operating system version, add customer-specific or service provider-specific extensions, generate its own configuration, and add itself to the network. Combined with other EOS capabilities like Open Extensibility and VM Tracer the Arista switch can also securely connect back to a managed service provider and auto-provision all of its network segments to support virtual machines in a VMware vSphere private cloud.

"The network is one of the fundamental bottlenecks to scaling cloud computing systems and automation, open source software, and architectures designed for cloud scale have been historically absent from networking vendors," commented Randy Bias, CEO of Cloudscaling a leading cloud design company. "Arista's EOS and ZTP are exactly the types of valuable developments needed to scale the cloud."

Large IT networks require the ability to add thousands of servers and petabytes of storage capacity to the network in minutes to scale with demand. The network has historically been one of the biggest inhibitors of IT automation. Arista is leading a change with ZTP.

"Arista's Zero Touch Provisioning capabilities are helping lead the way to a new world of network automation and management that robust cloud computing platforms demand,” said Tom Sands, chief network engineer at Rackspace. "We are excited about Arista's support of the OpenStack open source cloud project, and how their ZTP technology could enable more powerful network automation services in the cloud."

Product Availability

Supported on Arista fixed switches, Zero Touch Provisioning capability is available in Q2’2011 as a software option.

Additional Information and Resources

A video demonstration of Arista Zero Touch Provisioning can be found at: ?http://www.aristanetworks.com/en/products/eos/ztp

About Arista Networks:

Arista Networks was founded to deliver Cloud Networking Solutions for large data center and computing environments. Arista’s award-winning best-of-breed 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches redefine scalability, robustness, and price–performance. At the core of Arista's platform is EOS a ground-breaking new software architecture. Arista Networks markets its products worldwide through distribution partners, systems integrators and resellers.

2011-01-19 - Solarflare's 10GBASE-T PHY Named Product of the Year by Electronic Products Magazine:
Industry's first 40nm quad-port PHY garners award for innovative advancement in analog and mixed-signal interconnects

IRVINE, Calif. – January 19, 2011 – Solarflare, the company pioneering 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE), today announced it was honored with an Electronic Products Magazine’s Product of the Year award for its SFT9104 PHY, the industry’s first 40nm quad-port 10GBASE-T PHY chip for the mass adoption and deployment of 10GbE. Introduced in May 2010, the SFT9104 eliminates power, density and performance barriers with its low power and low latency characteristics.

The editors of Electronic Products, a leading trade publication for electronic design engineers, evaluated over three-hundred products launched in 2010. The winning products were selected on the basis of innovative design, significant advancement in technology or application, and substantial achievement in price and performance. Solarflare’s PHY demonstrated success in the analog and mixed-signal interconnects category by enabling ultra-low power consumption, consuming only 2.5 watts per port; multiple data center power reduction modes; and a low latency mode for in-the-rack applications. The SFT9104 breaks down prior performance and cost barriers for 10GbE connectivity and enables a new class of high-density modular switches and servers.

"There are four or five suppliers out there with 40-nm process based 10GBASE-T transceivers, but Solarflare seems to be leading the pack with just 2.5 watts at full reach and 1.6 watts for a 10 meter link," said Jim Harrison, editor of Electronic Products. "We like the fact that the PHY dynamically adjusts its power — if there is a short link, it adjusts the drive. If there is no connection, it enters a low-power sleep mode automatically and will wake up in less than 3 seconds. Back when I was in school, if you told us you could send data at 10G over twisted-pair wire for 100 meters, we would have had you put away in a nice padded cell."

Solarflare’s fourth-generation PHY chip is a mixed-signal solution that performs physical layer functions for 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) transmission over standard Ethernet twisted-pair cabling. Compliant with the 10GBASE-T standard, it also supports 1000BASE-T and 100BASE-TX for 1000 Mbps and 100 Mbps operation respectively. Fully backwards compatible with lower speed Ethernets, the triple speed SFT9104 enables seamless transition of installed Ethernet networks to 10 Gigabit/s speeds by preserving customer investments in existing infrastructures, and eliminating the need for forklift upgrades. Protected by over 25 issued US patents, Solarflare’s SFT9104 PHY is able to deliver industry-leading performance at one-third the power consumption of competitive offerings. This is due to Solarflare’s unique analog and digital signal processing algorithms that make it possible to implement a powerful communications system using cost-effective technology.

"We are honored to have our PHY named a product of the year, as this validates the work and expertise Solarflare has in the 10GbE market," said George Zimmerman, CTO at Solarflare. "The SFT9104 enables IT and data center managers to take full advantage of existing infrastructures and preserve previous investments, especially since it’s easy for customers to integrate into switch and server designs. 2011 is an important year for 10GbE adoption and we’re excited to have our products lead the charge."

2010 marks the 35th annual Electronic Products’ Product of the Year recognizing the best products in the industry. The 2010 Product of the Year awards were announced in the January 2011 issue of Electronic Products with a cover feature and a brief description of each product. Additionally, the winning products appear on Electronic Products’ website.

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About Solarflare
Solarflare Communications is the leading provider of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) chips and server adapters. Solarflare's robust and power-efficient solutions are cost effective and easy to deploy. Ready for primetime, Solarflare® 10GbE products and OpenOnload® make possible next-generation applications such as low-latency networking for market data applications, cloud computing, server virtualization, and network convergence. Solarflare 10GbE adapters have proven their performance in testing conducted by Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC) Research. Solarflare chips can be found in switches, adapters and test equipment shipping from Dell and others. The company has announced partnerships with Arista Networks, Citrix, Cloudsoft, CommScope, Delta Networks, LG-Ericsson, Panduit, Solace Systems, SR Labs and VMware. Solarflare is headquartered in Irvine, California, has an R&D site in Cambridge, UK and sales offices in Taiwan and China.

2011-01-18 - Arista Networks Expands Modular Switching Portfolio With Introduction of the Arista 7500 4-Slot Data Center Switch:


Santa Clara, CA, January 18, 2011 - Arista Networks, Inc., the pioneer of next-generation data center switching for cloud networking, today announced the Arista 7500 4-slot modular data center switch, continuing to increase the performance, reliability, and scalability of the data center network. Consolidation of storage and virtualization of servers has created demand for a new class of modular device for space and power constrained environments.

The Arista 7500 4-slot chassis has 5 terabits per second of switching capacity and up to 192 wirespeed L2/L3 10GbE ports in only seven rack-units. The Arista 7500 4-slot chassis builds off of the success of the award-winning Arista 7500 8-slot chassis introduced in April 2010. The Arista 7500 4-slot chassis is purpose-built to alleviate capacity demand in the spine layer of cloud networks.

"With the Arista 7500 4-slot chassis we expand the portfolio of 10GbE data center switching products delivering unmatched performance and density,” stated Andy Bechtolsheim, chairman and chief development officer of Arista Networks. “The introduction of the 4-slot chassis makes modular platforms more approachable and meets the density requirements of our carrier and large enterprise customers.”

The Arista 7500 4-slot chassis leverages the same 48-port 10GbE Ethernet line cards, supervisor engines and power supplies across the entire Arista 7500 product line and also runs the same binary Arista Extensible Operating System (EOS) image across the entire Arista 7000 Family of switches. EOS 4.6 supports the entire Arista 7000 Family from a single image delivering new features such as 32-port Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation, significant BGP and OSPF enhancements, and support for DWDM optics for metro and carrier deployments.

Measuring seven rack units in height (12.25 inches, 31.15 cm), the Arista 7500 4-slot chassis brings new levels of port density and performance to space-challenged provider and data center applications, supporting over 1,100 10GbE interfaces in a standard seven-foot (2.13m) rack with a full suite of L2 switching and L3 routing features. Arista Networks forwarding and control-plane technology provides wirespeed performance forwarding across all interfaces, even when deploying value-added services such as multicast, Data Center Bridging, and 802.1q based VLAN segmentation.

2011-01-10 - F5 Announces Two BIG-IP Apps Now Available at the App Store:
Free F5 apps deliver secure and optimized corporate network access for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch

SEATTLE, January 10, 2011




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), a global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced that its BIG-IP® Edge Client™App and BIG-IP Edge Portal™ App are now available at the App Store. These apps provide iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch users with convenient, secure, and accelerated access to corporate materials and ensure IT teams can confidently support both corporate and personal devices.




Additional Resources

Securing iPhone and iPad Access to Corporate Web Applications – F5 Technical Brief
Securing iPhone Access to Corporate Web Applications – Audio
BIG-IP Edge Client App and BIG-IP Edge Portal App – Image



F5 apps provide secure access to
corporate resources from iPad,
iPhone, and iPod touch

"As iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch further establish themselves in the corporate space, organizations have been pressed to support the products their employees want to use to stay connected,” said Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5. “The need for IT managers to enable access and encourage productivity without compromising security or control led F5 to develop apps for Apple’s iOS devices. This approach provides seamless corporate access that both users and IT departments can rely on."

The new apps work in tandem with F5’s BIG-IP Access Policy Manager™, BIG-IP Edge Gateway™, and FirePass® products to centralize application access control for mobile users of iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch devices. With these solutions, organizations can provide reliable, optimized mobile access for employees, partners, and contractors, and IT administrators can grant full VPN access or limit access to specific applications, depending on business priorities and personnel requirements. F5’s flexible access solutions, including the new apps, help organizations boost productivity and allow users to enjoy seamless access wherever they are, and whatever device they’re using.

The BIG-IP Edge Client App and BIG-IP Edge Portal App allow organizations to:
•Provide Secure Access for Corporate and Personal Devices to Enhance Productivity
Historically, IT and helpdesk staff have been called on to support both managed and unmanaged devices in the corporate environment. Without direct control of endpoints, IT risked alienating users by limiting support to certain corporate devices, or accepted the consequences of granting unsecured access to company resources. F5’s BIG-IP apps address this need by providing secure, managed access to corporate resources from iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch via F5 access solutions.With F5’s new apps, IT teams can broaden their support of user devices and help keep employees productive.
•Ensure Corporate Systems Uphold Security and Compliance Requirements
The new apps enable F5’s BIG-IP Access Policy Manager, BIG-IP Edge Gateway, and FirePass products to provide flexible, policy-based access capabilities for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. This allows IT to extend the proper level of access to corporate resources for specific groups or employees. In addition, F5’s sophisticated security, logging, and accounting capabilities help ensure that access to company materials adheres to the organization’s specific policies as well as any applicable industry compliance mandates. As an example, F5’s dynamic access policy capabilities enable customers to firewall access based on user identity, endpoint context, geolocation, and the user’s directory attributes. Layer 7 access control and geolocation capabilities are unique to F5 among other vendors’ solutions.
•Improve Mobile User Performance with Accelerated Client Access
Data center consolidation efforts coupled with the growing use of mobile devices continues to put more physical distance between users and corporate data. F5’s BIG-IP Edge Gateway solution optimizes access between clients, gateways, and data centers, enabling iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch users to enjoy optimized performance regardless of location. By leveraging technologies like acceleration and compression to improve performance levels, these apps enable users to enjoy a superior experience. F5 solutions combine to deliver 2-8x better application performance than competing products.

2010-12-17 - Solarflare and Arista Networks Announce Completion of Multi-Vendor Benchmarking of Market Data Solution Stack :
Full test report available in the STAC Vault

IRVINE, Calif. – December 17, 2010 – Solarflare, the company pioneering 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE), today announced the successful completion of a multi-vendor test using the STAC-M2™ Benchmark to measure the messaging performance of the solution stack. STAC-M2 measures the ability of a solution to handle real-time market data in a variety of configurations.

The multi-vendor testing achieved very low mean latencies with very small standard deviations of the latency, also known as jitter. According to the policies of STAC, the specific results may not be disclosed publicly. A complete 89-page benchmark report has been made available to banks, trading firms and other end-user members of the STAC Benchmark Council with access to the STAC Vault™ http://www.stacresearch.com/vault.

The solution stack for this report used products available for shipping to financial firms today and consisted of the following components:
• IBM® WebSphere® MQ Low Latency Messaging v2.4.0.2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server AS 5.5
• Intel Xeon CPU E5530 @ 2.40GHz
• IBM® x3550 M2 Model 7946-E2U
• Solarflare SFN5122F 10GbE adapter with OpenOnload
• Arista Networks 7124S 10GbE switch


The report illustrates the very low standard deviation of latency (jitter) that was observed during testing. The elements of the solution stack and their configuration contributed to the low jitter. This included tuning the server systems so that all interrupts and background processing tasks were run on a single dedicated CPU core.

The Solarflare SFN5122F is a low-latency, low-power 10GbE server adapter. For the STAC M2 test, Solarflare’s OpenOnload application acceleration middleware was used in combination with the SFN5122F to enable full operating system bypass, which dramatically reduces host processing overheads and enables high transaction rates, while substantially reducing application latency with very low jitter. Solarflare’s OpenOnload library was configured to enable the application threads to run without contention with each other, and without requiring any interrupt processing or other interaction with the kernel active on the dedicated core. These techniques implemented in Solarflare’s OpenOnload enabled the system to be entirely vertically separated on CPU cores, avoiding any application level crosstalk.

The ultra-low latency, cut-through switching functionality of the Arista 7124S switch and its dynamic allocation of packet memory are major contributors to the benchmark results. The Arista 7124S also features a fully non-blocking architecture from any port to any port, in L2 or L3 mode and for all packet sizes at GbE or 10GbE speeds. This fully non-blocking architecture ensures that the switch is never the bottleneck in throughput tests.

The STAC-M2 Benchmark specification tests the ability of solutions, such as messaging middleware, to handle real-time market data in a variety of configurations. According to STAC, the specification reflects the input of seven leading trading firms and six vendors of high-performance messaging. STAC-M2 Benchmark provides key performance metrics, including throughput, latency, power efficiency and CPU/memory consumption. The tests provide key performance metrics under several scenarios, such as undisturbed flow and exception conditions like slow consumers. The STAC-M2 benchmark can be used to provide a “level playing field” for comparing any messaging configurations.

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2010-12-14 - F5 Simplifies and Centralizes Access Management for Citrix Applications:
BIG-IP solutions help customers running virtual desktop applications lower IT costs and unify access capabilities for remote and mobile users

SEATTLE, December 14, 2010




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced enhanced support for organizations that run Citrix and other virtual desktop applications. Using the BIG-IP® Access Policy Manager™ (APM™) or BIG-IP Edge Gateway™ solution, customers can consolidate and centralize authentication and access control for simpler and more predictable access management across all virtual desktop environments, including Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware based deployments.





Additional Resources

Deploying the BIG-IP Solutions with Citrix XenApp
BIG-IP for Citrix Remote Desktops – SlideShare Presentation
F5 Web Access Security Solutions
Remote Access Topics on F5’s DevCentral




F5 now provides an access architecture that supports a wide range of virtual desktop and virtualization technologies. F5® solutions secure, accelerate, and ensure constant availability for VMware View and Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. By adding support for Citrix technologies, F5 enhances the breadth of its optimized virtualization solutions. This gives customers a choice of flexible solutions to meet their business needs, rather than the prior alternative of point solutions that only worked with an individual vendor’s offerings.

“Many companies rely on secure access to their virtual desktop infrastructure, but rollouts can be incredibly complex,” said Jeff Wilson, Principal Analyst at Infonetics Research. “F5 is in a perfect position to simplify rollouts with BIG-IP, and their focus on solving real-world problems like this demonstrates how well they listen to their customers.”

Details

Many enterprise organizations face the challenge of supporting an increasingly distributed workforce. The profusion of new intelligent clients—from smart phones to tablet devices—requires organizations to scale application environments and accommodate multiple access methods. The challenge in a Citrix environment can be particularly acute.

For example, in a local Citrix XenApp environment where traditional client devices connect directly to the LAN, Citrix Web Interface servers handle user authentication and authorization. Adding remote users and mobile devices would typically require reconfiguring existing Web Interface servers, or adding and administering additional Web Interface instances to handle remote access. In either case, customers would need to deploy a Citrix Access Gateway solution and manage the Citrix Secure Ticket Authority (STA) service to provide authentication and grant user access. However, the introduction of Citrix support helps F5 customers avoid this added complexity.

F5 customers can now simply use BIG-IP APM or BIG-IP Edge Gateway to consolidate access control in a central location, keeping infrastructure administration concerns to a minimum. With BIG-IP solutions, customers enjoy the flexibility and scalability needed to extend Citrix applications to both local and remote users without changing local XenApp deployments or requiring STA to provide secure remote access to applications.

“With F5 access solutions such as APM and Edge Gateway, we’re making it easy for customers to extend and manage access to their Citrix environments without the need to custom code applications or modify existing servers,” said Mark Vondemkamp, Director of Product Management at F5. “Combining either APM or Edge Gateway with Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop gives customers centralized application access control, which helps reduce the size and cost of their infrastructure to support local and remote users.”

Benefits of Deploying Citrix Applications with F5 Solutions

Highlights of deploying Citrix and F5 technologies together include:
•Reduced Management Time and OpEx – By simplifying and centralizing local and remote access authentication, BIG-IP solutions eliminate the need for customers to add separate Citrix STA infrastructure or make changes to existing Web Interface servers, resulting in an environment that is less expensive to deploy and requires less time to manage.
•Simplified Configuration and Deployment – With BIG-IP solutions, administrators can support users of Citrix applications with fewer devices, configure deployments to support flexible access models, and easily scale the environment. This fully integrated functionality makes it quick and easy for customers to set up and deploy local and remote access capabilities for Citrix applications, keeping users productive.
•Centralized and Comprehensive Access Control – Unlike the separate Citrix products required to adequately support applications for remote users, BIG-IP solutions provide centralized application access control and use a single access policy to support all types of users securely, so IT teams can be confident that application access is aligned with the organizations’ specific business priorities and security policies.


“This announcement further supports F5’s vision of highly efficient, reusable, and dynamic application and network services that can be leveraged across IT,” added Vondemkamp. “BIG-IP solutions deliver a unified, highly scalable access platform regardless of virtualization vendor, application, or protocol type—enabling secure access across the entire network and application environment. Access unification, advanced security, and the ability to layer in acceleration and availability services make BIG-IP Access Policy Manager and BIG-IP Edge Gateway the most comprehensive, cost effective, and flexible solutions on the market today.”

Availability

F5’s BIG-IP solutions for Citrix application deployments are available today. Please visit www.f5.com/products/ for more information.

2010-12-08 - F5 BIG-IP Solution Enables Rackspace Customers to Integrate Dedicated and Cloud Hosting with RackConnect:
Innovative solution enables bi-directional provisioning of dedicated servers and cloud resources at wire speed

SEATTLE, December 08, 2010




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced that Rackspace (NYSE: RAX), a leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, chose F5® BIG-IP® products as the foundation for its innovative RackConnect service. RackConnect is a hybrid architecture that allows customers to mix dedicated and cloud based hosting platforms for scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. With an F5 BIG-IP solution, Rackspace customers can provision resources, secure and manage network traffic, and balance workloads in real time among the two environments.



Additional Resources

Rackspace Case Study – F5 Success Story
ADN Services: Essential for an Agile Cloud Infrastructure – Video
Rackspace RackConnect: Hybrid Architecture in Action – DevCentral Blog Post
RackConnect: Where Dedicated and Cloud Hosting Come Together – Rackspace Blog Post
Improve the User Experience with Application Delivery Controllers – Rackspace White Paper

"We chose BIG-IP as a cornerstone of RackConnect because with it, we can make our customers' dedicated servers and cloud environments communicate seamlessly with each other over a protected, private network," said Toby Owen, Product Manager for Hybrid Hosting Solutions at Rackspace. "This solution does much more than provide a physical connection; it allows customers to take advantage of BIG-IP's intelligent traffic management capabilities between dedicated and cloud servers. Furthermore, BIG-IP has already proven itself as a reliable and cost effective component of our infrastructure."

Rackspace's primary focus is to provide a world-class service experience to its customers through its brand of customer service called Fanatical Support®. To better meet its customers' needs, the company wanted to develop a hosting solution that was a mix of its managed and cloud hosting offerings. With RackConnect, Rackspace customers gain cloud computing benefits without the burden of rewriting their entire application to adapt to the cloud. RackConnect is especially useful for companies that experience seasonal traffic spikes. For example, an e-commerce company can now respond to peak demand periods by "bursting" a predetermined segment of its operations—such as its web catalog—to run in the cloud, while keeping its payment processing on highly secure, dedicated servers, all within a Rackspace data center.

"We are pleased to be part of Rackspace's RackConnect service," said Jason Needham, Senior Director, Product Management at F5 Networks. "Rackspace's enterprise customers can receive great benefit from their ability to access cloud based resources safely on demand."

Details

Rackspace offers its customers a full range of BIG-IP devices with Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM®). An initial setup process connects the customer's dedicated servers to its cloud account, enabling BIG-IP products to act as a strategic control point between the environments. As cloud services are provisioned or deprovisioned on demand, BIG-IP products automatically connect to dedicated resources, directing traffic to the appropriate application and web pools based on business requirements.

Rackspace leverages F5's open application programming interface (API) solution, iControl®, to automate connections between the dedicated and cloud environments. "Because of iControl, our time to market for this new service capability was less than three months," added Owen. "The F5 technology provides a straightforward, rapid service development environment."

RackConnect also enhances security, because the iControl API allows communication between cloud and dedicated environments, and contains features that prevent unauthorized access. User connections, data packets, and application data are routed through the BIG-IP device to and from the cloud environment, and are managed according to specific business policies, helping to ensure, for instance, that confidential data such as credit card information is isolated and protected on dedicated, managed database servers.

For more information on RackConnect, please visit the Rackspace website and check out the blog entry on F5's DevCentral™ site.

2010-12-06 - F5 Extends Power of Intelligent Automated Storage Tiering to the Cloud:
Additions to F5’s award-winning Data Solutions portfolio, including new ARX Virtual Edition and ARX Cloud Extender, enhance business value and deployment options

SEATTLE, December 06, 2010




F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced major enhancements to its Data Solutions portfolio, including the ARX® Cloud Extender™ solution, which supports a variety of cloud storage providers and object storage platforms; an ARX® Virtual Edition (VE) appliance, which delivers the power of ARX as a flexible virtual machine; and the F5® iControl® file services solution, which provides an open storage management API.






Additional Resources

IDC Vendor Spotlight: F5 Networks and ARX – Analyst Report
ARX Cloud Extender Product Information
ARX Series Datasheet
F5 Data Solutions Launch Presentation – SlideShare Deck

These enhancements help customers seamlessly extend the file storage infrastructure from the data center to the cloud, accelerate their return on investment for intelligent automated storage tiering, and provide more flexible deployment options for F5 Data Solutions. As a strategic point of control in the file storage infrastructure, ARX and its intelligent file services enable customers and third-party vendors to create more powerful and granular file data management policies to improve business operations and reduce costs.

“The real problem for organizations isn’t just that the volumes of information keep expanding rapidly, it’s that they need to continually improve the way this information is classified and organized,” said Richard Villars, Vice President of Storage and IT Executive Strategies at IDC. “Solutions like F5’s open API for the ARX platform make it easier for storage systems partners and customers to design and implement information management solutions that reduce costs, boost performance, and better monetize information assets.”



Data Growth Monster Infographic

“F5’s API initiative for ARX will enable our partners and customers to realize the same kinds of benefits that our iControl API has long provided on the network side for BIG?IP Application Delivery Controllers,” said Kathleen Ferraro, VP of Data Solutions Product Management and Marketing at F5. “iControl offers direct access to the power of F5’s Application Delivery Controllers, enhancing their value as strategic points of control in the IT infrastructure. In the same way that it has changed the game in Application Delivery Networking, it will change the game in storage.”

Highlights of the new ARX capabilities include:
•Support for Cloud Storage
F5 has extended ARX’s intelligent, automated storage tiering capabilities to support cloud storage services, making it easier for companies to seamlessly integrate cloud storage into an existing infrastructure. To simplify access to data, files stored in the cloud are presented as if they reside locally in the data center. To maximize the amount of data tiered to the cloud while minimizing IT overhead and cost of access, customers can create customizable policies that automatically identify and migrate appropriate files to cloud storage. The new solution is fully qualified for use with Amazon S3, Iron Mountain VFS cloud storage, and NetApp StorageGRID. Additional service providers are in qualification.
•Virtual Platform
With the introduction of ARX VE, the solution will be available as a virtual appliance in addition to physical, hardware based offerings. This extends the benefits of ARX beyond centralized data centers, and provides a variety of flexible deployment options. Using ARX VE, branch offices and smaller organizations can enjoy performance benefits of the ARX product line that have previously been associated with larger, physical deployments. ARX VE will be available via three distinct deployment options: a trial version for demonstration purposes, a full version suitable for production environments, and through OEM partners.
•iControl File Services API
F5’s iControl file services API allows software vendors and customers to integrate ARX’s file virtualization capabilities to enhance their existing data management solutions and enable entirely new applications. Through the API, customers can use ARX’s real-time change notification capability to improve the scalability, responsiveness, and efficiency of a range of third-party applications such as search index, backup, audit, and quota management tools. For easier and more practical adoption across a wide range of organizations, this API includes support for .NET, Java, and Python development languages. To help organizations ramp up quickly, extensive documentation and developer resources will be available through DevCentral™, F5’s technical community of over 70,000 IT professionals worldwide.

Supporting Quotes

“Our mission is to help the future learn from the past, which means we need to save enormous volumes of data indefinitely,” said Sean Maisey, Manager of IT Operations and Engineering at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. “We’ve used ARX for years to tier data between our NAS devices, but cloud storage offers us a tremendous opportunity to more cost effectively support our mission. F5’s ARX Cloud Extender allows us to use the automated tiering capabilities of the F5 platform to front-end the cloud and treat it as another tier for secure deep archive and recovery purposes. This, in turn, will free up space on our NAS devices. And best of all, it will happen automatically, without disrupting users or applications, and without IT intervention.”

“The F5 ARX platform is ideal to use with the Iron Mountain Virtual File Store solution,” said Mike Wipperfeld, Vice President, Product Management at Iron Mountain, the information management company. “Our customers are looking to use storage clouds for their deep archive data storage requirements. The data mobility capabilities that F5 ARX provides are essential to helping them implement this new storage architecture without impacting their users or applications.”

“We see tremendous value in the ARX API functionality and technology stack,” said Steve Akers, founder and CTO at Digital Reef. “We look forward to our combined work with F5 to develop an interface that will bring together the power of F5’s ARX with our solutions for electronic discovery and file governance. This will simplify and accelerate our search processes, enabling us to deliver even greater value to our customers. Organizations are actively seeking new strategies for reducing the burden, cost, and risk associated with locating, producing, and governing information. We are excited to leverage this technological development that will help our customers achieve those goals.”

“Trace3 is extremely excited about the new F5 ARX Virtual Edition platform, which enables us to deliver data management, data mobility, and storage optimization services on a virtual platform,” said Tim Abbott, Solutions Architect at Trace3. “ARX VE will help us open up new opportunities and gives us another offering that we can use to distinguish ourselves from the competition. In addition, F5’s ARX Cloud Extender is a technology we have been watching with anticipation. It’s one of the first solutions to hit the market that will enable our customers to seamlessly and transparently connect their infrastructures to the public or private cloud. We are thrilled to see the partnership with F5 paying off in big ways, and we’re pleased that F5 is committed to investing R&D in cloud solutions.”

“Offering ARX as a virtual appliance opens up a number of opportunities for Tectrade to improve end-user storage environments,” said Andy Slater, COO at Tectrade. “Incorporating ARX VE into our Managed Backup & Recovery portfolio—which currently performs 125,000 backups per month and manages over 2 petabytes of storage—means our customers can introduce much greater flexibility into their data management strategies without incurring unwanted hardware related costs.”

Availability

The iControl file services API is available now and is included with F5’s ARX platforms. F5’s ARX Cloud Extender will be available in Q4 of calendar year 2010 and ARX Virtual Edition will be available in Q1 of calendar year 2011.

2010-11-15 - F5 Delivers Essential Solutions Enabling Service Providers to Cost Effectively Support Mobile Traffic Growth:
F5 launches a suite of unified service delivery solutions for mobile operators and new carrier-class hardware to ensure massive scalability, high availability, and rapid provisioning of new premium services

SEATTLE, November 15, 2010
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced an array of new solutions customized for global service providers. These solutions enable providers to cost effectively scale their service offerings and address the brisk growth of mobile IP traffic (voice, data, and video) while increasing the control and flexibility of their networks. F5’s offerings help service providers balance the cost of delivering differentiated services, increase average revenue per user (ARPU), and ensure excellent user experience.
Additional Resources Service Provider Solution Page
Service Delivery Networking – SlideShare Presentation
Service Delivery Networking – White Paper
Large Mobile Service Provider Case Study
With today’s news, F5 has defined a new market category for Service Delivery Networking (SDN), offering mobile operators a unified platform to deliver converged, full proxy IP services for voice, data, and video. By offering a set of integrated solutions for service and subscriber management—such as intelligent traffic steering, large-scale IPv4 to IPv6 translation, secure DNS traffic management, traffic optimization and acceleration, and policy enforcement—F5® SDN solutions provide a holistic architectural approach to solve the challenges mobile operators face today.
In addition, F5 is extending its carrier-class hardware with the release of two new NEBS compliant platforms: a BIG-IP® 11050 platform and a VIPRION® Performance Blade 200 that scales to over six million L7 requests per second.
The Impending Mobile Data Tsunami
“Until now service providers have been forced to take a piecemeal approach when deploying service delivery solutions for voice, data, and video, using multiple point products that significantly increase costs and complexity, and don’t scale very well,” said Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5. “Years ago, we witnessed the same evolution within the enterprise market where customers needed to move towards an all IP-based environment in order to cost effectively support user demands and business requirements. With Service Delivery Networking, F5 is extending the value its network and application fluency can bring to service providers, enabling them to break out of costly, conventional infrastructure models while adhering to industry standards and architectures like 3GPP, 3GPP2, NEBS, and IMS.”
“F5’s approach of an intelligent, end-to-end service delivery network designed to support any kind of traffic—whether it’s voice, video, or data—plays a vital role in supporting a converged infrastructure,” said Colin Holland, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Technical Operations at Cricket Communications, Inc. “Effectively managing our network is one of the ways Cricket maintains its industry-leading cost structure. F5’s service delivery solutions provide significant scale and intelligent steering of mobile IP services to ensure our customers enjoy superior performance and reliability.”
“To regain control and profitability of their rapidly growing mobile broadband networks, mobile operators need to evolve how they offer and bill for IP-based services,” said John Mazur, Ovum IP Infrastructure Principal Analyst. “They can’t afford to wait for 3GPP R8 evolved packet cores. They need to upgrade 2G and 3G mobile IP cores now with a high performance control plane capability so they can integrate IP routing and servers to optimize the performance of multiple applications.”
Details F5’s Service Delivery Networking solutions are available on a common platform that combines a set of integrated services with context-awareness, service intelligence, and dynamic adaptability. This enables service providers to effectively manage and steer traffic based upon subscriber policies, device type, geolocation, and network conditions, giving them the agility they need to cost effectively satisfy changing market demands and manage the explosive growth of mobile data traffic.
One of the most powerful aspects of the SDN approach is F5’s rich and dynamic support of the Diameter protocol and related systems. This positions F5’s SDN technologies as key components of any 3G, LTE, or IMS network, and adds a new level of service intelligence for operators seeking to roll out new products and value-added services quickly, cost effectively, and on a massive scale.
Highlights of F5’s integrated service delivery solutions include:
•More flexible pricing models and reduced server requirements
F5’s advanced solutions provide contextual user and traffic awareness to allow service providers to make dynamic, policy-based traffic steering decisions and enable them to offer premium opt-in services and flexible pricing models. It also allows them to dynamically provision resources as needed, helping to reduce server requirements by approximately one-third.
•Seamless transition to IPv6
F5’s IPv6 Gateway™ enables a service provider to manage and deliver applications across an IPv4 and IPv6 infrastructure simultaneously. As an integrated service, it reduces CapEx and OpEx by eliminating the need to maintain two separate systems: one for IPv4 and one for IPv6.
•Massive scale for device and network resources
F5’s large-scale Network Address Translation (NAT) solution provides scalable NAT services at one-third the cost of firewalls, and lowers CapEx and OpEx by offloading security features from firewalls. This integrated service scales up to 64 million concurrent NAT sessions in a single F5 device.
•Superior user experience and security
F5’s secure DNS solution provides massive scaling, monitoring, and high availability for DNS services, while protecting against malicious DoS attacks. Supported by F5’s carrier-class hardware, the solution distributes user application requests based upon policies, as well as data center and network conditions.
F5’s Ecosystem of Technology Partnerships To further address market needs, F5 continues to build a global ecosystem of technology partnerships with companies like Bridgewater Systems, Bytemobile, Ericsson, Flash Networks, Nokia Siemens Networks, Openwave Systems, Vantrix, and Volubill, each of which leverage F5’s SDN capabilities to deliver best-in-class service provider solutions.
Flash Networks Together, Flash Networks’ Harmony Mobile Internet Services Gateway and F5 solutions ensure that mobile operator networks can efficiently handle the dynamic nature of mobile content while optimizing their customers’ experience.
“With the integration of Harmony and F5’s powerful BIG-IP and VIPRION systems, we are able to deliver advanced video optimization and other intelligent, scalable traffic solutions to address challenges posed by rapid data traffic growth,” said Merav Bahat, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Flash Networks. “Already with many successful joint deployments, we are looking forward to expanding our partnership and our joint solution portfolio to help mobile operators globally to manage their traffic growth and provide a personalized user experience.”
Openwave Systems Collaboration between F5 and Openwave provides integration of the two companies’ products to enable smart, dynamic policy control and enforcement with user- and service-level awareness as part of Openwave’s traffic mediation solutions for wireless operators worldwide.
“Mobile operators are embracing the value in Openwave’s and F5’s IP traffic mediation and service orchestration capabilities,” said John Giere, SVP of Marketing at Openwave. “The combined solution is designed to help operators effectively manage, monitor, and monetize an ever increasing volume of mobile traffic from an equally diverse set of mobile users, devices, and internet content—all from a single point of control in the network.”
Vantrix Vantrix improves mobile and converged video capabilities for customers by ensuring that content is delivered cost effectively and with the best possible user experience. Vantrix uses F5 carrier-grade infrastructure for real-time intelligent traffic management in its leading Bandwidth Optimization solution.
“As mobile data explodes and video becomes the dominant content on mobile networks, F5 helps Vantrix to intelligently manage traffic,” said Jean Mayrand, CTO and co-founder of Vantrix. “F5 and Vantrix integrated technologies provide a best-in-class solution to address traffic optimization in a cost effective manner, as well as provide an outstanding quality of experience for users.”
Volubill Volubill’s CHARGE IT™ and CONTROL IT™ products have been tested and integrated with F5’s BIG-IP solutions. F5’s advanced capabilities such as its iRules® technology, combined with Volubill’s policy management and enforcement, give providers a greater understanding of network traffic, enabling them to more accurately personalize subscriber services and, in turn, increase the quality of experience.
“Volubill is proud to have forged an alliance with F5 Networks,” said Rick Woods, VP Americas for Volubill. “Both companies are committed to assisting service providers as they tackle the challenge of balancing the increasing demands on the network with that of customer satisfaction. Even with the increased capacity and efficiency gains expected from LTE and other 4G technologies, operators will need to explore options for managing traffic on their networks. This alliance contributes to those options.”
Availability F5’s Service Delivery Networking solutions are available today. The NEBS compliant VIPRION Performance Blade 200 and a BIG-IP 11050 platform will be available by the end of calendar year 2010.

2010-11-15 - Brocade First to Market with Ethernet Fabric Solutions to Enable Virtualized Data Centers and Cloud-Optimized Networks:
Brocade VDX 6720 Data Center Switches Deliver Virtual Cluster Switching Technology that Revolutionizes the Way Networks are Built


FRANKFURT, Germany, November 15, 2010 - Brocade Conference – Brocade® (NASDAQ:BRCD) today announced the industry’s first true Ethernet fabric switching solutions that are purpose-built for highly virtualized and cloud-optimized data centers. As the global leader in data center fabric innovation and deployment, Brocade now leads the industry in the development and delivery of Ethernet fabrics.
The Brocade VDX™ 6720 Data Center Switches are a new family of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) offerings that revolutionize Layer 2 Ethernet networking to create the first true Ethernet fabrics. The switches eliminate the need for Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), collapsing the access and aggregation networking layers to create a flat, multipath, deterministic network that is ideal for virtualized environments. This approach provides virtual machines (VMs) a greater sphere of mobility, increases network utilization, creates more resilient networks and simplifies the management of data center networks.
“Over half of all IT workloads will run on virtual machines by the end of this year, with that number climbing to beyond 70 percent by the end of 2013. Brocade has architected a flat, high-performance and highly scalable data center network solution that promises to help their customers scale their virtual environments,” said Cindy Borovick, Vice President, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure and Datacenter Networks at IDC. “The new Brocade VDX 6720 switches, powered by VCS™ technology, are a natural evolution of Brocade’s trusted status in the data center – taking the best attributes from Fibre Channel and applying that knowledge to form a comprehensive Ethernet fabric.”
“Today more and more customers are moving toward virtualized cloud infrastructures to significantly reduce IT cost and complexity, increase efficiency and improve agility,” said Parag Patel, Vice President, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “Brocade’s new VCS technology and the innovative VDX product line present customers with a tremendous opportunity to simplify, scale and easily manage their virtualized data center network, offering a next step for customers implementing the IT-as-a-Service model.”
The Brocade VDX 6720 Data Center Switches are available in one- or two-rack-unit (1U or 2U) form factors and provide the ability to scale from 16 to 60 ports with pay-as-you-grow Ports on Demand (POD) licensing. The switches provide full 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) wire-speed performance from any port to any port, with latency of 600 nanoseconds (ns). The switches are based on low-latency, lossless, 10 Gbps Data Center Bridging (DCB) technology and are capable of running all types of data and storage traffic –including traditional IP, iSCSI, CIFS, NFS and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). The Brocade VDX 6720 switches protect customers’ existing investments by supporting their current server, hypervisor and storage choices, and by seamlessly interfacing with existing network infrastructures.
The Brocade VDX 6720 switches are the first products to deliver Brocade VCS technology, announced in June 2010. This technology, which includes virtual cluster switching capabilities, transforms data center networks through innovations that are optimized for highly virtualized and cloud environments. In particular, Brocade VCS technology:
1. Enables organizations to build the industry’s first true Ethernet fabrics. These fabrics are inherently multipathing and resilient, utilizing the IETF industry standard Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) and eliminating the need for inefficient Spanning Tree Protocol (STP).
2. Provides a fully distributed control plane so that every switch is aware of the entire network topology. The VM network characteristics and configuration automatically migrate with the VM by using Automatic Migration of Port Profiles (AMPP) technology. The Brocade VDX 6720 switching cluster initially supports a mobility sphere of 600 10 GbE ports and 8,000 VMs.
3. Dramatically simplifies configuration management by treating the cluster as a single logical switch. This management approach significantly reduces the number of elements being managed in the fabric to reduce operating cost and complexity.
“Today’s infrastructure is not sufficient to handle new applications, and not flexible enough for a world where applications are mobile. It’s clear that data center networks need to be upgraded to increase performance, reduce latency and eliminate downtime. They also need to be designed specifically to support highly virtualized and cloud-optimized data centers,” said Dave Stevens, Brocade CTO. “We are delivering upon our Brocade One™ unified network strategy and vision by dramatically simplifying networks and increasing scalability without adding complexity. Today, the Brocade VDX 6720 switches, featuring Brocade VCS technology, deliver true cloud-optimized networking for the first time.”
New Brocade Services Offer Customized Levels of Support
Brocade understands that every network is unique and requires a different level of technical support to meet critical business requirements. Brocade Global Services offers different levels of technical support to meet each customer’s specific needs. To help customers simplify virtualization deployments in large environments and maximize the value of their networks, Brocade has invested in enhancements to the Premier and Premier-Plus Support levels to provide more personalized, preferential, and proactive experience. Specifically, the new enhancements to the Premier levels include:
Proactive identification of potential network issues with remote monitoring
Response to network problems before they affect the network through fault management
Priority access to Brocade expertise 24x7 and accelerated escalation management designed to reduce time to resolution
In addition, to support customers in building end-to-end solutions for their virtualized data center and transition to Ethernet fabrics, Brocade Global Services has developed a Virtualized Data Center Practice. This practice offers assessment, design and implementation services for cloud-optimized networks.

2010-10-27 - F5 Introduces Self-Service Support Capabilities and Diagnostic Tools:
New iHealth service offers improved visibility into BIG-IP environments helping streamline support interactions, and ensure peak system performance

SEATTLE, October 27, 2010
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced the F5® iHealth™ system, an exclusive online support service available to F5 customers and partners designed to proactively improve the performance of application delivery infrastructures. iHealth is a web-based application that provides insight into BIG-IP® product deployments through performance monitoring and automated analysis. It empowers administrators to identify performance issues, access data for troubleshooting and remediation, and exchange information with F5 Support teams for analysis.
Additional Resources iHealth Datasheet
iHealth SlideShare presentation
F5 Services Brochure
“With iHealth, customers and partners can take a comprehensive snapshot of their current infrastructure, and use it to proactively identify opportunities for performance improvement or preempt potential challenges,” said Julian Eames, SVP of Business Operations at F5. “This new offering represents F5’s continued commitment to exceeding customer and partner expectations for service excellence and providing an enhanced portfolio of self-service options for our extensive installed base.”
Details Offered as a free web-based service for customers and partners with a current services maintenance agreement, iHealth comprehensively analyzes BIG-IP solution performance and provides recommendations for improving performance. After gathering configuration information, iHealth gives users a succinct description of identified issues along with F5’s recommendations for addressing them. This comprehensive analysis validates current product configurations against best practices, and displays heuristics data in an easy-to-understand format based on the familiar BIG-IP interface. In offering a proactive approach to troubleshooting, iHealth significantly decreases the time and effort necessary to diagnose and address technical issues.
Key benefits of the iHealth system include:
•Self-Service Capabilities for Quick Remediation of Performance Issues
Administrators can upload specific product configurations any time, aiding troubleshooting efforts on a flexible schedule. The iHealth service analyzes configuration and performance data, and prioritizes existing performance challenges. This automated capability leverages F5’s years of experience working with global organizations to provide convenient diagnostic and remediation information and offer detailed recommendations to address any issues. These recommendations also include links to the Ask F5™ Knowledge Base for detailed solutions and procedures.
•Proactive Identification of Potential Application Delivery Challenges
In addition to providing tips for addressing current challenges, iHealth offers detailed performance statistics and helps proactively identify potential trouble spots before they create issues.By taking a holistic view of the infrastructure, iHealth quickly identifies opportunities for performance improvement so action can be taken. It can also alert users to available upgrades that optimize performance and help assess the impact of industry or regulatory changes, such as the effect on SSL performance when migrating from 1024-bit keys to 2048-bit keys.

•More Efficient Collaboration with F5 Support Professionals
With iHealth, users have a convenient, accurate method for sharing deployment configuration data with F5 professionals, should opening a support case with F5 be necessary. iHealth’s ability to capture specific details of a particular deployment significantly reduces the chance of redundancy or human error in performing diagnostic tasks. iHealth can quickly gather all relevant information and provide a concise snapshot for support professionals to work with, helping improve interactions between F5 and its customers and partners, ultimately leading to a swifter resolution.
Supporting Quotes “With the introduction of iHealth, F5 is expanding on its top-notch support capabilities,” said Stuart Lyons, Security Engineer at Human Kinetics. “Now, we can run self-diagnostics to proactively identify any application delivery issues—without needing to take systems offline or put a call in to the help desk. The iHealth interface is very intuitive, and we can view and track the capacity of our BIG-IP solutions over time, helping us be better prepared for future application deployments and other IT projects. iHealth goes far beyond what we’ve seen in the industry in terms of customer empowerment, and really demonstrates F5’s commitment to supporting its users with tools to maximize the value of Application Delivery Networking.”
“Early adoption of F5’s iHealth has been a real time-saver for Milestone Systems,” said Bruce Hampton, Director of Engineering at Milestone Systems. “Whether we’re using the iHealth Viewer to look at performance graphs and network statistics, or using iHealth Diagnostics to examine our software and configuration, it’s all here—displayed in an easy-to-read format. This complete view of a system gives us hard data about our BIG-IP system’s overall performance, letting us know when it’s operating outside normal limits. We can take immediate steps to improve performance and enforce best practices. This is a real productivity tool and will further enhance the customer experience when dealing with F5.”
“The growing range of intelligent networking devices in the application delivery infrastructure calls for equally sophisticated service offerings,” said Matt Healey, Research Manager for IDC. “Specifically, the ability to proactively offer performance data and prescriptive advice for improving performance has become critical for IT organizations. IDC believes that all networking vendors need to provide their customers with tools that empower administrators, network engineers, and architects, to get the most out of their IT investments.”
“As a leading international IT security solutions provider for numerous blue-chip companies, proactive and rapid customer service is critical to our success. iHealth gives our team the visibility we need to efficiently scale and maintain application delivery infrastructures,” said Charlotte Manley, Technical Support Center director for Integralis Global Services. “It displays at a glance how network conditions are impacting BIG-IP solutions’ performance, enabling swift remediation if any challenges are encountered. In addition to its diagnostic capabilities, iHealth provides information about upgrades that might be available for BIG-IP products, helping ensure that systems are always up to date. Simply put, iHealth enables our support teams to be more self-sufficient. And with its ability to quickly examine the deployment details, it enables our customers to be more proactive.”
Availability iHealth services are now available worldwide at no charge for all F5 customers and partners with a current services maintenance agreement. iHealth services can be accessed directly at http://iHealth.f5.com

2010-10-18 - InMon Corp. introduces server performance monitoring with sFlowTrend :
InMon Corp. announced the immediate availability of sFlowTrend v4.2. sFlowTrend v4.2 uses the new extensions to the sFlow® standard, which includes physical and virtual server performance metrics, linking network, server and application performance monitoring to provide an end-end view of networked system performance.


San Francisco, California — October 18, 2010 — InMon Corp. announced the immediate availability of sFlowTrend v4.2. sFlowTrend v4.2 uses the new extensions to the sFlow® standard, which includes physical and virtual server performance metrics, linking network, server and application performance monitoring to provide an end-end view of networked system performance.
"sFlowTrend integrates sFlow data available from hardware switch vendors’ devices, virtual switches, and servers to provide visibility into all the physical and virtual resources in a converged environment," said Peter Phaal, President, InMon Corp. "The result is a scalable performance monitoring solution which makes it possible to optimize workloads, isolate performance problems and charge for services at the same time as reducing costs by eliminating layers of monitoring."
The new capabilities supported by sFlowTrend include:
Real-time visibility of physical and virtual server performance
Visualisation of the relationship between physical and virtual servers
Drill-down analysis linking server and network performance
These capabilities give the integrated view of network and server performance that is critical for managing servers, storage and networking in converged environments.
sFlowTrend and sFlowTrend-Pro fully support the sFlow standard for monitoring layer 2/3 switches; available in equipment from most leading network equipment vendors, including: BLADE Network Technologies, Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Extreme Networks (Nasdaq: EXTR), Force10 Networks, Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Hitachi (NYSE: HIT), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR).
The availability of sFlow in Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) XenServer, Xen, Xen Cloud Platform (XCP), KVM and VirtualBox virtualization platforms makes sFlowTrend a compelling solution for managing the performance in virtualized environments.
About InMon Corp InMon Corp is the leading supplier of traffic monitoring solutions for high-speed switched and routed networks. These solutions provide the tools and information needed to take control of today's mission-critical, value-added applications and services. Customers throughout the world in a variety of sectors including: Enterprise, Service Provider, Healthcare, Education, Government, and Media are using solutions from InMon Corp.
InMon Corp. is the pioneer in the application of statistical sampling for scalable and cost effective solutions for network-wide traffic monitoring, analysis, and reporting and has multiple patents pending in this field. As the inventor of sFlow, InMon Corp. works closely with leading switch vendors to enhance their networking solutions with comprehensive traffic management. For more information visit www.inmon.com.

2010-10-11 - F5 Enhances Replication and Data Migration with WAN Optimization Solutions:
Testing between storage and virtualization technologies and F5’s WAN optimization solutions demonstrates compelling customer benefits for data center to data center replication

SEATTLE, October 11, 2010
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced performance testing results that demonstrate the value of combining storage, virtualization, and WAN optimization solutions to achieve superior data transfer capabilities. With F5’s integrated solutions, including the BIG-IP® WAN Optimization Module™ product, enterprise customers can more efficiently use existing bandwidth and reduce the costs of replicating data between data centers.

Additional Resources BIG-IP WOM Product Information
BIG-IP WOM Technical Brief
F5 Solution Optimizes Oracle Database Deployments – Press Release

"As enterprises consolidate their globally dispersed data centers, business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) requirements drive the need for data center to data center storage replication and virtual machine migration capabilities," said Joe Skorupa, Research VP, Data Center Transformation at Gartner, Inc. "This trend—coupled with the general increase of data traveling between corporate data centers—has led to the emergence of focused WAN optimization products that enable enterprises to maximize the performance of critical BC/DR activities while minimizing bandwidth costs for very high speed WAN links."
Performance Testing and ResultsTesting conducted by F5, NetApp, and other vendors confirms the value of combining WAN optimization services with storage and virtualization technologies. Results show that integrated WAN optimization services can help customers address availability, performance, and storage migration requirements, while greatly reducing the effects of latency.
"With F5 and NetApp, joint customers can further optimize secure replication and long distance live migration efforts between data centers to bolster data migration and traffic balancing capabilities," said Patrick Rogers, Vice President, Solutions and Alliances at NetApp.
Through additional testing efforts, Hitachi Data Systems has qualified F5's BIG-IP appliances for use with Hitachi TrueCopy® Remote Replication on Hitachi Universal Storage Platform and Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage. And significant performance and security benefits related to WAN replication have been demonstrated in combining Dell™ EqualLogic™ PS Series Internet SCSI (iSCSI) arrays with F5® BIG-IP solutions, including the BIG-IP WAN Optimization Module (WOM™).
F5 provides documented guidance on how results were achieved to help customers get the most from their IT investments. More information related to the above solutions can be found in the following F5 documents:
•Optimizing Long Distance Live Migration with VMware vMotion, NetApp FlexCache, and F5 BIG-IP WOM – Solution Profile
•Optimizing Hitachi Data Systems Storage with BIG-IP WOM – Solution Profile
•Accelerate and Secure Dell EqualLogic iSCSI Replication with BIG-IP WOM
F5 Solution DetailsF5's unique approach of layering in optimization services as part of an open and flexible application delivery platform, TMOS®, ensures consistency and reduced management costs. This integrated approach delivers the advanced LAN-side throughput performance critical to data center to data center performance, and provides a superior alternative to other point solutions in the market.
F5's WAN optimization solutions allow two BIG-IP devices to communicate across the WAN using F5's iSessions technology to optimize traffic during data replication, offsite back-up, and virtual machine migration. iSessions uses TCP optimization, adaptive compression, intelligent byte caching, and other technologies to provide efficient bandwidth utilization and maximum throughput.
F5's WAN optimization solutions deliver performance benefits that:
•Ensure accelerated and secure offsite replication required to meet the recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) associated with data protection
•Extend the distance between disaster recovery and backup sites, based on maintaining acceptable performance levels
•Mitigate the need for higher cost WAN links or isolated WAN replication infrastructure
•Enable efficient live migration capabilities across long distances for VMware vMotion environments in a secure, accelerated manner
"Optimization of WAN traffic between data centers is a critical component of F5's ADN strategy," said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. "With the ongoing trends toward data center consolidation and escalating data growth, it is vital that enterprises maximize data replication efficiency while capping bandwidth expenses."

2010-09-21 - InMon Corp. first to deliver converged data center performance monitoring using sFlow standard:
InMon Corp. announced the immediate availability of Traffic Sentinel 5.0, providing the integrated visibility into network, storage and server performance that customers need to manage performance in converged, virtualized and cloud data centers

San Francisco, California — InMon Corp. announced the immediate availability of Traffic Sentinel 5.0, providing the integrated visibility into network, storage and server performance that customers need to manage performance in converged, virtualized and cloud data centers.
"Traffic Sentinel has always provided unparalleled visibility into network traffic; the wide support of the sFlow® standard among switch vendors allows Traffic Sentinel to build up a detailed, real-time picture of traffic from every switch in the network," said Peter Phaal, President, InMon Corp. "Convergence moves storage traffic onto the switched fabric, making it possible to use sFlow to monitor storage performance. Finally, the recent extension of the sFlow standard to include server performance monitoring completes the picture, allowing us to deliver end to end visibility across all the resources in the data center."
Traffic Sentinel 5.0 includes a number of technology firsts:
Real-time visibility into converged storage, including NFS/CIFS, iSCSI and FCoE
Server and scale-out cluster performance monitoring using sFlow
Enhanced scalability to provide centralized, "single pane of glass" performance monitoring of every physical and virtual resource in the data center
Performance in the data center is critical, any problems with storage, networking or servers can severely impact productivity. Traffic Sentinel provides an integrated view of performance to the data center management team, pinpointing problems instantly throughout the converged infrastructure.
Traffic Sentinel fully supports the sFlow® standard for monitoring layer 2/3 switches; available in equipment from most leading network equipment vendors, including: BLADE Network Technologies, Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Extreme Networks (Nasdaq: EXTR), Force10 Networks, Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Hitachi (NYSE: HIT), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR).

2010-09-21 - F5 Solution Optimizes Oracle Database Deployments:
New solution offers comprehensive benefits, including accelerated data replication and simplified administration for enterprises using Oracle Databases

SAN FRANCISCO, September 21, 2010
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced availability of a new Application Ready Solution for Oracle Database technologies. For the first time, F5 is delivering capabilities specifically designed for the database. By integrating F5’s BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™ and WAN Optimization Module™ with Oracle Database, the new solution provides optimized performance for joint customers.
Additional ResourcesF5 Application Ready Solution Guide for Oracle Database
Deploying the BIG-IP WAN Optimization Module with Oracle Database Data Guard, Streams, and Recovery Manager
Optimizing Oracle Streams with BIG-IP WAN Optimization Module
Accelerating Oracle’s Recovery Manager with F5’s WAN Optimization Technology – Demo
SlideShare Presentation on Today’s Announcement
"By utilizing F5's BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager and WAN Optimization Module with the Oracle Database, customers benefit from simplified database administration and accelerated database replication over the WAN," said Tim Shetler, VP, Product Management at Oracle.
DetailsAs part of a comprehensive Application Ready Solution for Oracle Database technologies, F5 provides specific performance improvements and optimizations to help customers get the most from their Oracle Database environments including:
•Enhanced Visibility, Enabling IT Administrators to Respond Quickly to Change
F5's Application Ready Solution delivers enhanced health monitoring and connection management capabilities. This helps IT teams respond rapidly to dynamic conditions affecting database servers and performance levels. F5’s BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager serves as an intermediary to Oracle Database servers, monitoring their health and providing the ability to manage connections from the application to the database for added efficiency.

•Savings in Time and Resources for Data Replication
F5's BIG-IP WAN Optimization Module can dramatically reduce the volume of data transmitted over the WAN during data replication. Moreover, BIG-IP solutions can also accelerate database replication over bandwidth-constrained network environments by up to 9 times, while offloading all processing for network compression, network optimization, and SSL encryption from Oracle Database servers.
Additional Quotes"IT managers and database administrators are continually looking for ways to effectively maintain database environments while limiting the amount of manual intervention required," said Jon Oltsik, Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "Assuring business continuity and disaster recovery with large databases can make it difficult to meet SLAs for recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives. By providing tools for enhanced database health monitoring and centralized management, F5 and Oracle solutions can help IT teams improve database efficiencies and reduce operations costs."
"Historically, F5 has collaborated with Oracle on a number of solutions involving applications and middleware deployments, and we’re excited to expand our solution partnership to database environments as well," said Calvin Rowland, VP of Application Partner Programs at F5. "With unified management, and optimization capabilities, F5 products provide strategic points of control within the IT infrastructure. By combining our flexible solutions with Oracle's leading database technologies, we're able to offer customers powerful performance benefits and the ability to customize how IT resources are used to best address organizational priorities."
F5 at Oracle OpenWorldF5 will be demonstrating this solution at Oracle OpenWorld, September 19–23 at Moscone Center in San Francisco. F5 is exhibiting in booth #1427 in the South Hall.
AvailabilityF5’s Application Ready Solution for Oracle Database deployments is available today. To learn more, please visit www.f5.com/solutions/applications/oracle/database/.
F5 Networks is a Gold-level member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork.
About the Oracle PartnerNetworkOracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle’s partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell, and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle’s growing product portfolio, partner base, and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise, and proven success. To find out more, visit http://www.oracle.com/partners

2010-09-20 - Mellanox and Arista Deliver Breakthrough 10GbE Latency for Financial Services Applications:
Mellanox ConnectX®-2 Network Adapters and Arista 7100 10GigE Switch Deliver Unprecedented Latency and Scaling Benefits for Ethernet-based Data Center Fabrics

High Performance Computing Financial Markets, New York City, NY – September 20, 2010 - Mellanox® Technologies, Ltd. (NASDAQ: MLNX; TASE: MLNX), a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end connectivity solutions for data center servers and storage systems, and Arista Networks , a leading provider of low latency 10GigE Ethernet switches for enterprise data centers, today announced that IBM WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging maintained a latency of 4?s at rates up to 100K messages/second and 6?s at one million messages/second using Mellanox ConnectX-2 EN NICs with RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) and Arista 7100 10GigE switch. Latency remained consistently low as the number of multicast groups increased from one to one thousand. Such breakthrough performance is critical for financial institutions and other enterprise applications for which every millisecond of improved latency translates to millions of dollars in potential increased profitability.
“We are pleased to be collaborating with Mellanox," said Mansour Karam, managing director of business development at Arista Networks. "The combination of Arista's ultra-low latency 10GigE switches and Mellanox's network adapter products with RoCE deliver industry-leading latencies for high frequency trading applications.”
RoCE is an add-on feature to Mellanox’s ConnectX-2 EN adapters that implements the IBTA RDMA over Converged Ethernet standard and utilizes the popular OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) and application programming interfaces (APIs). ConnectX-2 EN with RoCE supports both 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet today, making it the only Ethernet NIC future-proofed for 40 Gigabit Ethernet fabrics of the near future.
“ConnectX-2 EN with RoCE adapters deliver up to 1/10th the latency, saves power consumption and improved economics compared to other standards-based 10GigE adapter solutions in the market today,” said John Monson, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “The combination of low latency Ethernet switches from Arista and networking solutions from Mellanox provides financial services applications with leading low-latency and sustained performance that meet the financial market’s higher message rate requirements.”
Visit Mellanox Technologies and Arista at the High Performance Computing Financial Markets Show on September 20th, 2010 in New York Mellanox will be showcasing its end-to-end InfiniBand, and 10 and 40GigE NIC solutions at booth #212, and Arista will be presenting its product line of ultra-low latency switches at booth #218.
Supporting Resources
• Learn more about Arista Networks 10GigE Switches at www.aristanetworks.com
• Follow Arista Networks on Twitter and Facebook
• Learn more about Mellanox 10 and 40GigE NICs with RoCE
• Follow Mellanox on Twitter and Facebook
About Arista Arista Networks was founded to deliver cloud networking solutions for large datacenter and computing environments. Arista offers best-of-breed 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches that set the standard for scalability, robustness, and price-performance. At the core of Arista's 7000 Family is the Extensible Operating System (EOS), a modern software architecture with self-healing and live in-service software upgrade capabilities. The Arista team is comprised of experienced management and engineering talent from leading networking companies. Arista markets its products worldwide with a strong dedication to partner and customer success.

2010-09-15 - Brocade Delivers on Brocade One Promise with World’s Most Powerful 100 Gigabit Ethernet Router:
Industry’s First Terabit-Trunk Routers Deliver Massive Scalability and Unparalleled Economics to Simplify Service Provider and Data Center Networks


SAN JOSE, Calif., September 15, 2010 - Brocade® (Nasdaq:BRCD) today unveiled the new Brocade MLXe Core Router as part of the Brocade MLX Series of high-density routers. These routers are designed to establish industry benchmarks for performance, scalability and investment protection for service provider and data center networks. In addition, Brocade is now offering the industry’s most competitively priced 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) solution to address the exponential traffic surge that carriers are experiencing worldwide.
The new Brocade MLXe router and IEEE standards-based 100 GbE blade deliver on the four value propositions of the Brocade One™ unified network vision: non-stop networking, investment protection, unmatched simplicity and application optimization. These value propositions align to today’s customer imperatives and help them remain ahead of the innovation curve by providing a clear growth path for next-generation networks.
Extending the company’s proven heritage with more than 9000 carrier and data center routers deployed globally, the new Brocade MLXe routers provide superior 100 GbE price/performance value to help generate greater revenue streams with a future-ready infrastructure. The breakthrough performance levels enable next-generation virtualized data centers to support rising application traffic demands and deliver cloud-based services using less hardware—vastly improving operational efficiency and driving down capital cost.
To protect existing network infrastructure investments, the new Brocade MLXe routers are fully interoperable with and support all existing Brocade MLX and Brocade NetIron® XMR blades. This approach provides a clear product evolution for future network expansion. Current Brocade MLX router customers also gain the power and benefits of 100 GbE performance and capacity since the 100 GbE blade integrates with and operates across all Brocade MLX, Brocade MLXe and NetIron XMR routers.
“The new offerings are technological breakthroughs developed to help service provider and data center customers collapse their infrastructure layers, allowing for reduced overhead and massive scalability without compromising performance or efficiency,” said Ken Cheng, vice president, Service Provider Products, Brocade. “They fulfill the promise of the Brocade One vision by helping customers transition seamlessly to a world where information and applications reside anywhere in the cloud.”
Redefining Service Provider Scalability and Economics from Edge to Core
Service providers today must continually evaluate their networking requirements to manage a surge in Internet traffic due to expanding broadband penetration, bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications and mobile application growth worldwide. Delivering four times the 100 GbE wire-speed density and nine times the system capacity of competing routers, the Brocade MLXe 15.36 Terabits per second (Tbps) fabric helps ensure greater simplicity with significantly less infrastructure and operational overhead. In addition, it can also transport dramatically more traffic on a single routing platform.
To help reduce operational expenditures and promote service provider expansion, the new 100 GbE blades cost just a fraction of competitive offerings. When installed in the Brocade MLXe routers, the new 100 GbE blades enable service providers to deploy the industry’s first Terabit-per-second trunk, which utilizes multiple ports in a single logical link for greater bandwidth and reduced management.
This technology supports the streaming of a half-million high-definition video streams over a single managed connection – serving the equivalent of all San Jose, Calif. households – and delivers more than twice the operational efficiency of competitive offerings at a dramatically lower cost. The result is greater profitability gains to help service providers offer ultra-high-performance, yet affordable, broadband connectivity and services for their subscribers.
“Performance, scalability and investment protection are important design attributes of our global network platform,” said Denver Maddux, vice president, Network Engineering, Limelight Networks, Inc. “We see rapid traffic growth due to mobile video and online media downloads, and so, it is important that we can cost-efficiently upgrade our routing platform to support our growth. Routers like the Brocade MLXe and 100 GbE blades provide us with a path to add massive capacity and scalability to our network as we look at our future needs.”
Powering Next-Generation Virtualized Data Centers
With server virtualization and rich-media content triggering the need for more servers to connect through wire-speed connectivity, increased data center network capacity has become crucial for scaling services. In addition, data center deployments are requiring highly scalable performance attributes and simplified design characteristics.
The Brocade MLXe router delivers on these requirements with a comprehensive solution that integrates high-performance wire-speed switching/routing with enormous system capacity to collapse network layers. Its 4.8 billion packets per second performance provides five times the IPv6 forwarding capacity compared to competing offerings. This exceptional performance helps data centers support more network traffic using far less infrastructure – with the added benefit of long-term investment protection.
Non-stop networking with reduced architecture complexity is also a fundamental requirement for next-generation data centers. The Brocade MLXe router and newly introduced Multi-Chassis Trunk (MCT) innovation simplify data center networks and increase resiliency for customers moving to 10 GbE-enabled servers. This advancement enables network-level virtualization and enhanced network reliability while greatly reducing management complexity.
Unified Network Management for Complete SAN and IP Control
Brocade today also introduced Brocade Network Advisor, the industry’s first comprehensive unified network management solution for Brocade Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), wireless, Ethernet switching, and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks — providing end-to-end network visibility in a single application. This solution enables customers to automatically discover, manage and monitor the full Brocade networking portfolio including IP/MPLS routers, such as the new Brocade MLXe, as well as Ethernet switches, application delivery controllers, wireless LAN, Fibre Channel SAN and FCoE switches. Brocade Network Advisor delivers on the Brocade One vision as the common management platform that brings together all the Brocade networking solutions to maximize end-to-end infrastructure visibility from a single application.
Pricing and Availability
The Brocade MLXe router is available today in 4-, 8-, 16- and 32-slot configurations and has a starting list price of $22,245 USD. The Brocade 100 GbE blade is orderable today with general availability planned for the first half of 2011. The list price for the 100 GbE blade starts at $194,995 USD for two ports of 100 GbE in a single blade

2010-08-31 - F5 Optimizes User Experience and Secure Access with New Solution for VMware View™ 4.5:
F5’s Application Ready Solution for VMware View™ 4.5 optimizes user experience with secure access, single sign-on, high performance, and scalability

SAN FRANCISCO, August 31, 2010
Today at VMworld 2010, F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), announced an integrated solution supporting VMware View™ 4.5 that optimizes user experience, delivers critical security, and enhances the performance, scalability, and availability of back-end VMware services. F5’s new Application Ready Solution for VMware View 4.5 offers desktop virtualization users convenient single sign-on (SSO), secure access, and high-performance PC-over-IP (PCoIP) protocol handling through the BIG-IP® Edge Gateway™ solution; high availability and scalability through the BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM®) solution; and documented expertise with deployment guidance based on thorough testing between F5® products and VMware View 4.5.
Additional Resources F5 Solutions for VMware View
Deploying F5 Solutions with VMware View 4.5
F5 and VMware Solution Guide
“Organizations are very interested in desktop virtualization with its promise of cost savings and simplified management, however security and user experience have been two key issues IT teams needed to address in taking on these projects,” said Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5 Networks. “These are two core areas of expertise for F5’s Application Ready Solutions, which are designed to expedite implementation of emerging technologies like desktop virtualization.”
Details F5’s Application Ready Solution for VMware View 4.5 is a validated, documented solution, complete with deployment guidance that is specifically tailored to enhance the security, availability, and scalability of VMware View without compromising performance. Highlights include:
•Superior User Experience with SSO – Streamlining the authentication process for mobile/remote workers not only enhances user experience, but also minimizes security risk and reduces password lockout calls to the helpdesk. BIG-IP Edge Gateway caches sign-on credentials and enables authentication pass­through during the logon process. If the connection drops, the user will automatically be re-authenticated.
•Secure Access with Broad Range of Authentication Mechanisms – Providing stringent access control is vital to secure corporate desktops and protect critical business assets. BIG-IP Edge Gateway provides powerful authentication and access control with pre-logon checks on the endpoint device before the logon sequence begins. In addition, it provides a broad range of authentication mechanisms, including two-factor schemes and various back-end directory services. After authentication, BIG-IP Edge Gateway guarantees the encryption of all VMware View transport protocols, including PCoIP, to enable external users to securely connect to virtual desktops in the enterprise.
•Unique Support for the PCoIP Display Protocol – BIG-IP Edge Gateway, with its Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) feature, is uniquely capable of providing security for transporting PCoIP communications—with no degradation in performance. In addition, BIG-IP Edge Gateway supports automatic fallback to TCP if a high-performance UDP tunnel cannot be established.
•Reduced Infrastructure/Power/Space Requirements for the Data Center – As part of the Application Ready Solution for VMware View 4.5, BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager provides valuable server offload functions to optimize availability and scalability for VMware View deployments. These include load balancing, health monitoring, session persistence, and SSL server offload for the VMware View connection brokers. In addition to reducing CapEx and OpEx costs, the solution helps IT departments enhance user experience.
Supporting Quotes “VMware is committed to providing our customers with the best user experience. With F5’s Application Ready Solution, organizations implementing VMware View™ 4.5 benefit from a high-performance desktop environment that simplifies authentication and connectivity for users, while enabling rich management features to help drive down desktop management costs,” said Vittorio Viarengo, VP, End-User Computing Products, VMware.
“When it comes to addressing our customers’ needs, Softchoice takes a holistic approach to storage, networking, and virtualization in order to deliver increased efficiencies while laying the groundwork for a more dynamic and more scalable IT environment,” said Frank Ball, Director of Networking at Softchoice. “F5’s solutions align well with ours, adding clear value to VMware View™ deployments by ensuring end-to-end security, performance, and scale. By working with F5 on VMware View deployments, we can offer greater value to our customers by helping them achieve a superior user experience and fully optimize their desktop virtualization projects.”
“Extending the value of desktop virtualization beyond the corporate network is becoming a primary use case as companies target offshore developers, regional offices, and contract workers,” said Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Architecting F5 solutions into VMware View™ deployments helps ensure feature-rich and reliable user experience, secure connections, and simplified single sign-on access to centralized virtual desktops.”
Availability F5’s Application Ready Solution for VMware View 4.5 is available today. The integrated solution comprises several F5 technologies, including BIG-IP Edge Gateway and BIG-IP LTM

2010-08-31 - F5 Integrates with VMware vCloud™ Director to Provide Cloudbursting Solution for Enterprises:
New solution simplifies and automates use of cloud resources to enhance application delivery performance and availability while minimizing capital investment

SAN FRANCISCO, August 31, 2010
Today at VMworld 2010, F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), 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.
Additional Resources Cloudbursting for Elastic Applications in a Hybrid Cloud Architecture – Webcast
A Hybrid Cloud Architecture for Elastic Applications with F5 and VMware – Overview
Hybrid Cloud Application Architecture for Elastic Java-Based Web Applications – Deployment Guide
F5 and VMware Solution Guide

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.”
Details 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.”
Availability 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

2010-07-28 - F5 Teams with Oracle to Streamline Access Management:
F5’s BIG-IP system integrates with Oracle Access Manager to centralize authentication, simplify access control, reduce costs, and enhance application performance

SEATTLE, July 28, 2010
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced that the F5® BIG-IP® Access Policy Manager™ (APM™) solution can now integrate with Oracle Identity Management. Specifically, Oracle Access Manager, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, can be paired with BIG-IP APM’s access control capabilities for web applications. By integrating F5 and Oracle technologies, customers gain a centralized point of enforcement to simplify access control and auditing.
Additional Resources Deploying the BIG-IP Access Policy Manager with Oracle Access Manager
F5 Solutions for Oracle Fusion Middleware
F5 Web Access Security Solutions
“Enterprises want streamlined integration across their heterogeneous IT assets, and the integration of F5’s BIG-IP access solutions with Oracle Access Manager gives customers a holistic enterprise architecture that simplifies authentication and reduces infrastructure costs,” said Rohit Gupta, VP of Product Management for Oracle Identity & Access Management. “F5’s unique integration architecture with Oracle Access Manager simplifies our customers’ infrastructure and support considerations for their web access management needs, while continuing to deliver higher levels of scalability.”
DetailsThe BIG-IP product portfolio offers high-performance access and security solutions that provide context-aware user access to web applications. With BIG-IP products, IT teams can offload authentication services from application and specialized web servers, enabling administrators to apply consistent, policy-based access control across many applications and manage access to those applications from a central location. Pairing Oracle Access Manager with BIG-IP APM gives remote and mobile users optimized, reliable, and secure access to Oracle applications. And the combined Oracle/F5 solution enables administrators to conveniently scale the infrastructure to keep pace with the burgeoning growth of mobile and remote users.
With F5 products and Oracle Access Manager, customers can:
•Consolidate Infrastructure to Reduce IT Costs – By offloading authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) functions to the BIG-IP solution, customers do not need an added tier of web proxy servers or servers running agent software. Instead, authentication functions can be performed by a single BIG-IP device, resulting in significant savings—efficient integration and consolidation can reduce authentication and web tier costs by up to 10 times.
•Simplify and Centralize Management to Save Time – With a smaller, less complex infrastructure and AAA control directly on BIG-IP devices, IT administrators can manage network identity and access control from one centralized location, applying repeatable access policies across many applications. Centralized management reduces the amount of manual intervention necessary, and enables IT to modify existing policies as regulations and business requirements change.
•Easily Scale the Infrastructure to Support a Superior User Experience – Many organizations cannot afford the expense of adding an extra tier of proxy servers to their access environments. With the combined solution, F5 helps customers easily scale their IT environment to support the rapidly increasing number of mobile workers. A single high-end BIG-IP appliance can handle hundreds of logins per second and tens of thousands of concurrent SSL encrypted user sessions, and offers multi-gigabit per second SSL encryption throughput with HTTP(s).
Additional Quotes“Different aspects of Identity and Access Management (IAM) and web access are maturing to the point where the method of delivery is taking different forms, from appliances to services,” said Earl Perkins, Research Vice President, Gartner. “Delivering such services at logical points in the IT infrastructure, such as the network, makes sense from a performance and administration perspective because it allows commodity services and their management to be combined for best effect.”
“We work closely with vendors like Oracle so that customers can maximize the value of their technology investments,” said Mark Vondemkamp, Director of Product Management for Security at F5. “With this combined solution, it’s easy for organizations to improve their access capabilities without custom coding applications, installing additional servers, or adding agents to existing web servers. With F5’s BIG-IP APM integration with Oracle Access Manager, customers can centralize identity and access management services to reduce their infrastructure size and cost—even as user numbers and access requirements change.”
AvailabilityBIG-IP Access Policy Manager is available today. To learn more about the product’s integration with Oracle Access Manager, go to www.f5.com/pdf/solution-center/f5-oracle-solution-overview.pdf

2010-06-22 - F5 Enhances SSL VPN Offerings:
FirePass® 7.0 release improves SSL VPN functionality, scalability, third-party integration, and offers new flexible deployment options including a virtual appliance

SEATTLE, June 22, 2010
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced a new version of its FirePass SSL VPN solution. With the 7.0 release, FirePass provides enhanced access capabilities, improved IT management through integrated access services with third-party solutions, and flexible deployment options, including an SSL VPN virtual appliance running on VMware vSphere, FirePass Virtual Edition (VE).
Additional ResourcesFirePass 7.0 Launch Highlights
FirePass Product Overview
Deploying the FirePass Controller with VMware View
City of Diamond Bar Case Study
DetailsFirePass provides browser-based access to organizations’ applications, networks, and data, and employs customizable access policies to ensure all devices accessing corporate information adhere to a company’s specific requirements.
“Remote access creates continuous market demand for new virtual private network (VPN) products and services, including virtual solutions,” said John Girard, VP Distinguished Analyst with Gartner, Inc. “Business continuity and telework are creating new opportunities for companies working through upgrades and replacement cycles to replace legacy remote-access VPNs. Even if you have sufficient capacity to handle increased demands in your VPN gateway based on these new trends, it will do you no good if your network services cannot scale.”
With FirePass, enterprises can manage employee and external access to business applications, keep mobile users connected, and enforce compliance mandates such as HIPAA and PCI-DSS. Highlights of the new FirePass version 7.0 include:
•Flexible Deployment Options, Including a Virtual Appliance
F5 now offers customers the ability to deploy FirePass on both physical and virtual platforms, with FirePass VE delivering all the traditional functionality of its physical counterpart. F5’s virtual deployment options—including the recently announced BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™ Virtual Edition—provide a powerful way for organizations to reduce CapEx and OpEx costs by controlling the number of physical devices in their IT infrastructure. With FirePass VE, customers gain the valuable flexibility to add remote access capabilities to their existing virtual environments while maintaining emergency capacity in case of an unexpected event.In addition, with this new version, FirePass now interoperates with both the FirePass Client and the new BIG-IP Edge Client™. The BIG-IP Edge Client provides advanced roaming, domain detection, and automatic connection, helping users stay connected when transitioning between locations.

•Advanced Endpoint Security and Enhanced User Experience
FirePass 7.0 includes enhanced endpoint security features for Mac and Linux environments, including updated antivirus, firewall, and anti-malware software detection capabilities. This new version reduces risk of data loss with upgraded features, including Protected Workspace for 64-bit operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 7.FirePass ensures users receive continuous, seamless access from any authorized device whether they are at home, on a wireless network, or connected via a guest network. With the BIG-IP Edge Client, FirePass can also automatically detect domain changes to connect or reconnect to network resources (even after losing a VPN connection) or halt VPN access when the user connects to a secure LAN.

• Improved Ease of Management with Integrated Access Services
FirePass 7.0 features advanced hardware identification to help IT administrators identify unauthorized devices and block access to corporate networks and materials as appropriate. Additionally, customers who use VMware virtualization tools in their data center can now use those same management tools to manage SSL VPN capability within their virtual desktop infrastructure. FirePass integration with the VMware View web client allows customers to quickly and easily deploy VMware View for remote users without requiring an additional client installation. Also, FirePass now enhances access to Xen Presentation Server, sending Smart Access filters to XenApp/Presentation Server based on the results of the endpoint inspections.
Additional Quotes“As a former IPsec shop, we’re impressed with the flexibility FirePass provides in supporting our business needs and providing seamless and easy VPN access,” said Ken Desforges, Information Systems Director for the City of Diamond Bar, California. “The ability to set and configure granular access policies has been invaluable for us, especially as we extend network access to vendors and contractors. FirePass enables us to provide the highest level of service to our constituents while keeping operating costs low. Specific to the 7.0 release, we’re excited to see augmented endpoint security features and increased support for an expanded array of devices, operating systems, and browsers. These enhancements provide secure access capabilities for distributed users without sacrificing performance.”
“As the number of remote and mobile users climbs, those users are increasingly reliant on access to corporate materials and data from a variety of locations,” said Mark Vondemkamp, Director of Product Management for Security at F5. “Accordingly, organizations are seeking remote access solutions that provide easy user connectivity, strong endpoint security, and support for the latest mobile devices, browsers, and operating systems. In addition, organizations need to be able to tailor access policies to enable internal contacts and business partners to access corporate materials while maintaining optimized application performance levels. With F5’s comprehensive access security portfolio—including FirePass, BIG-IP Edge Gateway™ and Access Policy Manager™ solutions, and the new FirePass VE—customers have confidence that F5 can support their access priorities, even as user needs and IT environments evolve.”
AvailabilityThe new version of the FirePass SSL VPN solution is available now. For more information on FirePass, please visit www.f5.com/products/firepass/.
About F5 NetworksF5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), focused on ensuring the secure, reliable, and fast delivery of applications. F5’s flexible architectural framework enables community-driven innovation that helps organizations enhance IT agility and dynamically deliver services that generate true business value. F5’s vision of unified application and data delivery offers customers an unprecedented level of choice in how they deploy ADN solutions. It redefines the management of application, server, storage, and network resources, streamlining application delivery and reducing costs. Global enterprise organizations, service and cloud providers, and Web 2.0 content providers trust F5 to keep their business moving forward. For more information, go to www.f5.com.
F5, BIG-IP, Local Traffic Manager, Edge Client, Edge Gateway, and Access Policy Manager are trademarks or service marks of F5 Networks, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
# # #

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Press Contacts Alane Moran
F5 Networks, Inc.
(206) 272-6850
a.moran@f5.com Holly Hagerman
Connect Public Relations
(801) 373-7888
hollyh@connectpr.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This press release may contain forward looking statements relating to future events or future financial performance that involve risks and uncertainties. Such statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," or "continue," or the negative of such terms or comparable terms. These statements are only predictions and actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these statements based upon a number of factors including those identified in the company's filings with the SEC.
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2010-06-01 - F5 Optimizes Microsoft Solutions Enabling the Dynamic Data Center:
New offerings allow enterprises to leverage virtualization and on-premise cloud computing, move toward ‘On-Demand IT,’ and implement a more agile and responsive IT infrastructure

SEATTLE, June 01, 2010
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced enhanced application delivery capabilities to help Microsoft customers implement dynamic infrastructures that can quickly respond to changing business needs and variables. With F5® solutions optimized to work with Microsoft technologies, customers gain strategic points of control throughout the infrastructure, giving IT the ability to access and allocate resources on demand. Specifically, F5 is announcing the advantages of deploying the F5 Management Pack® for System Center Operations Manager and the BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™ Virtual Edition in concert with Microsoft products, in addition to expanded partnership efforts.
Additional ResourcesThe 2.0 Wave of the F5 Management Pack and Data Center Orchestration
Dynamic Data Center Alliance Blog
F5 and Microsoft Solution Guide
DetailsVirtualized environments require sophisticated tools to help IT provision and unify computing, network, and storage resources for maximum utilization and efficiency. F5’s solution portfolio promotes seamless application delivery for virtualization and cloud deployments running on Microsoft platforms. In addition, F5® solutions provide enhanced visibility into application delivery environments so that IT resources can be tailored to meet an organization’s business objectives while supporting users with optimized services.
“Customers looking to deploy Microsoft’s on-premise cloud and virtualization solutions will find F5 solutions to be a powerful complement for the enhanced application delivery, infrastructure visibility, and automation capabilities they provide,” said Dai Vu, Director of Virtualization Solutions Marketing at Microsoft Corp. “F5 shares our vision for the dynamic data center, and joint customers looking to deploy solutions in a number of distinct physical, virtual, and hybrid computing models will see added value.”
To support Microsoft’s vision for dynamic infrastructure with flexible deployment options and simplified management, F5 delivers:
•Increased Support for Virtualization and Cloud Architecture Models
F5 offers a solution portfolio with both physical and virtual deployment options, providing comprehensive integration with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, and more. With F5’s BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager Virtual Edition, customers can conveniently scale their data center environments without incurring the added cost and time associated with deploying traditional hardware. This flexibility gives customers options for supporting Microsoft applications within a variety of data center architecture models, including those leveraging cloud computing.
•Enhanced Efforts with Microsoft to Benefit Joint Customers
F5 has joined the Microsoft Dynamic Datacenter Alliance to further its commitment to providing joint customers with the IT agility they need to support their organizations and maximize the value of their technology investments. Recently, Microsoft announced that it would open its Dynamic Datacenter Alliance to technology partners, including the company’s compute, network, and storage partners. F5 is the first ADN partner in this alliance and one of the “founding” network partners. Through this alliance and other partnership efforts, F5 plans to further work with Microsoft on solutions that promote the companies’ shared vision of dynamic IT infrastructure.
•Improved Infrastructure Manageability and Visibility for Microsoft Solutions
Integration with Microsoft’s new Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit reduces the time required to deploy new virtual machines, and simplifies integral functionality such as virtual application provisioning, reconfiguration of network traffic, and holistic health monitoring. Tight integration between F5 BIG-IP solutions and Microsoft products enables the F5 Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and other F5 technologies to provide a unified view across Microsoft application environments.

For example, SharePoint—which operates as a composite of multiple application services, including core Windows Services, IIS, and Microsoft SQL—can now benefit from network visibility down to the component level. This provides IT departments with deep visibility into all the complementary technologies that SharePoint requires. Additionally, flexible F5 solutions—like the iControl® API and iRules® programming language—enable administrators to customize alert thresholds, reporting parameters, and resource provisioning. F5 is the only vendor providing comprehensive functionality, visibility, and management capabilities to this level of granularity.
“Our partnership with Microsoft continues delivering value for joint customers,” said Calvin Rowland, VP of Application Partner Programs at F5. “Through collaborative interoperability and integration efforts, we’re enhancing organizations’ abilities to control and manage dynamic IT services. Real-time visibility into the status of computing, network, storage, and software application services allows organizations to make more effective, timely, and intelligent decisions regarding resource utilization and provisioning. The joint solutions stemming from this partnership enable customers to more readily harness the power of On-Demand IT.”

2010-04-30 - F5’s Application Delivery Controllers Lead in Comparative Evaluation:
The industry’s most comprehensive, transparent, and repeatable testing shows F5’s BIG-IP solutions outperform products from Cisco and Citrix

SEATTLE, April 30, 2010
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced the results of rigorous Application Delivery Controller (ADC) testing comparing F5® BIG-IP® solutions to Cisco ACE and Citrix NetScaler devices, with F5 demonstrating significant performance advantages. Alongside these results, F5 has also made available its transparent testing methodology and a performance testing guide, as well as comprehensive device configurations, precise definitions, extensive factual data, and the real-world scenarios devised for this comparative evaluation.
Supporting ResourcesF5 2010 Application Delivery Controller Performance Report
Creating a Robust Performance Testing Methodology
Clustered Multiprocessing: Changing the Rules of the Performance Game
Testing Details and HighlightsPerformance testing compared both high-end and mid-range categories of products from the top three ADC vendors, based on market share. In the high-end category, the comparative test included F5’s VIPRION® chassis with one PB200 and another with two PB200 blades, the BIG-IP 8900, Citrix’s NetScaler MPX-17000 Classic and nCore products, and Cisco’s ACE20. For the mid-range category F5 compared the BIG-IP 3900 and Cisco’s ACE 4710. Citrix’s mid-range product was not tested because it is the same architecture and technology as the MPX-17000, which is included in the report. Customers can extrapolate their mid-range product performance based on the results in the report.
•Testing measured a range of real-world use cases including requests per second for various Layer 7 response sizes, compression, caching, SSL, and Layer 4 performance.
•At a similar or lower price point compared to others, BIG-IP products demonstrated the highest processing capabilities for Layer 7 requests, making F5 solutions the best value for enterprises and service providers.?For mid-range ADCs, F5 solutions achieved up to 15x the Layer 7 performance of the nearest competitor.
?For high-end ADCs, F5 solutions achieved up to 9x the Layer 7 performance of the other tested devices.

•With F5’s unique Clustered Multiprocessing (CMP) capability and chassis design architecture, BIG-IP solutions provide truly linear scaling capabilities where other solutions do not. This enables F5 customers to add on-demand capacity and processing as required by their users, applications, and infrastructures.
•F5 devices have 63%–3700% greater energy efficiency compared to the other vendors’ products.
“The guiding principles of a comparative report are that it must be accurate, transparent, and reproducible,” said Karl Triebes, SVP of Product Development and CTO at F5. “We strive to provide as much factual information as possible so the customer can make informed purchasing decisions, and that others in good faith can reproduce these tests and see the same results. F5 conducted these tests with our own performance experts, as opposed to contracting with an ‘independent’ third party hired to produce favorable results. In addition, we invite constructive feedback on all materials or product configurations to ensure testing is accurate. We’re committed to publishing test results following this methodology, and it is our hope that the industry will follow our lead in adopting an open approach to technology evaluations.”
Because F5’s comparative testing methodology is designed to be reproducible, customers can make more informed assessments of vendors’ offerings and trust the results to be reliable, since they can be independently verified and reflect real-world scenarios. In contrast to this comparative approach, third-party competitive testing organizations often make unqualified assertions or do not disclose their testing methodologies, leading to inaccurate and sometimes misleading conclusions. And because competitive test methodologies and configuration information are rarely disclosed, performance claims can be difficult to reproduce and validate, making a fair and balanced analysis unachievable.
“Historically, ADC vendors have often measured and categorized performance capabilities individually, resulting in a level of ambiguity for customers attempting to interpret or compare one vendor’s claims to another’s,” said Zeus Kerravala, SVP of Enterprise Research at Yankee Group. “By releasing both their performance results and testing methodology, F5 is going a long way toward encouraging prospective customers, business partners, and even competitors to evaluate solutions on a level playing field. This approach—along with a wide range of testing parameters—helps minimize the effect of variable performance measuring techniques and definitions, selective disclosure, and marketing hype so that the facts can be borne out.”

2010-04-28 - F5 Extends Application and Data Security to the Cloud:
New BIG-IP release augments F5’s integrated security services with improved attack protection, simplified access control, and optimized performance

INFOSECURITY EUROPE, LONDON, April 28, 2010
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced enhanced BIG-IP solution capabilities delivering new security services for applications deployed in the cloud. Application security provided by F5 solutions, including BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™, BIG-IP Edge Gateway™, and BIG-IP Application Security Manager™, ensures that enterprise applications and data are safe even when deployed in the cloud. The new BIG-IP Version 10.2 software enhances F5’s security offerings, enabling customers to lower infrastructure costs, optimize application access, and secure applications in the enterprise and the cloud.
Additional Resources Securing the Cloud
F5 Cloud Computing Solutions
Security SlideShare Presentation
Hobsons Case Study
Details Cloud environments can be key resources for IT teams leveraging enhanced scalability and lower expenses, but there are security concerns when it comes to moving organizations’ sensitive applications and data into the cloud. With BIG-IP solutions, customers can assign policy-based access permissions based on user, location, device, and other variables. This enables organizations to extend context-aware access to corporate materials while keeping their most valuable assets secure whether the data is stored in the data center, internal cloud, or external cloud. Additional details on how F5 helps organizations securely extend enterprise data center architecture to the cloud can be found in a separate F5 announcement issued earlier this week.
The BIG-IP v10.2 release introduces new security functionality throughout the BIG-IP product family. By unifying application delivery, security, optimization, and access control on a single platform, security capabilities can be extended across data center environments and in the cloud. F5 security solutions provide comprehensive application security, including packet filtering, port lockdown, attack protection, network/administrative isolation, protocol validation, dynamic rate limiting, SSL termination, access policy management, and much more.
F5 security solutions and the new BIG-IP v10.2 enable customers to:
•Enhance Attack Protection and Safeguard Applications
BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM™) is a flexible web application firewall (WAF) that not only protects against common vulnerabilities like those listed in the OWASP Top Ten, but can also be tailored to provide policy-based security for organizations’ specific security needs. The new release of BIG-IP includes easy-to-implement protection from dangerous Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks. Many web applications are vulnerable to this attack and alternative solutions can be expensive and complex to implement and maintain. BIG-IP ASM can now protect applications against Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks with simple checkbox configuration.
•Simplify Management of Access Control for Applications in the Cloud
With BIG-IP Edge Gateway, enterprises can implement strong authentication, authorization, and encryption policies to make sure data is kept secure as it traverses the cloud. By unifying access and acceleration services on a single, optimized device, BIG-IP Edge Gateway simplifies and centralizes management tasks, and helps IT teams consolidate their infrastructure to reduce CapEx and OpEx costs.
•Improve Mobile and Remote User Experience
Adding to the current services of advanced roaming, domain detection, and automatic connection, new security services integrate the BIG-IP Edge Client™ solution with the Microsoft Windows logon process. By caching logon credentials the first time they are entered, mobile and remote users can seamlessly access applications via a common VPN model, and this authentication can further be utilized by BIG-IP Edge Gateway to provide access control for cloud applications as well as traditional enterprise applications.
•Reduce Infrastructure Costs of Supporting Common Access Cards (CAC)
BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager with the Advanced Client Authentication™ (ACA) module now supports Kerberos Protocol Transition. This capability can reduce the infrastructure required to allow multiple agencies who authenticate using CAC cards to access a shared application. Customers can simplify authentication, eliminate a tier of infrastructure to reduce costs, and streamline access management.
Supporting Quotes “Deploying applications in the cloud can create significant security headaches for IT if the right supporting pieces aren’t in place,” said Mark Vondemkamp, Director of Product Management for Security at F5. “Administrations need an integrated approach to application security—no matter where the applications are deployed—to maintain access control standards when applications are deployed in a cloud scenario. BIG-IP solutions address organizations’ needs by combining simplified application access and ICSA-certified security solutions in a unified, flexible solution architecture.”
“What I love about the F5 solution is that it enables organizations to maintain their own security policies rather than adapt to those of a cloud provider and trust that they will keep those applications and user data secure,” said Patrick McFadin, Director of Systems and Architecture at Hobsons. “With Global Traffic Manager and the BIG-IP Edge Gateway, organizations can maintain centralized control and provide all of their authentication services inside the firewall, and then, through secure connections, redirect a user to an application, regardless of where it’s located—in the network or in the cloud. It lets organizations provide unified security across all of their applications.”
“Malicious attackers get more and more aggressive every day, so it is important for us to protect our private corporate and customer information with the highest levels of security,” said Brad Trankina, Director of Network and Information Systems at Human Kinetics. “F5’s ASM is a great WAF and we are excited to see that protection from CSRF attacks is now so easy to configure with just a few clicks of the mouse.”
“It’s fashionable to pontificate about how security issues are holding back cloud computing, but unfortunately there is still more attention on industry rhetoric and not enough on providing solutions,” said Jon Oltsik, Principal Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. “With these announcements, F5 is going beyond talking and taking a leading role in cloud security solutions. What’s more, F5’s solutions provide a bridge between internal security controls and the cloud. This will be especially attractive to highly-regulated security-centric industries like financial services, health care, and government organizations.”
Availability BIG-IP Version 10.2 will be available in April. To learn more about F5’s BIG-IP solutions, please visit www.f5.com/products/big-ip/. For more information on F5’s portfolio of security solutions, go to www.f5.com/solutions/security/.
About F5 Networks F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), focused on ensuring the secure, reliable, and fast delivery of applications. F5’s flexible architectural framework enables community-driven innovation that helps organizations enhance IT agility and dynamically deliver services that generate true business value. F5’s vision of unified application and data delivery offers customers an unprecedented level of choice in how they deploy ADN solutions. It redefines the management of application, server, storage, and network resources, streamlining application delivery and reducing costs. Global enterprise organizations, service and cloud providers, and Web 2.0 content providers trust F5 to keep their business moving forward. For more information, go to www.f5.com.
F5, BIG-IP, Edge Gateway, Edge Client, Application Security Manager, ASM, Local Traffic Manager, and Advanced Client Authentication are trademarks or service marks of F5 Networks, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
# # #

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Press Contacts Alane Moran
F5 Networks, Inc.
(206) 272-6850
a.moran@f5.com Holly Hagerman
Connect Public Relations
(801) 373-7888
hollyh@connectpr.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This press release may contain forward looking statements relating to future events or future financial performance that involve risks and uncertainties. Such statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," or "continue," or the negative of such terms or comparable terms. These statements are only predictions and actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these statements based upon a number of factors including those identified in the company's filings with the SEC.
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2010-04-26 - F5 Unlocks True Potential of ‘On-Demand IT’:
New BIG-IP release helps extend enterprise data center architecture to the cloud through holistic ecosystem supporting the dynamic nature of applications and data

INTEROP, LAS VEGAS, April 26, 2010
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today introduced its BIG-IP® Version 10.2 software to help extend enterprise data center architecture to the cloud, and enable enterprises and service providers to realize the potential of ‘On-Demand IT’ through a dynamic services model. To help customers unlock the power of ‘On-Demand IT,’ F5 is detailing a comprehensive approach that integrates disparate technologies for application delivery, security, optimization, data management, and infrastructure control—all critical technologies needed to realize the true flexibility and agility of virtualization and cloud computing solutions. Today’s announcement builds on F5’s strategy to unify application delivery and data services within its rich solution portfolio.
Supporting Resources On Demand IT slideshare presentation
F5 Cloud Computing Solutions Overview
Controlling the Cloud: Requirements for Cloud Computing | Audio Version
Connecting to the Cloud with F5 BIG-IP Solutions and VMware VMotion | Audio Version
Harmonizing Enterprise Virtualization and Cloud Computing Projects to Maximize Value The true benefits of virtualization and cloud computing projects are achieved when organizations move beyond addressing single initiatives—such as data center consolidation, green IT, IT/business alignment—and move toward a holistic architecture that integrates these initiatives and creates new, more efficient ways of implementing technologies in concert with one another.
“The cloud is evolving as the next generation of IT,” said Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5. “Whether a business is planning to deploy a private cloud or take advantage of external public cloud services, it needs to put its enterprise requirements first and leverage an integrated architecture for on-demand mobility, orchestration, and automation. F5 is committed to helping customers utilize their existing infrastructures, while extending and reusing them to enable a common cloud architectural model—regardless of where IT resources actually reside.”
Extending Unified Application Delivery, Access Control, and Optimization into the Cloud F5’s holistic approach, which integrates multi-vendor solutions into a unified whole, is the cornerstone of its dynamic services model. For example, F5’s delivery of a virtual Application Delivery Controller (ADC) platform in combination with physical ADCs gives customers the unique ability to seamlessly extend their current operational model into multiple data centers, hosting providers, and cloud environments on demand, while utilizing the same trusted configuration, features, and control that they have developed over years of application delivery deployment.
With F5’s unified application delivery architecture, enterprise customers can easily implement centrally managed security enforcement policies that provide user access according to specific IT requirements and business needs. And F5’s new BIG-IP Edge Gateway™ solution enables enterprise customers to simplify the management of application services—such as access, security, and optimization—within a dynamic services model that leverages both traditional data center and cloud computing environments.
“Many IT organizations won’t even consider moving applications into the cloud if it means giving up visibility and control. This creates a significant challenge for companies that want to leverage the value of a public cloud, but manage it as if it were their own,” said Pat O’Day, Chief Information Officer at BlueLock. “With the F5 solution, they can take all the context and control that they currently have in their existing infrastructures and apply it to applications that they move into the cloud, which allows them to take advantage of the cloud in a very non-threatening way. The F5 solution essentially neutralizes the layer 2/3 network configuration differences between the customer data center and the cloud data center, so the cloud just becomes an additional resource—an extension—of their private data center.”
Enhancing the Value of Application Delivery with Integrated Partner Solutions F5’s vision of a dynamic services model is further buoyed by its ongoing collaboration with technology partners like Microsoft, VMware, and Gomez. These partnerships help integrate virtualization management and end-user performance monitoring and management solutions within an overall dynamic control plane. This collaborative approach provides customers with the tools they need to improve the end-user experience for joint customers, and gives enterprises leveraging virtualization and cloud models the means to reliably measure real-time performance levels for tracking SLAs.
“Application Delivery Networking plays a vital role in unlocking the power of cloud computing,” said Parag Patel, VP, Alliances, VMware. “VMware vSphere™ complements BIG-IP to help enable customers to implement private cloud computing today. Whether it’s provisioning application and networking resources automatically on-demand, or automatically migrating virtual machines over distance, VMware and F5 deliver solutions that enable the kind of flexibility necessary for cloud projects to succeed.”
“The notion of a dynamic services model that acts as the ultimate, final layer of virtualization between users, the applications, and data provides immense flexibility and control to the enterprise,” said Tom Meusel, Vice President of Worldwide Channels at Gomez, the Web Performance Division of Compuware. “For Gomez, it provides a way to integrate with the infrastructure and not just the application, allowing our services to be applied across any web application, anywhere in the world, even as these web applications are created and moved on demand.”
Additional Quotes “Alaska Airlines continues to set a high bar in our industry for leveraging technology to increase efficiencies and better serve our customers—internal and external constituents,” said Wayne Seward, Sr. Systems Architect at Alaska Airlines. “Cloud computing promises solid benefits, but before embracing this environment it’s critical to have a unified architecture to integrate disparate technologies that will allow us to extend traditional enterprise data center requirements to the cloud, with no compromises on control. F5’s vision of enabling a dynamic services model builds on its holistic view of application delivery and is designed to help enterprises safely leverage cloud services driven by business needs, and not just technology.”
“The fact that we can create a virtual ADC may not be new, but the F5 solution is different because it consistently applies application templates, security, and availability configurations across all instances of applications and data,” said Nick McClure, Lead Systems Programmer at University of Kentucky. "That’s true even when the virtual ADC moves beyond the datacenter and become an integrated component of an overall physical and virtual data center architecture. This solution provides flexibility of choice in providers, reduces switching costs by not locking organizations into one provider’s technology, and still ensures ultimate control of applications and data.”
“With FusionStorm’s broad set of technology solutions for enterprise data centers and our rapidly growing cloud and managed hosting services business, F5’s vision and product portfolio resonate well with FusionStorm’s practice,” said Vince Conroy, CTO at FusionStorm. “We need to help enterprises simplify and bridge the transition to enterprise cloud computing architectures on their terms. F5’s new 10.2 release enables unification of multiple vendor solutions for a dynamic services model and extends existing application delivery services to clouds, such as FusionStorm’s offering. Working with F5, we can help our customers seamlessly and safely extend their current, proven operational models to the cloud with minimal disruption—leveraging their configurations and maintaining the control they require for application delivery.”
“Cloud environments promise to finally allow IT departments to take advantage of on-demand services and dramatically lower computing costs, said Zeus Kerravala, SVP of Enterprise Research at Yankee Group. “However, cloud computing comes in many different flavors, and organizations need to understand how to put various components of a cloud model together to optimize performance and address specific business priorities. An Application Delivery Controller is a key piece to the puzzle, as it helps customers leverage their existing infrastructure and integrate cloud services into the current architecture where it will yield the highest returns.”
Availability BIG-IP Version 10.2 will be available in April. To learn more about F5’s BIG-IP solutions including the associated product and feature modules, please visit www.f5.com/products/big-ip/

2010-03-02 - F5 Teams with Oracle to Deliver Optimized Solution:
New solution integrates management of F5 Application Delivery Controllers and Oracle Enterprise Manager to deliver improved control, simplified operation, and lower TCO for Oracle applications customers

SEATTLE, March 02, 2010

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking and Gold member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, today announced the release of a new solution developed in cooperation with Oracle that optimizes the use of F5® BIG-IP® Application Delivery Controllers with Oracle Enterprise Manager. Working together, F5 and Oracle have created the Oracle® Enterprise Manager plug-in for BIG-IP, now available for download at F5 DevCentral and from the Oracle Technology Network. In addition, customers can access both an Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture White Paper on Oracle’s website and an F5 Deployment Guide on www.f5.com.

“The Oracle Enterprise Manager plug-in for F5 BIG-IP is a great example of how Oracle partners can extend Oracle Enterprise Manager. With this plug-in, our mutual customers can improve application availability by managing their environments through one central location. Our longstanding collaboration with F5 has not only enhanced Oracle Enterprise Manager, it continues to deliver tangible benefits to our joint customers,” said Will Scelzo, Senior Director, Business Development, Oracle.

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides customers with a comprehensive and unified monitoring and management console for Oracle application deployments. This new jointly developed solution provides detailed, prescriptive guidance for deploying Oracle Enterprise Manager with F5 BIG-IP solutions for high availability, performance, and security. By enabling monitoring of F5 BIG-IP solutions directly within Oracle Enterprise Manager, the plug-in extends the ability to manage Oracle deployments to include both Oracle software (for example, database, middleware, application) and the F5 Application Delivery Network.

The joint management solution offers customers the ability to:

Reduce TCO by Centralizing Monitoring Capabilities – The plug-in provides administrators managing Oracle systems and BIG-IP solutions with a consolidated view of the entire enterprise, enabling them to monitor and manage all components from a central place. This integrated solution can reduce the total cost of ownership by helping to eliminate the need to manually compile critical information from several different tools, making it easier to identify availability and performance issues across the infrastructure.

Save Time by Automatically Tracking Configuration Changes – Tracking configurations is one of the most time-consuming and difficult tasks administrators face on a daily basis. Being able to quickly view a detailed configuration snapshot, analyze historical changes, and enforce standardization between systems is key to performing diagnostics, auditing, and compliance tasks, and making intelligent business decisions.

Streamline Operations with Pre-Set Threshold Alerts – The plug-in automatically collects a comprehensive set of availability and performance metrics with pre-defined thresholds, immediately alerting administrators of potential issues. This allows administrators to realize significant value, while giving them the flexibility to fine-tune thresholds according to their specific business needs.

Enhance Management Visibility with Convenient Out-of-the-Box Reporting – To further aid administrators with critical tasks such as problem diagnosis, trend analysis, and capacity planning, the plug-in includes eight out-of-the-box reports that summarize key information about BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™ availability, performance, and configuration. These reports are easily accessible from the Oracle® Enterprise Manager Grid Control console, enabling administrators to schedule, share, and customize their reports.

“We’re pleased to collaborate with Oracle in producing a valuable solution to help joint customers manage, integrate, and optimize deployments of Oracle Enterprise Manager and BIG-IP systems,” said Calvin Rowland, VP of Application Partner Programs at F5. “Previously, customers have had to manage the Oracle applications and BIG-IP systems using different tools. Our new offering gives customers holistic visibility for Oracle software and the F5 application delivery infrastructure to increase operational efficiencies and streamline management.”

“The collaboration between F5 and Oracle demonstrates today’s tight integration between business applications and the network,” said Jon Oltsik, Principal Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “This partnership will enable IT groups to better address change control, problem isolation, and application performance. The result? Increased business productivity and improved IT efficiency.”

Availability
The plug-in is validated by Oracle and is available today on the Oracle page of F5's DevCentral community web portal (free registration required—users must be logged in to download) and on the Oracle Technology Network.

2010-03-01 - F5 and Infoblox DNS Integrated Architecture: Offering a Complete Scalable, Secure DNS Solution:
Combination of Industry-leading Global Load Balancing and Real-time Signing, with DNS Management Technologies, Enables and Simplifies DNSSEC Deployment

SEATTLE & SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 1, 2010

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN) and Infoblox, the leading provider of DNS, DHCP and IPAM (DDI) solutions, today announced a partnership agreement. F5 and Infoblox have partnered to develop a solution to simplify and speed deployment of the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC).

Additional ResourcesInfoblox DNSSEC
F5-Infoblox
F5 DNS Security
F5-Infoblox
F5 and Infoblox together deliver the market’s only fully integrated and complete DNSSEC solution including high-performance DNS and global server load balancing functions, all supporting signed DNSSEC data. This provides customers a scalable, manageable, and secure DNS infrastructure that is equipped to withstand DNS attacks. The solution is a combination of Infoblox’s purpose-built appliances that deliver highly reliable, manageable and secure DNS services with built-in, automated DNSSEC features, and F5® BIG-IP® Global Traffic Manager™ appliances optimized with hardware acceleration facilitating real-time signing of DNSSEC signature queries.

Details
•Many security experts consider DNSSEC to be an essential tool in “sealing” DNS vulnerabilities and mitigating DNS cache poisoning attacks that undermine the integrity of the DNS system. DNSSEC implements an automated trust infrastructure, enabling systems to verify the authenticity of the DNS information, and foils attackers’ attempts to direct users to alternate sites - for collection of credit card information and passwords, to redirect email, or otherwise compromise applications.
•Infoblox’s industry-leading DNSSEC features replace manual key generation and zone signing with a “one-click” process that generates and securely distributes encryption keys to all appliances in the Infoblox Grid that serve DNSSEC data. F5 provides a FIPS-compliant option to satisfy the most stringent military grade key security. Both F5 and Infoblox systems handle the NIST recommended key policies and automatic rollover.
•Deploying F5 to load balance several Infoblox appliances ensures high performance and availability. This configuration mitigates denial of service attacks on DNS. The superior tools provided by Infoblox allow customers to easily manage the adoption of IPv6 and the growth of IP addresses.
Supporting Quotes
Security researcher Dan Kaminsky, Director of Penetration Testing at IOActive who exposed the “Kaminsky DNS vulnerability” and is advocating implementation of DNSSEC, commented: “The lack of DNS security not only makes the Internet vulnerable, but is also crippling the scalability of important security technologies. DNSSEC offers the most feasible solution to a serious threat.”

“DNSSEC adoption has been hampered by concerns over the operational complexity with provisioning encryption keys and the processing overhead required to sign DNS information,” said Jon Oltsik, Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Additionally, customers haven’t had a seamless DNSSEC architecture option for global server load balancing and standard DNS, so they’ve had to choose between either deploying reliable intelligent DNS systems or securing their DNS infrastructure with DNSSEC. With the F5 and Infoblox solution, customers no longer need to compromise.”

“This joint solution changes the game for DNS infrastructure deployments by advancing the security and integrity of both government and enterprise sites,” said Jason Needham, Senior Director of Product Management at F5. “F5 welcomes this alliance with Infoblox. By combining two mission-critical DNS control points, the leaders in ADN and the DDI space allow customers to reap the benefits of an agile deployment architecture with layered security and simplified management.”

Infoblox Vice President of Architecture and DNS expert, Cricket Liu, commented: “The combination of F5’s and Infoblox’s appliances provide enterprise customers an opportunity to build authoritative DNS infrastructure without giving up either global server load balancing or DNSSEC—a no-compromise solution.”

For More Details, Attend the Joint Webinar March 10, 2010
There is a joint F5 and Infoblox DNSSEC webinar scheduled for Wednesday, March 10. The webinar will feature industry experts Dan Kaminsky, Scott Rose, and Cricket Liu highlighting the value of DNSSEC and offering some related best practices. Register for the webinar here: http://www.infoblox.com/events/Infoblox-F5-DNSSEC-Webinar.html.

2010-02-17 - Brocade Powers Top Three Internet Exchanges Worldwide:
Largest Internet Exchanges Trust their Traffic with Brocade’s High Performance, Scalable and Reliable IP Networking Solutions





SAN JOSE, Calif., February 17, 2010 - Brocade® (NASDAQ:BRCD) today announced that it powers the world’s top three largest Internet Exchange Points (IXP) with its performance-driven and highly energy-efficient switches and routers. IXPs serve as Internet traffic carriers that interconnect Internet Service Providers (ISP) and subscribers. The three largest top-tier IXPs globally all rely upon Brocade networking solutions due to its unique combination of performance, reliability, efficiency and scalability. Brocade IXP switching and routing solutions are one of the industry leaders in density, wire-speed performance at ultra-low latency, while consuming significantly less energy and dissipating less heat than comparable solutions.

IXPs are experiencing exponential traffic growth worldwide — largely due to video, Web-enabled mobile devices, advanced applications, reliance on online services, social multimedia and expanded online-based tools — and traffic patterns are hitting unprecedented levels. This accelerated growth of Internet traffic constantly places IXP networks under enormous strain. To constantly meet and exceed these needs, IXPs require exceptional port and bandwidth capacity to preserve and grow their customer base.

“As of today, we’ve experienced peak traffic in excess of 850 gigabits per second. Approximately two years ago, our network traffic reached about 450 gigabits per second so you can clearly see the growth in bandwidth demands is absolutely astonishing,” said Henk Steenman, chief technical officer for the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), the world’s largest public Internet exchange point. “With this performance obstacle in place, Brocade was the only networking provider that could deliver us a networking infrastructure that could accommodate a combination of three key factors: performance, high scalability, and reliability. If any of these requirements fall short, it will have an immediate negative impact on our business and ultimately users from gaining access to the Internet.”

Leading the race in innovation to prepare IXPs and service providers for upcoming capacity needs and to help protect network infrastructure investments, NetIron MLX routers allow users to combined as many as 32-ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) to provide an aggregated link capacity of 320 Gbps. Brocade has applied advanced load-sharing algorithms in order to fully utilize the increased capacity, establishing a highly advanced link aggregation solution. These patent-pending load-sharing algorithms help optimize link utilization in a Link Aggregate and reduce correlation between Equal Cost Multi-Path (ECMP) and Link Aggregation. Additionally, the NetIron MLX’s design eliminates “polarization effects” in a network, thus enabling service providers the flexibility to optimally design large-scale networks.

The flexibility of the NetIron MLX routers helps service providers to maximize the return on investment of their existing routers. With 10 GbE port density of up to 128 ports of wire-speed connectivity in a single NetIron router, service providers can trunk existing 10 GbE ports without having to purchase additional router hardware or invest in costly optical infrastructure upgrades. This promotes cost-efficiency and the ability to scale more effectively. In addition, the Carrier Trunk (link aggregation) capabilities support scalable and flexible adjustment of trunk capacity or data throughput to meet operational needs.

"Brocade is committed to fully powering and scaling Internet Exchange growth," said Ken Cheng, vice president, IP Products, Brocade. "Brocade's capabilities and enhancements to its performance orientated switches and routers are at the forefront of flexible and scalable solutions to enable Internet Exchanges to meet stringent bandwidth, Service Level Agreement, scalability and efficiency requirements. Our networking solutions provide link aggregation capacity, stability and flexibility to set an industry standard for powerful and efficient scaling of Internet Exchange Point networks."

About Brocade

Brocade® (Nasdaq: BRCD) develops extraordinary networking solutions that enable today’s complex, data-intensive businesses to optimize information connectivity and maximize the business value of their data. For more information, visit www.brocade.com.

Brocade, the B-wing symbol, BigIron, DCX, Fabric OS, FastIron, IronPoint, IronShield, IronView, IronWare, JetCore, NetIron, SecureIron, ServerIron, StorageX, and TurboIron are registered trademarks, and DCFM, Extraordinary Networks, and SAN Health are trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. All other brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of, and are used to identify, products or services of their respective owners.

2010-02-17 - F5 Improves Customers’ IT Infrastructure Agility with BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager Virtual Edition:
New virtual version of BIG-IP LTM increases deployment flexibility, offering customers freedom to combine physical & virtual appliances in an integrated application delivery architecture for optimal efficiency, scalability, and reliability

SEATTLE, February 16, 2010

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced availability of a free trial version of its new virtual appliance, the BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM™) Virtual Edition (VE). The combination of virtual and physical Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) is a major milestone in delivering on F5’s vision for dynamic IT infrastructure. The free trial is now available at http://www.f5.com/trial/.

With the addition of BIG-IP LTM VE to its market-leading family of ADC solutions, F5 extends its unique architectural approach for application and data delivery to include both physical and virtual appliances. This release gives developers and architects a new, efficient, and effective tool for modeling ADC deployments. The free trial version is downloadable online, reducing both the time and cost of evaluations.

"The Application Delivery Network is the foundation for a flexible architecture, and F5’s advanced ADCs are the enabling solution that allows organizations to deliver services dynamically," said Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5. "Now IT departments can shorten their testing time by simply spinning up a virtual BIG-IP to immediately begin testing on different configurations, iControl® and iRules® programs, and other variables with confidence that the test results will match live operation of a physical BIG-IP appliance in their production network."

As part of today’s news, F5 is also announcing the availability of the BIG-IP LTM 'Essentials Training Class' as a web-based training course. This online course is available to anyone at no charge.

Details
•Developers can easily create and test application delivery solutions developed using F5’s programming language, iRules, as well as management and automation solutions that take advantage of the iControl API, F5’s standards-based control plane.
•Unlike other application delivery virtual appliance solutions, BIG-IP LTM VE is part of an overarching application delivery architecture. It is designed to work in context and cooperation with a network of physical and virtual ADC appliances, and with many different server virtualization technologies.
•Users of the BIG-IP LTM VE trial have free access to F5’s online support portal, and to community support through DevCentralSM, to help further accelerate innovative solutions.
•F5 is now offering free BIG-IP LTM web-based training as a flexible learning tool to help users get the most from F5 solutions. More information about this free F5 resource is located at www.f5.com/training-support/global-training/web-based-training/.
•F5 plans to offer a version of BIG-IP LTM VE with production-level throughput rates, as well as an evaluation version with higher rate limits for more in-depth testing, in the first half of CY 2010. Users will experience seamless transfer from the test environment and configurations, iRules, etc., to their production BIG-IP devices.
•The BIG-IP LTM VE is part of F5’s overall Enterprise Cloud Architecture strategy that began back in 2007 with the introduction of F5’s unique Clustered Multiprocessing (CMP) technology. This strategy and vision was recently bolstered by the new BIG-IP Edge Gateway™ and BIG-IP Access Policy Manager™ products, which can serve as application access control points for internal and external enterprise cloud services. These solutions simplify and unify application access control while ensuring high levels of quality of service.
Supporting Quotes
“While application architects and developers don’t necessarily care about the final implementation of ADC services, they require a flexible infrastructure that can easily be integrated into the application development and deployment process, and can adapt quickly to business operations and opportunities,” said Mark Fabbi, VP and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. “Soft ADCs give customers the flexibility to deploy ADCs in whole new ways to test, develop, and integrate more tightly into an overall Enterprise Cloud Architecture.”

"Our overarching objective at Trace3 is to help businesses do more with less, and virtualization and cloud computing offer clear ways to accomplish this," said John Pfaff, President at Trace3. "Our enterprise customers are ready to offload some of their infrastructure to the cloud, and a virtual ADC is essential to help them get to the next step. F5’s combined approach of physical and virtual BIG-IP solutions provide all the building blocks to do this effectively. In addition, many of our existing BIG-IP customers don’t have special-purpose lab gear, so the virtual ADC will be a powerful tool for them to run new configurations, test iRules, add new features, etc., in a safe environment."

"Byer California uses VMware and BIG-IP to run our virtualized infrastructure that supports a variety of applications, including Oracle, email, and others, on virtual machines hosted on HP Blade Servers," said Mandar Ghosalkar, Applications Infrastructure Manager at Byer California. "F5's virtual BIG-IP LTM fits well with Byer’s IT strategy for several reasons. First, this will enable us to test new solutions in an isolated environment and then easily transfer them to our production BIG-IP devices. Second, it should save valuable time and resources by eliminating the need to purchase and rack additional devices, helping us deploy applications faster."

Availability
The free trial is available for download at http://www.f5.com/trial/.

2010-02-08 - F5 and VMware Solution Yields 10x Improvement in Long Distance Live Migration Performance Using VMware VMotion:
Tests confirm joint solution’s ability to quickly migrate virtual machines across data centers located thousands of miles apart

SEATTLE, February 08, 2010

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced deployment guidance and test results that illustrate and validate the value of deploying F5® and VMware solutions in concert to extend live migration capabilities across long distances for VMware vSphere™ 4 environments in a secure, accelerated manner.

Additional ResourcesDeploying the BIG-IP System to Enable Long Distance VMotion with VMware vSphere
Long Distance Live Migration with F5 & VMware VMotion
F5 and VMware Enable Long Distance VMotion
Connecting to the Cloud with F5 BIG-IP Solutions and VMware VMotion
Building on the previous announcement and demo at VMworld 2009, these test results confirm that organizations can securely migrate live, virtualized web applications - and their associated storage - between data centers thousands of miles apart without downtime or user disruption using F5® and VMware products available today.

The integrated solution enables organizations to rapidly respond to changing application and business requirements by seamlessly migrating live applications across geographically dispersed data centers.

Details
VMware VMotion™ is deployed in production by a significant number of VMware customers to migrate virtual machines and data. The joint F5 and VMware solution helps solve latency, bandwidth, and packet-loss issues, which historically have prevented customers from performing live migrations between data centers. Long distance virtual machine migration across distributed data centers typically required the operator to halt online sessions, suspend the image, migrate the image to the new data center, and then bring the virtual machine back online at the new data center. This process could require significant downtime. Moreover, once the virtual machine was back online at the new data center, clients with previously established sessions would still be unable to access the migrated application until they received an updated DNS record aligning with the new location. This new solution mitigates the impact of migrating virtual machines across long distances - allowing live migration and automatic redirection of sessions - thus making the experience seamless to users.

A flexible Application Delivery Network is the fundamental component required to extend live migration capabilities beyond a single data center. There are two key ADN components to the new solution:

•BIG-IP® WAN Optimization Module™ (WOM™) secures and accelerates VMware VMotion™ and VMware Storage VMotion traffic up to 10x when compared to attempting long distance live migration without the solution—even over links that are subject to bandwidth, latency, or packet-loss issues. BIG-IP WOM encrypts and compresses data between BIG-IP devices, extending the effective distances of migrations and decreasing replication time for offline transfers.
•BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM™) and BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager™ (GTM™) enable local and global redirection of established and new web application sessions before and after the migration. This overcomes many of the networking hurdles that previously prevented organizations from migrating live applications between data centers.
Supporting Quotes
“VMware VMotion™ and Storage VMotion capabilities are significant differentiators for VMware vSphere™,” said Parag Patel, Vice President, Alliances at VMware. “F5’s technology complements VMware solutions, making it possible to execute live workload migrations over greater distances. Combining VMware vSphere with BIG-IP® solutions expands the many use cases possible, and adds to the value we’re able to offer customers.”

“According to recent ESG research, increasing server virtualization usage is the top overall IT priority facing organizations over the next 12 to 18 months,” said Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. “The mobility of virtual machines now provided by F5 and VMware will help companies distribute workloads across data centers, relocate applications closer to the end-user, and perform live data center migrations.”

“F5 and VMware are working closely to integrate Application Delivery Networking and virtualization with the goal of making our customers’ application infrastructures more resilient and responsive to business needs,” said Jim Ritchings, VP of Business Development at F5. “This joint solution frees applications from infrastructure constraints for maximum flexibility and business agility. We look forward to continued collaboration and innovation with VMware to address the growing demand for flexible virtualization solutions.”

Availability
F5’s step-by-step solution deployment guide for long distance live migrations performed with VMware VMotion™ can be downloaded from f5.com. This resource includes general guidelines on expected performance gains and the types of applications best suited to long distance live migrations with VMware VMotion.

All products integrated within the joint solution are available today from F5 and VMware, respectively.

To learn more about how F5 and VMware solutions help customers virtualize their infrastructures and improve IT agility, please visit www.f5.com/solutions/applications/vmware/virtualization/.

2010-01-25 - F5 Announces Flexible New Management Solutions Providing Customers with Essential Application Visibility:
Enhanced monitoring and management capabilities deliver unparalleled, cost-effective control over network and application resources

SEATTLE, January 25, 2010

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced two new management solutions, Enterprise Manager™ 2.0 software and the Enterprise Manager 4000 hardware platform. These new offerings enhance F5’s management solution portfolio and provide customers with improved visibility, automation, and network health monitoring capabilities to ensure optimum performance and streamlined administrative control.

Details
Enterprise Manager is a centralized management platform for F5® BIG-IP® devices that gives customers a consolidated, real-time view of their entire F5 Application Delivery Network, as well as the tools they need to optimize performance amidst changing network and user conditions. By combining simplified configuration management and performance monitoring in a single solution, Enterprise Manager helps organizations boost efficiency and reduce the time spent on redundant tasks and managing multiple devices.

F5’s new Enterprise Manager solutions enable customers to:

•Reduce OpEx with Simplified Application Delivery Networking
By consolidating and simplifying the management of BIG-IP Application Delivery Controllers, Enterprise Manager helps customers reduce operational expenses and infrastructure complexity. The ability to customize operations policies lets IT staff automate repetitive operational tasks such as certificate and configuration management and software updates, freeing up IT personnel to focus on other crucial tasks. The new 4000 hardware platform allows customers with as few as eight devices to take advantage of Enterprise Manager’s sophisticated reporting, device monitoring, and performance management capabilities.
•Easily Configure Application Delivery Networks for Continuously Optimized Performance
By providing real-time visibility into network and device performance, Enterprise Manager allows organizations to configure pre-set thresholds and alerts, enabling IT teams to adapt to changes in their application delivery environments. In addition, Enterprise Manager 2.0 gives organizations the ability to manage pools and pool members, giving administrators a central interface to quickly make changes (for instance, taking a server offline for scheduled maintenance) for both BIG-IP devices and the servers associated with them.
•Enhance Device Manageability for Geographically Dispersed IT Infrastructures
The ability to manage devices, and their associated servers, in a centralized fashion saves customers time. Today’s organizations often employ trained staff in multiple locations to make manual policy changes or update devices one at a time. With Enterprise Manager, critical security updates can be performed simultaneously on separate devices. Customers can quickly and easily make changes to their network configuration and ensure that new policies are in place immediately, no matter where the device is located.
Supporting Quotes
“As enterprises look to scale, consolidate, and automate network functions, solutions like F5’s Enterprise Manager continue to demonstrate attractive ROI for customers,” said Zeus Kerravala, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Research at Yankee Group. “Unified device management capabilities, comprehensive visibility into application delivery environments, and granular control over application resources should be primary considerations as organizations seek to minimize IT complexity or evaluate cloud and other resource-on-demand computing models.”

“Global organizations continue to rely on F5 solutions to scale their application delivery capabilities and support their evolving IT infrastructures,” said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. “The new Enterprise Manager software enhances organizations’ ability to cost-effectively manage and track application performance metrics across an F5 infrastructure. For our customers, this translates into holistic visibility into application delivery at a glance. In addition, by updating the Enterprise Manager hardware portfolio, F5 provides excellent value, consolidated device management, and a clear upgrade path for customers with even a small number of BIG-IP devices in their network.”

Availability
The Enterprise Manager 4000 hardware platform and Enterprise Manager 2.0 software are available now. For more information, please visit www.f5.com/products/enterprise-manager/.

2010-01-25 - F5 Delivers Next-Generation Application Delivery Services Giving Enterprises More Control with Context-Aware Networking:
New BIG-IP® release offers advanced services featuring enhanced web access management, TMOS®-integrated geolocation data, and accelerated data transfers over the WAN

SEATTLE, January 24, 2010

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced the expansion of its industry-leading application delivery services portfolio. Building on the recent announcements of BIG-IP® v10.1’s unique web security capabilities and functionality supporting the intelligent scaling of mobile infrastructures, F5 is introducing additional advanced Application Delivery Controller services and products designed to support enterprises’ efforts to move toward a more dynamic data center, reduce infrastructure costs, enhance workforce efficiency, and simplify access policy enforcement.

Additional ResourcesBIG-IP v10.1 Advanced ADC
BIG-IP Version 10.1: An Integrated Application Delivery Architecture
Geolocation and Application Delivery
The powerful new BIG-IP release offers a rich set of advanced services providing unparalleled control and compelling cost savings for enterprises, as well as service and cloud providers. BIG-IP v10.1 enables organizations to: (1) Reduce CapEx and OpEx through centralized, granular access control using the new BIG-IP® Access Policy Manager™ product module; (2) Improve end-user experience and enhance security by creating policies based on user location with IP geolocation services integrated into the TMOS® platform; (3) Reduce bandwidth costs and improve disaster recovery through accelerated data transfers with the new BIG-IP WAN Optimization Module™; (4) Deploy applications faster by leveraging new Application Ready Templates for SAP and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.

BIG-IP Access Policy Manager for Convenient, Flexible Application Access
With virtualization and cloud computing models becoming key pillars of today’s enterprise architectures, increasing application traffic is placing higher demand on organizations to control and secure corporate data. F5’s new BIG-IP® Access Policy Manager™ (APM™) module enables IT departments to provide policy-based, customizable access and authentication to web applications for corporate employees (local and remote), mobile workers, business partners, and customers. By integrating and consolidating authentication services, BIG-IP helps organizations eliminate the need for costly authentication enforcement alternatives. The APM module also greatly reduces the costs associated with change control and compliance reporting. Instead of a highly distributed and unmanageable architecture, F5 consolidates and simplifies authentication services into a few strategic points of control.

“With this new release, F5 has provided a roadmap of offerings that meet our strategic goals in terms of business growth,” said Dean Newman, Director of Information Technology at PensionsFirst Analytics, which offers risk management analysis and advisory services to the defined benefit (DB) pensions industry. “The solution protects the initial investment we’ve made in securing our web application with BIG-IP Access Policy Manager because we can continue adding services as we require them without having to re-engineer our security environment. With BIG-IP APM, we’ve built an iron fence around our web application. It not only protects the application; it helps us manage the traffic and the user experience.”

BIG-IP WAN Optimization Module for Data Center-to-Data Center Replication
Expanding F5’s WAN application delivery services, the BIG-IP WAN Optimization Module™ (WOM™) accelerates data transfer over the network by optimizing traffic and bandwidth through the use of adaptive compression and de-duplication technologies. WOM enhances data center-to-data center replication of mission-critical applications like storage data and virtual machine images, dramatically reducing bandwidth costs while increasing transfer rates up to 70 times over existing methods. This new BIG-IP product module improves organizations’ overall disaster recovery posture, ensuring data is replicated quickly and reliably at speeds greater than 1 Gbps—faster and less-expensive than any alternative on the market today.

Geolocation Services Integrated in TMOS for Enhanced Security
BIG-IP v10.1 also includes the industry’s first geolocation services database that identifies the physical location of a user by monitoring additional contextual information for BIG-IP products. This location information, coupled with F5’s unique iRules™ scripting language, enables customers to take into account the users’ actual location and access conditions in order to determine the best application delivery policy. This information provides additional intelligence to help customers better secure, optimize, and direct end-user application transactions. The alternative today is to attempt to code this in each and every application, which is neither cost-effective nor practical for most businesses. For the first time, IT administrators will possess unparalleled ease of control over who can access the corporate network based on location or even limit access to specific materials. BIG-IP’s world-class geolocation capabilities are made possible in collaboration with F5 technology alliance partner Quova.

Expanded Library of Application Ready Templates for Rapid Deployment
With v10.1, F5 is further extending its lead in application fluency with the addition of two new application templates for SAP Dynamics and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. Application Ready Templates have been pioneered by F5 and are developed with F5’s broad set of application partners. These templates simplify the creation of profiles, policies, and other configuration parameters needed to optimize application deployments across BIG-IP® products and services. These cumulative advancements minimize deployment time for administrators and boost performance for end-users, reducing OpEx and streamlining application delivery.

“IDC finds that IT requires an ‘always on’ application delivery strategy that incorporates users, applications, and infrastructure,” said Lucinda Borovick, Research Vice President, Datacenter Networks at IDC. “F5 Networks’ BIG-IP v10.1 brings together a collection of features that enable IT to create a foundational infrastructure that supports ongoing datacenter consolidations and transformations while at the same time keeping up with end users' demands for capacity and quality-of-service expectations.”

“F5’s unique TMOS® architecture platform gives our customers an adaptable framework to deploy market-leading application delivery services in a unified solution,” said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. “BIG-IP v10.1 provides a dynamic, context-aware environment that takes action based on the user’s identity, device, network conditions, and the application itself. For example, with BIG-IP Access Policy Manager, F5 is bringing user and group identity into the network that enables IT to make more intelligent secure access decisions. No other vendor in the market is able to match this degree of innovation and integration. The level of intelligence this release delivers helps customers realize unmatched performance gains, maximized security, cost savings, and IT agility.”

Availability
BIG-IP v10.1 software is available today. Product modules including BIG-IP Access Policy Manager, WAN Optimization Module, and others are also currently available. Geolocation services are integrated with F5’s TMOS platform starting with BIG-IP v10.1. New Application Ready Templates are available for no additional fee. For more information about BIG-IP solutions, please visit www.f5.com/products/big-ip/.

2010-01-25 - F5’s BIG-IP Edge Gateway Solution Provides Breakthrough Approach to Unifying and Optimizing Access to the Data Center:
New BIG-IP® solution provides enterprises with key ‘edge-of-network’ services, integrating remote access, access optimization, site-to-site security, and application acceleration to support remote and mobile workforces

SEATTLE, January 25, 2010

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced the new BIG-IP® Edge Gateway™ product, providing enterprise organizations with a high performance, next-generation remote access solution that delivers LAN-speed application performance for remote and mobile workers. This solution effectively solves the challenges that enterprise IT personnel face due to the massive growth of mobile and remote users. With BIG-IP Edge Gateway, F5 provides the first Application Delivery Controller (ADC) on the market that unifies secure SSL VPN access, dynamic access and optimization control, and application acceleration for remote users—regardless of the device or access network—on a single, scalable platform.

Additional ResourcesBIG-IP Edge Gateway
BIG-IP Edge Gateway Product Overview
Unified Access and Optimization with F5 BIG-IP Edge Gateway
F5 Customer Interview with CSC
Details
With this release, F5 continues to deliver on its vision of unifying its ADC solution set and redefining how customers implement, share, and cost-effectively extend their Application Delivery Network all the way to the client. With approximately five times the scaling capability and up to an eight times improvement in application performance, the BIG-IP Edge Gateway offers enterprises significant ROI at less than half the cost of alternative, disparate technologies.

The new BIG-IP Edge Gateway enables customers to:

•Dramatically Reduce CapEx with Unified Services and Simplified Management
The BIG-IP Edge Gateway solution simplifies device management by ensuring access across heterogeneous applications services, access networks, and data resources. With the free BIG-IP Edge Client™ solution—included with BIG-IP Edge Gateway—customers can combine acceleration, endpoint security, and automatic network roaming persistence for an improved end-user experience and increased workforce efficiency. In addition, web application acceleration yields significant performance gains for remote and mobile users.
•Provide Secure, Accelerated Remote Access that Easily Scales to Support User Demand
BIG-IP Edge Gateway enables organizations to cost-effectively scale their access networks to unprecedented levels. The solution accelerates and optimizes applications, yielding LAN-speed performance gains (up to eight times faster), and ensures that users are always seamlessly connected via F5’s new BIG-IP Edge Client™ with smart connection technology. Smart connection technology’s unique persistence and access intelligence makes sure that as a user roams networks—wireless (802.11), cell (3G and LTE), or wired—they stay connected, and the integrity of their application session is protected. The client also includes best-in-class endpoint security and unique application and network acceleration.
•Implement Context-Aware Networking through Access Policy Enforcement
BIG-IP Edge Gateway offers granular access policy enforcement. With features such as Visual Policy Editor (VPE), plus integrated authentication and endpoint inspection, access management becomes simpler, centralized, and more cost-effective. Now, IT staff can provide application access based on context by taking into account the user’s policy, identifying user location for redirection to local resources, and supporting single sign-on for most directory services across all application types, devices, and operating systems. This capability significantly reduces both cost and complexity.
•Prioritize Applications for Optimal Performance and User Productivity
With BIG-IP Edge Gateway, IT staff can design application prioritization into access policies to ensure that bandwidth is reserved for high priority applications. For example, VoIP traffic can be managed and prioritized so it is always clear, instead of choppy due to packet loss and latency. Furthermore, with F5’s unique client-side QoS functions, customers have the superior service levels they need to increase user productivity.
Supporting Quotes
"BIG-IP Edge Gateway and BIG-IP v10.1 software provide the most intelligent, cost-effective access management architecture in the market," said Mark Vondemkamp, Director of Product Management for Security at F5. "The explosive growth of mobile workers creates a huge challenge for enterprise IT teams who must make sure their access networks can scale and support a superior user experience. By unifying SSL VPN access, powerful security policy and access control, and application acceleration on a single ADC, organizations can expect to reduce costs by up to 5 times due to lower OpEx and CapEx. The solution’s smart connection technology affords users ‘always on’ hassle-free connectivity and improved performance regardless of the access network. Other solutions available today require multiple clients from different vendors, costing hundreds of dollars per client."

“We see a number of market drivers for a next-generation access and acceleration solution, which is why we selected F5’s BIG-IP Edge Gateway for our global managed service offering,” said Evan Loats, Remote Access Product Manager at CSC. “Our offering for remote working, CSC Connect, requires the ability to deliver fully virtualized, highly scalable services in a cloud-based delivery model. Remote workers need more than just access—they want a better user experience, application awareness, and acceleration. The proliferation of mobile devices and increased incidence of disaster scenarios demand the ability to scale easily to very large numbers of concurrent users with no compromise in security. F5’s BIG-IP solution combines all the key capabilities to enable CSC to differentiate our services and help customers achieve their business goals more quickly and cost-effectively.”

“Many companies are looking for secure access solutions to support the rapid rise in new remote users, stemming from increasingly distributed user populations,” said Jeff Wilson, Principal Analyst at Infonetics Research. “At the same time, these organizations are increasingly reliant on flexible access capabilities to make company materials available to contractors and partners, support disaster recovery scenarios, and leverage broadband access from a wide variety of locations and device types—and they’re looking for solutions with revolutionary capital and operational cost models. F5’s BIG-IP Edge Gateway offers this kind of revolutionary cost model without sacrificing performance or ease of use.”

FishNet Security continues to be a market leader in helping businesses, government, educational institutions, and other organizations define the true risks in their environment. “We’re particularly excited about the latest release of BIG-IP as it’s tightly aligned with our customers’ key IT security priorities,” said Gordon Shevlin, Executive Vice President of FishNet Security. “What’s compelling is F5’s unique ability to layer the necessary services, including edge-of-the-network services, into a unified platform. The new BIG-IP release will help customers scale, simplify management, and ensure the user is always connected. F5 converges access and acceleration, which is game changing for the market and a solution our customers will embrace.”

Availability
The BIG-IP Edge Gateway is available today. In addition, BIG-IP v10.1 software and all associated product modules are also currently available. For more information about BIG-IP solutions, please visit www.f5.com/products/big-ip/.

2010-01-05 - F5 Announces Superior Application Delivery Controller Performance and Scalability with New Hardware Blade for VIPRION:
New performance blade helps service providers and large enterprises support growth initiatives, consolidate high-performance infrastructure, and enrich mobile service offerings

SEATTLE, January 05, 2010

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today introduced Performance Blade 200 (PB200) hardware for the company's VIPRION® solution. The PB200 is designed to support the growth, availability, and performance requirements of content and service providers, as well as large enterprises.

Additional ResourcesPB200 and VIPRION ADC Information - SlideShare presentation
VIPRION Information - Datasheet
BIG-IP® Product Family Information - Overview
Details
Many IT departments are struggling with rapid increases in both traffic volumes and users. Simultaneously, organizations continue to leverage social media, mobile devices, and an expanding array of web services to achieve business goals. These demands result in many companies pushing the limits of their current application delivery infrastructures.

The new VIPRION system with PB200 hardware enables organizations to:

•Support Users with Industry-Leading Performance and Availability
A fully loaded VIPRION chassis with four PB200 units is the highest performance Application Delivery Controller (ADC) on the market, delivering 72 Gbps of L7 throughput and 200,000 SSL transactions per second.

The PB200 has dual quad-core processors that leverage F5's Clustered Multiprocessing (CMP) technology. With CMP, VIPRION performance blades work together form a virtual processing fabric utilizing all available CPU resources to more efficiently meet users' application delivery demands.

•Achieve Scale and Growth Needs
With VIPRION and the new PB200 hardware, organizations can better manage large volumes of traffic and provide additional capacity when needed. Because additional performance blades can be added on-demand, organizations can augment their infrastructures to deal with seasonal or unexpected traffic spikes with ease-and without downtime.

In addition, F5® solutions enable organizations to customize their application delivery infrastructures to support the unique needs of their business. Flexible technologies, such as iRules™ commands and the iControl® API support and automate true infrastructure agility even as business or user conditions change.

•Consolidate Infrastructure to Save on OpEx and CapEx Costs
The VIPRION platform's ability to combine and customize disparate application services make it an ideal solution for organizations looking to consolidate their application delivery infrastructures to reduce power, space, and cooling costs in the data center.

By offloading servers through its SSL, compression, caching, and TCP Express™ capabilities, VIPRION can help significantly reduce the total number of application servers needed to support applications.

Supporting Quotes
"Global mobile data traffic is set to double every year through 2013, and forecasts show that mobile broadband will be adopted by nearly half the world's population over the next five years," said Adrian Hall, Chief Marketing Officer at Bytemobile, a tier-one provider of integrated mobile internet solutions. "Now more than ever, operators need to efficiently manage dynamic network architectures and extend service portfolios to keep pace with user demands. The throughput improvements of the new PB200 hardware will provide added scalability to our mobile internet solutions and help to maximize the value of our customers' previous infrastructure investments."

"The ability to efficiently add more processing power to an existing application delivery infrastructure is essential," said Joe Skorupa, Research VP at Gartner, Inc. "By offloading functionality and letting the servers serve, Application Delivery Controllers help enterprises and service providers enhance the value of their investments as they plan new application deployments in 2010 and beyond."

"Today's service providers and large enterprises face exponential data growth, escalating demand for mobile capabilities, and increasing pressure to get the most from their existing resources," said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. "To address these evolving challenges, organizations continually rely on intelligent Application Delivery Controllers to provide strategic points of control throughout the infrastructure to add value and enhance manageability. With solutions like the PB200 hardware, F5 offers customers superior technology and the flexibility to align IT efforts with their overall business goals."

Availability
PB200 hardware for the VIPRION Application Delivery Controller is available now.

2009-12-02 - F5 Announces Winners of DevCentral iRules Contest:
F5's global community of 50,000+ users showcases impressive real-world application delivery capabilities made possible with flexible iRules applications; winners demonstrate creativity and quantifiable cost savings

SEATTLE, December 02, 2009

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced the winners of its third DevCentral iRule, Do You? contest. After evaluating the submissions, a team of industry experts and F5 personnel-along with votes from the DevCentralSM community-honored six application developers and network professionals for their BIG-IP® iRules™ development expertise. The winning contributors, and their iRules, are among the best at addressing real-world application delivery challenges and expanding the value of F5® technology investments.

"First held in 2005, the ongoing success of this global contest underscores the ingenuity of DevCentral members in leveraging iRules to meet complex and constantly changing application delivery needs," said Jeff Browning, Senior Director of Product Management at F5. "This contest showcases iRules' unique capabilities and celebrates the collaborative spirit that has helped DevCentral grow to a vibrant community of over 50,000 members worldwide. The F5 DevCentral team thanks all participants for their excellent entries. We are continually inspired by the new and thoughtful ways customers and partners deploy iRules to move their businesses forward."

Contest entries were divided into two separate categories: customers and partners.

iRules Contest Winners - Customer Division
First Place iRule: "Pool Member List" by Chetan Bhatt (USA)
This iRule was written to display the status of all pools and related members on a BIG-IP device. It allows application owners to view the status of their application quickly from web browsers as well as iPhone and BlackBerry devices. And the real success was to provide this information without the backend complexity of SNMP setups.

Without viable alternative options, this iRule helped uphold the customer's IT support model, simplified application access, centralized process management, and enabled mobile device access.

"iRule, Do You?" contest judges comments:

•Jason Rahm, from the F5 DevCentral Team, commented, "Excellent use of an iRule that returns management status in client data streams."
•Joe Pruitt, fellow DevCentral team member, said, "Good use of exception handling 'catch' and creatively storing status in an external class file via a cron job. Great example of building application logic into the network layer."
•" F5's Jeff Browning added, "This iRule provides access by the application teams to key information (on mobile devices too!). It also reduces workload for the network/IT team-another bonus. Happier users and less work. Well done!"
According to winner Bhatt, "This iRule saved our support teams from being contacted at all hours to respond to a pool status question. Application owners can now effortlessly access their pool status information. The iRule also enables them to view the status through their iPhone and BlackBerry devices, which is extremely valuable."

Second Place iRule: "Siteminder Authentication" by Kris Weinhold (USA)
An organization wanted internal users to authenticate to the intranet using integrated Windows authentication and external or non-Windows domain users to be presented with a stylized login form.

According to Weinhold, "Siteminders' out-of-the-box authentication schemes allow these two forms of authentication independently, but do not allow us to conditionally select which form of authentication should be presented to which user. Using iRules, we have successfully implemented this logic, and optimized the number of browser redirects the user experiences when being redirected for authentication."

Third Place iRule: "RTSP Redirect" by Jari Leppala (Finland)
This iRule, contributed by a previous contest finalist, helps to more efficiently redirect RTSP requests to more than two video servers. Leppala added, "[The] video servers' own redirecting system had always been a single point of failure with no true redundancy and poor load balancing. Automatic failover saves us lots of time and effort. With intelligent load balancing, video servers scale for more customers and we save money."

iRules Contest Winners - Partner Division
First Place iRule: "EncryptOutgoingSOARequest" by Sake Blok of Ion-IP (Netherlands)
Ion-IP's customer was faced with the challenge of securely communicating with many information providers over an insecure network. To check all SSL credentials prior to this iRule, a virtual and a serverssl profile needed to be created for each distinct information provider, resulting in a significant administrative burden. This iRule makes it possible to create a general virtual and serverssl profile, and let the iRule dynamically check the common name in the certificate against the hostname in the HTTP header of the SOA request.

Comments from the judges:

•Kirk Bauer, F5 engineer and iRule guru said, "Very original concept for a challenging problem, and quite a simple iRule to accomplish so much. Much cleaner than the alternative. I like it!"
•Jason Rahm added, "It's amazing the business value that can be achieved in so few lines of code. I really like the use of the client-side construct within the server-side event to respond to the client."
•Joe Pruitt stated, "This is a very creative way to reduce the need for hundreds of serverssl profiles for each application, moving the validation logic into an iRule. What's even better is that this iRule does not require external configuration of valid hostnames and is thus compatible when servers are added or removed from the system."
Winner Blok added, "This iRule initially saved hundreds of hours that were otherwise needed to configure a serverssl profile for each and every information provider. It also saves many hours needed to handle all the permutations."

Second Place iRule: "Cookie Tampering Prevention" by Henrik Gyllkrans of Advanced IP Scandinavia AB (Sweden)
Applications typically keep track of clients with the help of cookies by storing session information. In some cases, this means that session data can easily be tampered with by the client. This iRule prevents cookie tampering by keeping track of the data in the cookies sent out by sending along another (encrypted) cookie that contains hashes of all individual cookies. When the data comes back, BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™ can make sure that the data has not been changed by the client.

"I'm proud and honored that my iRule was received so well by the judges," commented Gyllkrans. "I hope this iRule can help organizations around the world to deliver better and more secure sites."

Third Place iRule: "iRules Deny Repeat Login OK" by Levin Chen of Sinogrid Information Technology (China)
This iRule helps ensure that user sessions requiring a USB key are 'cleaned up' effectively after removal of the unique USB key. Due to an issue with certain browsers, a security vulnerability involving incomplete session cleanup had occurred, and this iRule helped eliminate the problem.

About the "iRule, Do You?" Contest
A panel of leading industry press and analysts, as well as the F5 DevCentral team of iRules experts, evaluated iRule entries based on a weighted scale for innovation, creativity, and business applicability. This year, a community vote also helped determine the winners. Prizes were awarded for the winning entries.

Industry experts and F5 judges included:

•Jon Erickson, Editor-in-Chief of Dr. Dobb's
•Jon Oltsik, Enterprise Strategy Group
•Alan Weckel, Dell'Oro Group
•The F5 DevCentral team and additional F5 experts
Full contest details are available on DevCentral at: http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=156

2009-11-17 - Brocade Helps Service Providers Deliver Advanced Ethernet and MPLS Services Faster, Further, and More Cost-Effectively with Compact NetIron CER 2000 Series Router:
Providers Can Increase “Revenue Footprint” in the Face of Growing Traffic with Cost-Efficient, High-Capacity MPLS-Enabled Edge Devi

SAN JOSE, Calif., November 17, 2009 - Brocade® (Nasdaq: BRCD) today announced the Brocade NetIron® CER 2000 Series compact multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) router, featuring industry-leading hardware-based routing capacity, in a compact 1U form factor: 24 or 48 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports with two 10 GbE uplinks. Unmatched in its combination of throughput, compact size, and efficiency, the NetIron CER 2000 enables service providers to more broadly, rapidly, and cost-effectively deploy high-margin business virtual private network (VPN) and IP voice, video, and data services while helping to reduce their cost per megabit.

The new NetIron CER 2000 addresses the needs of service providers that are facing increased edge and aggregation routing demands and are nearing the “revenue footprint” and performance limitations of their current networking infrastructures. Combining industry-leading forwarding capacity with strong price/performance value, the NetIron CER 2000 helps service providers increase revenue footprint, maximizing the number and types of advanced services that can be deployed in a given area. It does so by helping to significantly decrease both capital and ongoing maintenance costs while also helping to generate new revenue from value-added service offerings.

The NetIron CER 2000 enables service providers to offer wire-speed Carrier Ethernet services — such as E-LINE, E-LAN, and E-TREE services — with its multicast and Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities to support triple-play applications. It features scalable MPLS with VLL, VPLS, VPLS-PBB, and advanced resiliency at multiple layers using MPLS Fast Reroute, hot-standby LSPs, and fault detection and recovery with Brocade Metro Ring Protocol (MRP)/MRP2. In particular, the NetIron CER 2000 can benefit service providers and data centers by:

Doubling the routing capacity and tripling the forwarding performance of competitive solutions in the smallest possible space
Providing the fastest route to advanced business and MPLS services based on the same OS — Brocade Multi-Service IronWare® — that powers the high-end NetIron MLX and NetIron XMR chassis-based routers
Offering vertical consolidation with at least 33 percent space compression when compared to chassis-based products
Improving operational efficiency with 66 percent power consumption savings and front-to-back airflow for more efficient space and power usage
“As we reported in August, we think that in spite of the downturn, and in part because of it, uptake of IP MPLS VPN and Ethernet services is growing at a healthy pace as companies seek to increase efficiencies and decrease costs,” said Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst of Infonetics Research. “Organizations are looking to control WAN costs despite rising bandwidth needs and are turning to Ethernet and managed Layer 2 and Layer 3 services, where service providers can help stabilize costs, prioritize critical applications, and increase capacities. The Brocade NetIron CER family helps fulfill a need in this environment, with MPLS-based services support, good port density in a small form factor, and low cost.”

The platform is optimal for use as a Carrier Ethernet/Metro edge router, an MPLS Provider Edge (PE) router, or as a high-capacity border router for small data centers and enterprise branch offices with Ethernet connectivity. Additionally, the NetIron CER 2000 features a highly scalable BGP implementation for compact route-reflector applications to help reduce complexity and cost for service providers.

With MEF 9, 14, and 21 certification, NEBS Level 3 certification; hot-swappable, redundant, load sharing AC/DC power supplies; a N+1 redundant, replaceable cooling system; and front-to-back airflow, the NetIron CER 2000 extends the Brocade NetIron router family and further demonstrates carrier-class availability.

“Bandwidth needs, applications, and user numbers are increasing, while provider budgets are flattening or declining,” said Marc Randall, senior vice president of products and solutions at Brocade. “A high-density, MPLS-enabled compact router, such as the Brocade NetIron CER 2000, is an often-requested addition to our product line that meets a clear market need.”

Availability and Pricing

The NetIron CER 2000 will be available first quarter CY 2010 in six models, including fiber and copper configurations. The base price is $12,495 USD.

Frost & Sullivan Report: Brocade Carrier Ethernet Switch/Router Competitive Positioning

http://www.brocade.com/downloads/documents/research_and_test_reports/ICT_Brocade_Carrier_Ethernet_SwitchRouter_Competitive_Positioning_1132009_CC.PDF

Product Image

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642@N02/4101039893/

Product Information Page

http://www.brocade.com/sites/dotcom/products-solutions/products/ethernet-switches-routers/service-provider/product-details/netiron-cer-series/index.page

Social Media

Corporate YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/BrocadeVideo
Technical YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/BrocadeTech
Twitter: http://twitter.com/BrocadeWingspan
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642@N02/
Wingspan (Executive) Blog: http://community.brocade.com/home/community/brocadeblogs/wingspan

2009-11-16 - F5's BIG-IP Solution Enables Service Providers to Transparently Scale and Grow Mobile Services:
BIG-IP version 10.1 delivers new features to help carriers scale mobile infrastructures, and prepare networks to scale for LTE and 4G wireless network traffic

SEATTLE, November 16, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced improved solutions for service providers to efficiently meet the growing demand for mobile services. The F5® BIG-IP® 10.1 release offers a new approach to mobile infrastructure scaling, enabling service providers and system integrators to benefit from layer 7 traffic management for their authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) infrastructure, without incurring the costly and time-consuming process of replacing existing AAA servers.

As mobile subscribers use more services, existing AAA servers become overloaded and strain to handle the traffic loads. BIG-IP v10.1 allows service providers to protect services from unplanned outages, and enables carriers to optimize traffic throughput on current AAA servers-achieving better resource utilization and higher availability. Additionally, the BIG-IP solution gives carriers the flexibility needed to maintain and scale existing services while preparing for increased traffic loads brought on by next-generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 4G wireless network traffic.

Key benefits of BIG-IP v10.1 for service providers and systems integrators include:

•Support for Diameter and RADIUS protocols - New traffic profiles and monitors specifically for Diameter and RADIUS traffic allow service providers to take advantage of the benefits of layer 7 traffic management-including load balancing, inspection, redirection, high availability, and simplified scaling-for their AAA infrastructure.
•On-demand capacity to handle highest levels of traffic - To help carriers manage massive volumes of revenue-generating traffic, F5 is introducing PB 200 blades for its VIPRION® chassis. VIPRION and PB 200 blades provide the throughput needed today as well as a simple method for adding on-demand capacity to future-proof a carriers' infrastructure.
•Carrier-class availability with Fast Failover - New failover methods use a combination of metrics to determine when to switch to the standby unit, and reduce the failover time to fractions of a second. Fast Failover, combined with new monitors and carrier-grade hardware, can significantly reduce downtime.
•Seamless strategy for staging network migration as IPv6 traffic grows - The BIG-IP® IPv6 Gateway™ feature ensures a carriers' ability to leverage the scalability of IPv6 for all their mobile devices, while still connecting to legacy IPv4 networks.
•Total traffic control with iRules - F5's powerful event-driven programming language, iRules™, allows system integrators to integrate BIG-IP into their total solution, providing advanced, customized traffic management, such as policy-based traffic steering.
Supporting Quotes
"F5 has a long history of helping wireless carriers manage traffic and optimize infrastructures, with BIG-IP being deployed in many of the top wireless carriers today," said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. "BIG-IP v10.1 further extends F5's ability to help service providers scale their IP infrastructures to handle the massive throughput demands of wireless customers and support policy-based traffic steering."

"3G data growth is accelerating with no end in sight, and the 4G outlook is for continued rapid IP services growth," said John Mazur, Ovum Principal Analyst for Switching, Routing and Packet Transport. "To manage this growth, mobile operators need advanced policy control and traffic management solutions to meet customers' quality of experience expectations and monetize their networks. Advanced subscriber management platforms provide the tools needed to ensure manageable traffic and revenue growth."

Availability
BIG-IP v10.1 and all associated product modules are available today. To learn more about F5's BIG-IP solutions, please visit www.f5.com/products/big-ip.

2009-11-09 - F5 Updates Microsoft Exchange 2010 Solution Portfolio:
Application Ready Solutions help optimize and scale deployments of Microsoft Exchange 2010

SEATTLE, November 9, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today introduced Application Ready Solutions for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. To support customers using Microsoft Corp.'s new release of Exchange Server, F5 provides solutions to ensure efficient application delivery, improved scalability, and enhanced performance for Exchange Server 2010.

F5® Application Ready Solutions enable customers to fully leverage the advanced messaging functionality in Exchange 2010. With these new solutions, Exchange Client Access Servers (CAS) can now handle all client connections (including MAPI), enabling F5 technology to optimize all messaging traffic in an Exchange deployment.

"With the amount of business being conducted via email, messaging is a critical application for enterprises," said Calvin Rowland, VP of Application Partner Programs at F5. "Downtime can significantly impact business performance. These new F5 solutions extend the value of the enhancements Microsoft has made in Exchange 2010, ensuring high-availability of messaging to end-users in the enterprise."

Highlights of Application Ready Solutions for Exchange 2010
•Deployment Guidance and Ready-Made Application Templates for Joint Deployments
F5 provides comprehensive configuration and deployment guides along with solution briefs to help customers efficiently deploy BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM™) and WebAccelerator™ products with Exchange 2010. F5's simple, fast implementation aids result in fewer errors than manual configuration methods. Ready-made application templates include a 60-second wizard to configure BIG-IP solutions with Microsoft Exchange 2010.
•Advanced Application Delivery Optimization
Application Ready Solutions outline configuration and deployment strategies to optimize application delivery and provide optimum scalability for Exchange 2010 deployments. F5 BIG-IP solutions' advanced application delivery capabilities include SSL offload, acceleration, compression, and caching. By offloading server resources, BIG-IP solutions improve capacity of Client Access Servers and reduce time to download email attachments by up to 90 percent.
•Exchange Messaging Optimization
Tested, validated solutions help users optimize and scale messaging applications. Solutions include optimized email attachment downloading, encrypted transfer of transaction logs during cluster node failover, spam filtering, endpoint trust management for Web clients, and BIG-IP application templates for easy configuration.
•iControl API Support
F5's customizable iControl® API enables integration into heterogeneous environments and message traffic routing between geographically dispersed data centers.
"Microsoft is pleased to see F5 support the extensive improvements we've made in Exchange 2010 by updating their deployment guides and application templates," said Julia White, Director of Exchange Product Management at Microsoft. "Advanced application delivery optimization is an integral component of our recommended Exchange 2010 deployment architecture for customers who require the highest availability and performance for their end-users."

Availability
The F5 Application Ready Solutions documentation for Microsoft Exchange 2010 and supporting resources are currently available at www.f5.com/solutions/applications/microsoft/exchange-server. Learn more about how F5 and Microsoft solutions work together at www.f5.com/solutions/applications/microsoft.

2009-11-03 - F5 Enhances Management and Support for Microsoft Windows-based Virtualization:
Updated Management Pack and new Application Ready Solutions for Hyper-V & System Center Virtual Machine Manager offer joint customers dynamic network control to ensure optimal application delivery in virtual environments

SEATTLE, November 3, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced a new F5 Management Pack® solution for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager that allows joint F5 and Microsoft customers to dynamically manage application delivery in virtual environments. F5 also updated its Application Ready Solution portfolio to support Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.

The F5® solutions announced today offer optimization and increased availability for virtual environments, enabling IT staff to make better decisions regarding applications running in the virtual environment, and automating virtual machine management.

"The benefits offered by Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) apply to all applications, whether they're deployed on physical or virtual servers," said Calvin Rowland, VP of Application Partner Programs at F5. "One of the primary challenges faced by companies who deploy applications on virtual servers is the management of those virtual machines. F5's solution for System Center Virtual Machine Manager is designed with virtual environments in mind, enabling customers to realize significant business value through faster rollout times, cost savings, and flexibility."

Dynamic Administration of Virtualized Server Infrastructure
F5 has added Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) capabilities to the F5 Management Pack, introduced in April 2009. The PRO-enabled Management Pack, in combination with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, provides customers with enhanced visibility into both the application delivery network and the server environment, enabling IT teams to proactively monitor and dynamically manage application delivery as network or user conditions change. In addition, the F5 Management Pack now proactively offers tips to improve application delivery.

"Microsoft is pleased to see F5 embrace our vision for the dynamic data center, and deliver its PRO-enabled Management Pack to offer seamless integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2," said Dai Vu, Director, Virtualization Solutions Marketing, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft Corp. "Our joint customers will benefit from F5's new management capabilities that allow them to better understand and meet the needs of end-users that rely on specific applications."

Building on F5's Robust Portfolio of Application Ready Solutions for Microsoft
This announcement comes as part of a series of updates for the existing suite of F5 Application Ready Solutions for Microsoft Windows Server, including solutions for IIS, Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Hyper-V, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. Leveraging the Live Migration feature of Hyper-V, F5 solutions also include configuration guidance to perform the network-level changes required to move virtual machines between hosts without taking them offline.

Availability
More information about F5 and Microsoft virtualization solutions working in concert can be found at www.f5.com/solutions/applications/microsoft/virtualization.

The F5 PRO-enabled Management Pack is a free download from F5's DevCentralsm community. PRO-enabled Management Pack downloads, documentation, FAQs, TechTips, and more can be found at http://devcentral.f5.com/mpack.

Additional Materials
•Introduction to the F5 PRO-enabled Management Pack - DevCentral blog post
•F5 PRO-enabled Management Pack overview - Datasheet
•Virtual Machine Manager and SharePoint demo - Video

2009-10-26 - F5 Networks Enhances Its Portfolio with Oracle Solutions; Achieves Oracle Validated Integration for BIG-IP with Three Oracle Applications:
Building on its strong portfolio of solutions for Oracle applications, F5 completes validated integration of BIG-IP® products with Oracle® E-Business Suite 12, PeopleSoft Enterprise 9, and Siebel CRM 8

SEATTLE, October 26, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV),the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced that it has completed validated integration testing of its BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™(LTM™) and WebAccelerator™products with Oracle applications, through the Oracle® PartnerNetwork Application Integration Architecture for Partners (AIAP) initiative.

F5 achieved Oracle Validated Integration for BIG-IP LTM and WebAccelerator with Oracle® E-Business Suite 12.0, Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0, and Oracle's Siebel CRM 8.0. By choosing Oracle Validated Integration solutions, customers can be confident that these F5/Oracle product integrations: have been tested and validated as functionally and technically sound; are integrated with Oracle Applications in a reliable, standards-based way; and that the integrations operate and perform as documented.

These validations, completed through the AIAP initiative, build on F5's existing portfolio of solutions for Oracle applications, which help Oracle customers optimize their application infrastructures for better user experience, productivity, and return on investment.

Supporting Details
•F5's BIG-IP solutions - F5® BIG-IP® solutions enhance the role of the network in application environments and are designed, engineered, tested, and documented for integration with popular enterprise applications in a variety of real-world deployment scenarios.
•Application availability - BIG-IP LTM integration with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.0, PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0, and Siebel CRM 8.0 enables efficient distribution of traffic and boosts availability by monitoring server health.
•Enhanced web content delivery - BIG-IP WebAccelerator integration enhances web content delivery by ensuring efficient use of bandwidth and preventing repetitive or duplicate data from being served to users, helping to speed up the first and subsequent visits to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.0, PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0, and Siebel CRM 8.0 applications.
Supporting Quotes
"Validation through Oracle PartnerNetwork Application Integration Architecture for Partners gives customers confidence that integrations between Oracle Applications and complementary partner solutions have been tested and work together as designed," said Kevin O'Brien, Senior Director, ISV and SaaS Strategy at Oracle. "This can help reduce risk, improve system implementation cycles, and provide for smoother upgrades and simpler maintenance. We're pleased to validate the integrations of BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™(LTM™) and WebAccelerator™with Oracle applications."

"We're proud of our longstanding relationship with Oracle," said Calvin Rowland, VP, Application Partner Program at F5. "Validation through the AIAP initiative places a seal of approval on the success we've had integrating BIG-IP® products with Oracle applications. Integrations between F5® solutions and Oracle help customers reduce CapEx and OpEx costs associated with application deployment and boost business performance."

2009-08-24 - F5's Landmark BIG-IP v10 Release Delivers Outstanding Value to Customers and Increases CapEx and OpEx Savings:
F5 builds on the success of its BIG-IP v10 solution, announcing more Application Ready Templates and a new release of Enterprise Manager to simplify device management and streamline application delivery

SEATTLE, August 24, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced that its BIG-IP® version 10 software continues to be well-received by customers worldwide. In April, F5 released BIG-IP v10, as part of its vision to unify application and data delivery services. Thousands of enterprises and service providers have downloaded BIG-IP v10 software to help streamline application delivery and reduce CapEx and OpEx costs. F5 continues to enrich the BIG-IP solution with more Application Ready Templates and a new release of Enterprise Manager™, which helps customers planning an upgrade from previous versions of BIG-IP to the most recent 10.0.1 release.

Additional ResourcesApplication Ready Solution Templates - White paper | Audio version | Video Walkthrough
Enterprise Manager 1.8 - '5 Minutes or Less' video
BIG-IP ASM v10 Security Policy Templates - '5 Minutes or Less' video
451 Group Market Insight Service on BIG-IP v10 - Analyst report
Butler Group BIG-IP v10 Technology Audit - Analyst report
"We're very pleased with our customers' reaction to BIG-IP v10 based on new features and overall quality," said Mark Anderson, SVP of Worldwide Sales at F5. "New customer deployments and upgrades to v10 from previous versions continue to go smoothly. Customers are realizing the value of BIG-IP v10 in OpEx and CapEx reductions by consolidating key ADN functionality into a single box and dramatically increasing workforce efficiency through simplified management and the use of Application Ready Templates."

This latest generation of BIG-IP software affords organizations a dynamic IT infrastructure to deliver services that fluidly adapt to changing business requirements. It has benefited organizations by enabling them to integrate with dynamic computing models such as virtualization, cloud computing, and SaaS (Software as a Service), without having to completely re-architect existing systems.

Customer Feedback on BIG-IP v10
Hobsons, a global solutions provider for the education market, delivers SaaS-based tools that help colleges manage student recruitment, enrollment, and retention. This includes tools such as CRM, online applications, social networking, and online chats that colleges use to keep students engaged. "As pressure mounts to reduce costs and increase efficiencies, colleges are turning to Hobsons to leverage shared services," said Patrick McFadin, Director of Systems and Architecture at Hobsons. "In turn, we rely on BIG-IP through its ability to streamline application delivery services. Not only can we consolidate multiple software modules onto a single BIG-IP device, our IT staff is able to quickly establish and maintain policies, such as authorization and access to resources, which is crucial in SaaS and cloud computing environments. And, F5's product quality is top-notch. IT departments monitor 'v.0' releases particularly closely, and we were very pleased with how smoothly the v10 deployment went."

BlueFort Security, a company that delivers solutions based on F5® products, helps its customers ensure secure and efficient access to enterprise applications. "BIG-IP v10 is working really well for us and we're particularly pleased with its ability to unify WebAccelerator and Application Security Manager with Local Traffic Manager on one device," said Ian Jennings, Technical Director at BlueFort Security. "A lot of our customers are looking to consolidate hardware and virtualize services, so BIG-IP v10 really hits the mark for them. The increased administrative control available in the v10 release has also been received very well."

Streamlined Application Deployments with Application Ready Templates
With BIG-IP v10, F5 delivered a rich library of Application Ready Templates to simplify the creation of profiles, policies, and other configuration parameters needed to optimize a BIG-IP deployment with specific applications such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Exchange Web Access 2007, VMware View™, Oracle Application Server 10g, and SAP ERP. These templates reduce setup time for administrators from hours to minutes.

"IDC finds that application templates are an excellent way for customers to benefit from the wealth of functionality available from Application Delivery Networking in a timely, operationally efficient manner," said Cindy Borovick, Research Vice President, Datacenter Networks at IDC. F5 continues to offer new templates to help companies further reduce operating expenses and streamline application delivery. The most recent release of BIG-IP v10 (v10.0.1) includes six new Application Ready Templates that provide customers with a full range of options for automated application deployment. New Application Ready Templates include:

•SAP ERP Central Component
•SAP Enterprise Portal
•Generic HTTP
•Generic IP Forwarding
•Generic LDAP
•Generic RADIUS
Enhanced Network Visibility and Manageability with Enterprise Manager
BIG-IP v10.0.1 also provides enhanced functionality for Enterprise Manager, F5's centralized management appliance for BIG-IP devices. The latest release of Enterprise Manager (version 1.8) simplifies security policy management for BIG-IP Application Security Manager™ (ASM™). Using a centralized wizard, customers can quickly and easily deploy security policies to multiple ASM devices, resulting in faster and easier management, and further lowering operational expenses. This new version of Enterprise Manager also includes specialized wizards to help customers simplify their migration to BIG-IP v10.

Availability
BIG-IP v10.0.1 and all associated product modules are available today. Software product modules include BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™, Application Security Manager, WebAccelerator™, Global Traffic Manager™, and Link Controller™. The new Application Ready Templates are available for no additional fee. Enterprise Manager 1.8 is available now. More information about the BIG-IP v10 system is available at www.f5.com/products/big-ip/v10.html.

2009-07-18 - F5 BIG-IP Solutions Integrated with VMware vCenter™ Server to Support More Rapid Alignment of IT to Business Requirements:
Tightly integrated solution affords enterprises a more agile IT infrastructure; intelligent automation significantly reduces OpEx costs and dynamically allocates resources as business needs and network, application, or user conditions change

SEATTLE, June 30, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced integration between its BIG-IP® solutions and VMware vSphere™ 4 and VMware vCenter™ Server, together creating a scalable and extensible platform that allows IT administrators to dramatically improve organizations' control over virtual environments. Working in concert, VMware vCenter™ Server and F5® BIG-IP® solutions enable customers to dynamically provision application resources, reduce costs, and maximize the automation and agility of their IT infrastructures.

"With F5 and VMware vSphere™ 4, we're able to provide a flexible service platform to support clients' IT and cloud initiatives," said Pat O'Day, CTO at BlueLock, a managed technology services company providing virtual cloud resources through an infrastructure-as-a-service model. "Our clients rely on automated service provisioning to increase efficiency and keep operation costs down. Leveraging integration between F5's BIG-IP and VMware vSphere™ 4, BlueLock's supporting architecture can scale virtual resource pools effortlessly as demand fluctuates, or as network and application conditions change. Our clients only pay for the resources they use. This model delivers real value and efficiency when compared to a traditional approach, where in-house systems are built to handle peak demand levels they seldom reach."

Integration with VMware vCenter™ Server is made possible through F5's open API, iControl®, which enables rapid integration with third party management systems. Due to the flexibility of iControl, organizations can tailor their networks to be more responsive to the dynamic changes happening in the virtual infrastructure. Together, VMware vCenter™ Server and F5® BIG-IP® systems provide a resilient platform that can continually optimize application delivery and enable IT organizations to more rapidly align with business needs by adapting to changes in business requirements or the overall IT environment.

"VMware vSphere™ and VMware vCenter™ Server help customers respond rapidly and easily to application demands," said Shekar Ayyar, VP, Infrastructure Alliances at VMware. "F5® BIG-IP® solutions extend this agility to the network to enable consistency in application state throughout the data center and in private clouds, enabling faster responses with less manual intervention."

VMware vCenter™ Server and F5's BIG-IP System: Automation leads to IT Agility
VMware vCenter™ Server enables customers to dynamically provision application resources in response to fluctuating user demand. However, until now, configuring the application delivery network to recognize and respond to those changes has been a manual process. This integration enables VMware vCenter Server to provide specific instructions on how F5 solutions should handle application traffic for newly provisioned or deprovisioned virtual machines. Instructions can include adding or removing virtual machines from BIG-IP's load balancing pool or even holding connections until the virtual machines are confirmed to be responsive. Instructions can even be given in the event that virtual machines are consolidated onto a reduced number of hosts by VMware Distributed Power Management. This automation minimizes the need for manual intervention and greatly reduces the possibility of configuration errors.

VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager and F5's BIG-IP® Global Traffic Manager™
BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager™ (GTM™) complements VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager by extending Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery automation functionality to the network, reducing IT administration time and effort, and substantially mitigating the risk of human error. In the event of site failure, BIG-IP GTM works with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager to redirect application traffic to an alternative data center or to the cloud, and ensure that applications remain available.

"With virtualization, applications are becoming more dynamic and responsive to variable business and technical environments," said Jim Ritchings, VP of Business Development at F5. "However, there is more to delivering an application to an end user than simply the application instance itself. The rest of the infrastructure that connects applications and users must be as responsive and flexible as the applications to ensure maximum resource availability and efficiency. F5's integration with VMware vCenter™ Server helps ensure business value and IT agility for organizations of all sizes."

For additional information on the benefits of deploying F5 and VMware solutions together, please visit www.f5.com/solutions/applications/vmware/virtualization.

For more about deploying BIG-IP solutions with vCenter, check out the deployment guide at www.f5.com/pdf/deployment-guides/vmware-infrastructure-dg.pdf.

For more about deploying BIG-IP solutions with vCenter Site Recovery Manager, check out the solution brief at www.f5.com/pdf/solution-center/vmware-srm-sb.pdf.

2009-07-17 - F5 Networks launches BIG-IP LTM technical training courses for TMOS v.10:


An updated version of the BIG-IP LTM training courses has been released to
match the version 10 of the TMOS software. Starting at the BIG-IP LTM
Essentials course scheduled for 18:th - 19:th of august and the BIG-IP LTM
Advanced Topics scheduled for 20:th - 21:st of august Advanced IP will hold
these updated courses. Since TMOS v.10 is built on the foundation laid by v.9,
the topics discussed in the BIG-IP LTM v.10 training are still valid for BIG-
IP:s running on v.9 software with addition of some of the unique features that
is available in the v.10 software.

2009-05-19 - F5's VIPRION Application Delivery Controller Receives 2008 Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award:
F5's high-performance, scalable hardware platform recognized for outstanding innovation

SEATTLE, May 19, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) has selected the F5® VIPRION® Application Delivery Controller (ADC) as a winner of its 2008 Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award.

"F5 Networks' VIPRION has been recognized with a 2008 Product of the Year Award for its excellence in the advancement of voice, data, and video communications," said Rich Tehrani, TMC President and Group Editor-in-Chief. "F5 has proven that it is committed to quality and excellence in solutions that benefit the customer experience as well as ROI for the companies that use them. I am pleased to honor F5's hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from them in the future."

VIPRION is a revolutionary bladed ADC system that consolidates networking and security functionality, superior processing power, load balancing, and application delivery service virtualization into a shared, highly scalable chassis. It is the industry's first ADC that scales seamlessly to address organizations' evolving business needs without sacrificing manageability or simplicity. VIPRION features top-end ADC performance four times greater than that of any competitive product on the market.

"We're extremely proud to have VIPRION receive this prestigious award from TMC," said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. "VIPRION addresses a real need in the marketplace, providing a powerful and scalable platform with best-in-class security and optimization capabilities. VIPRION enables enterprises, service providers, and other organizations with high traffic volumes to implement a sustainable Application Delivery Networking growth strategy."

The Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award recognizes the vision, leadership, and attention to detail that are the hallmarks of the prestigious award. The most innovative products and services brought to market in 2008 were selected as recipients of this year's Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award for their groundbreaking achievement.

About VIPRION
The VIPRION Application Delivery Controller's (ADC) innovative chassis and blade architecture extends the power of the F5 BIG-IP® product family, and is an ideal solution for enterprises and service providers seeking to scale their application delivery infrastructure while keeping device configuration and management simple. Unlike other ADC platforms, performance blades can be added on-demand as network environments and applications require increased processing power. As blades are added, management of the device remains simple, since all blades operate together in a unified solution. And individual blades can be installed or removed without network disruption, as VIPRION automatically reroutes traffic to the other blades.

Due to VIPRION's industry-leading ADC performance, the solution is ideal for companies seeking to leverage next-generation networking capabilities such as IPTV, VoIP, and other Web 2.0 technologies. Learn more by visiting www.f5.com/products/hardware/viprion.html.

About TMC
Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) is a global integrated media company helping clients build communities in print, in person and online. TMC publishes Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Unified Communications, and NGN Magazine. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. TMCnet is read by two to three million unique visitors each month worldwide, according to Webtrends. TMCnet is ranked as 2,921 in Quantcast's Top U.S. Sites placing TMCnet in the top .03% most visited Web sites in the US. In addition, TMC produces ITEXPO, 4GWE Conference, Digium|Asterisk World, and Communications Developer Conference. For more information about the awards, go to www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2009/05/14/4181002.htm.

2009-05-11 - F5 Enhances Data Management Solutions with Tools to Rein in Storage Costs and Broaden Adoption of File Virtualization:
Market-leading functionality in F5 ARX and Data Manager helps organizations achieve measurable storage cost savings; new "Fast Start" package speeds implementation in companies of all sizes

SEATTLE, May 11, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced new software releases for its award-winning ARX® file virtualization system and Data Manager storage management solution. The new capabilities in both products enable organizations to better control storage costs, improve capacity utilization and forecasting, and unlock maximum value from their existing file storage assets, all of which are key corporate mandates in today's economy. In addition, F5 announced the new "ARX Fast Start" package available in North America to make it easier and more cost-effective for organizations of all sizes to reap the benefits of file virtualization.

"Our research shows that the economy is definitely impacting IT budgets, with 47 percent of Fortune 1000 organizations interviewed planning to decrease their storage spending," said Robert Stevenson, Managing Director of Storage Research, TheInfoPro. "At the same time, these companies are actively looking for ways to boost storage utilization, which hovers at about 50 percent. Storage pros are indicating that they are turning to products like F5 ARX file virtualization solutions to achieve their cost-cutting objectives and make better use of the technology they already own. We've also seen an increased demand for tools, like Data Manager, that can provide the insight needed for more accurate capacity planning and forecasting."

New ARX Software Simplifies Automated Tiered Storage Deployments
Version 5.0 of Data Management Operating System, the common software powering all F5® ARX file virtualization solutions, introduces new features that simplify automated tiered storage deployments and enhance data protection and recovery. Highlights of version 5.0 include:

•Easier deployment of a virtualized file storage environment with seamless import functionality that gives users continuous access to file data throughout the implementation process
•Improved data protection capabilities for virtualized storage environments, including a file tracking capability, which dramatically simplifies file restoration from backup media and virtual snapshot capability for Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service
•Support for Microsoft Windows 2008, making it easy for organizations to migrate to the next generation of Windows storage and clients, without user or application downtime
"There are operational and economic benefits to storage tiering, but the challenge for many companies is to find a way to implement tiering in an easy to manage and non-invasive manner," said Dave Russell, Research Vice President at Gartner. "Solutions such as file virtualization help overcome these challenges."

Improves Infrastructure Visibility for Better Storage Utilization and Management Control
Data Manager version 2.5 improves storage reporting and forecasting in large file storage environments and introduces new cost savings analysis capabilities to help businesses better understand areas for potential cost reduction in their environment. In addition to providing detailed information such as file age, types of files, and which resources are being consumed, Data Manager 2.5 can project potential cost savings of storage tiering policies based on actual customer data.

"These releases increase the control companies have over their storage, which is especially important in this time of IT belt-tightening," said Nigel Burmeister, Director of Product Marketing at F5. "With F5 ARX and Data Manager, companies can implement automated solutions that optimize their storage infrastructure and free up IT resources. Simply put, we make it possible for IT organizations to squeeze every possible nickel from their existing storage assets."

ARX Fast Start Package Brings Value to Small and Mid-Size Organizations
While the benefits of storage tiering have long been recognized in larger environments, F5's newly announced "ARX Fast Start" package will make it cost-effective for small to medium-size companies as well. With this package, customers with storage environments supporting up to 500 users and 800 Mbps in throughput can implement an ARX500 solution for a very competitive price. This is a North America-only promotion, valid through September 30, 2009.

To contact an F5 sales representative and learn more, please visit www.f5.com/products/how-to-buy. F5 partners can also learn more about ARX Fast Start by visiting the "North America" section of F5's Partner Resource Center.

Availability
F5 ARX with Data Management Operating System version 5.0 and Data Manager version 2.5 will be available in May 2009. To learn more about F5's file virtualization solutions, check out the F5 Whiteboard Conversations and visit www.f5.com/solutions/virtualization/file.

2009-05-11 - Brocade Elevates Application Delivery Performance for Enterprises and Service Providers :
New Application Delivery Controllers Boost Data Center Load Balancing and Enterprise Application Integration

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 11, 2009 - Brocade® (Nasdaq:BRCD) today introduced the first application delivery controller (ADC) platform with the combined performance, scalability, and capabilities required to improve IP transport in both enterprise application delivery and service provider high-performance load-balancing environments.

Available in three fixed-configuration and chassis-based models, the new Brocade ServerIron® ADX Series is designed to help transform the application delivery market by providing the industry’s highest Layer 4-7 performance, flexibility, and scalability along with the application integration to improve business efficiency.

Introducing the Brocade ServerIron ADX Series Application Delivery Controllers

The Brocade ServerIron ADX Series is manufactured in three configurations:

ServerIron ADX 1000 (1U fixed form factor)
ServerIron ADX 4000 (4U chassis)
ServerIron ADX 8000 (8U chassis)
Performance and Efficiency Leadership

High-density 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 10 GbE plus hardware assist for linear session distribution across multiple application cores
Twice the density of the competition: 70 Gbps of Layer 4 and Layer 7 application throughput and twice the 10 GbE port density of any competitive offering
Industry-leading transaction rate and concurrent session capacity to help improve scalability and performance for environments with growing amounts of application traffic
Complete physical and logical isolation of application, data, and management planes to increase scalability and flexibility
Advanced Functionality and Application Integration

Content Switching (CSW) framework capabilities: A powerful utility to create rules/policies/configurations to perform application switching and content transformation on a wide range of enterprise applications, including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP applications
Tested and proven to interoperate with universally deployed enterprise applications, resulting in reduced risk, lower implementation costs, and faster deployment
Future-Ready to Provide Superior Investment Protection

Chassis models feature interchangeable modules with up to 16-ports of 10 Gbps fiber
Multi-chip, multi-core, high-density application processing plane designed for high core density, performance upgradability, and core-based virtualization
Field-upgradable hardware SSL, compression, and other future specialized functions
Security

Highest hardware-based Denial of Service (DoS) and SYN-cookie protection combined with four times the Layer 4 transaction rate to help prevent firewall meltdown and maintain maximum performance
Quotes

Purewire, a leading Security as a Service (SaaS)-based secure Web gateway vendor, selected Brocade for an end-to-end networking solution for its internal and customer offering production networks. “Using Brocade as the cornerstone of our IP network allows us to focus on protecting customer business and social interactions on the Web,” said Dr. Paul Judge, chief technology officer and co-founder, Purewire. “Efficient network utilization needs and security threats happen around the clock, making it crucial that our network infrastructure operate with maximum uptime and with the performance and flexibility to handle business needs. Brocade’s switching and application delivery solution was a perfect fit for our demanding requirements.”
“With more than a decade of experience, Brocade has a history of leadership in the application delivery controller market and was the first company to introduce an application delivery switch,” said Guru Pangal, vice president of product development for Brocade. “The Brocade ServerIron ADX Series is a future-ready platform for next-generation dynamic and adaptive data centers. It is designed to help both service providers and enterprises maximize the value of their IT investments and benefit from industry-leading performance per price, per rack unit, and per watt.”
“At a time when enterprises and service providers are focused on reducing CapEx and OpEx without sacrificing performance, flexibility and scalability, the ServerIron ADX application delivery controller exemplifies the value that Brocade brings to the data center by delivering twice the throughput at about one-third of the cost of its nearest competitor for chassis-based and fixed configuration platforms,” said Katie Trippet, analyst for Synergy Research Group. “Additionally, with its ability to manage multiple applications behind a single application delivery controller, IT administrators can benefit from the simplified operational environment it delivers.”

2009-05-11 - Brocade Unveils New Platforms, Features for Data Centers and Campus Networks:
New Products and Features Improve Data Center Efficiency and Redefine Campus Network Capabilities

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 11, 2009 - Brocade® (Nasdaq:BRCD) today introduced new products and features that span all layers of the network, reinforcing the company’s commitment to continuous IP networking innovation. These products significantly improve the customer experience through increased performance, reliability, and power/cooling/space efficiency while reducing complexity and cost.

The new IP networking solutions provide the advanced application delivery, data center connectivity, and enterprise campus network capabilities administrators and architects need to build next-generation networks that enable new and emerging local area network (LAN) end-point devices, improve mission-critical application performance, and simplify top-of-rack server connectivity.

Specifically, Brocade introduced:

Brocade TurboIron® 24X 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) top-of-rack switch
Brocade ServerIron® ADX Series Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs)
Brocade FastIron® CX Series of Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+)-ready switches
TurboIron 24X: Transforming Data Center Top-of-Rack Server Connectivity

Performance-driven top-of-rack solution:

Compact top-of-rack data center solution that provides 24-ports of 10 GbE/1 GbE wire-speed performance with ultra-low latency for server access and aggregation in a 1U form factor
Maximizing flexibility and reliability while simplifying expansion:

Flexibility to mix and match 10 GbE and 1 GbE server access in one highly reliable switch, protecting investments while easing migration from 1 GbE to 10 GbE-capable server farms
Green data center capabilities with a low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO):

Lower capital and operational expenditures provide a long-term, cost-effective platform that helps maximize scalability while significantly reducing power consumption — with just half the 10 GbE port power consumption of alternative solutions
A future-ready compact design in a 1U form factor frees up valuable rack space while the built-in IPv6 capability prepares the platform for future IP addressing requirements
ServerIron ADX Series: Revolutionizing Application Delivery Efficiency

Performance:

Industry-leading performance per price, per rack unit, and per watt with twice the 10 Gigabit density and Layer 4-7 throughput of any competitive offering
Application intelligence:

Tested and proven to interoperate with universally deployed enterprise applications from Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP — resulting in reduced risk, lower implementation costs, and faster deployment
Security:

Leading-edge hardware-based Denial of Service (DoS) and SYN-cookie protection combined with four times the Layer 4 transaction rate to help prevent firewall meltdown and maintain maximum performance
FastIron CX Series: Redefining IP Networking Edge Capabilities

Highest PoE+ port density in a stackable form factor:

Compact 1U form factor with 24 or 48 10/100/1000 port density and an optional 10 GbE module for high-performance connectivity
Future-ready PoE+ enabled at no additional cost, delivering 30 watts of power per port (approximately twice the current standard)
Future-ready flexibility:

Alignment with today’s dynamic business requirements through seamless expandability with stacking capabilities and future-ready benefits for next-generation campus edge convergence applications
High scalability with the capability to stack up to eight physical switches into a single logical switch, providing “pay-as-you-grow” flexibility
Advanced capabilities, such as full IPv4 Layer 3 routing, as network requirements expand
Quotes

“Modern data center and enterprise network solutions must be assessed across an extensive set of attributes, such as performance, reliability, scalability, end-to-end efficiency, security, and total cost of ownership,” said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst, enterprise voice and data for Infonetics Research. “The Brocade TurboIron 24X addresses all of these attributes and is available at a very compelling price point, giving buyers a great choice to manage their mission-critical data center and computing requirements.”
“Standard Power over Ethernet has allowed organizations to streamline the deployment and operation of wireless access points, IP phones, and IP video surveillance cameras,” said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst, enterprise voice and data for Infonetics Research. “The main application for PoE Plus today is pan/tilt/zoom IP video cameras, but as part of a research study I recently conducted, there will likely be a slew of new devices taking advantage of the additional power. By selecting PoE Plus capable switches, buyers can ensure that their networks can handle their future needs.”
“Continuous innovation, performance, and quality are important brand attributes we value at Brocade,” said Marc Randall, senior vice president of products and offerings for Brocade. “Today’s introduction of IP networking solutions, ranging from the data center to the campus edge, is further proof we are committed to delivering end-to-end networking solutions for service providers and enterprises worldwide. These new IP networking solutions provide the advanced application delivery, data center connectivity, and enterprise campus capabilities necessary to build next-generation networks.”
IP Network Infrastructure Services

To simplify installation and deliver customized consultation, Brocade IP Network Infrastructure Services provide customers an end-to-end methodology to assess, design, and implement next-generation IP networks. Customers can benefit from Brocade expertise and best-practice guidance to accelerate deployment, maximize resource efficiency, and mitigate risk when implementing IP networking technology.

Pricing and Availability

The TurboIron 24X, ServerIron ADX Series, and FastIron CX Series will be available in CY Q3 2009. Base pricing is as follows:

TurboIron 24X starting at $12,000 USD
ServerIron ADX Series starting at $21,995 USD
FastIron CX Series starting at $5,495 USD
Photos

Brocade TurboIron 24X: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642@N02/3501964756/
Brocade ServerIron ADX Series: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642@N02/3501137605/
Brocade FastIron CX Series: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642@N02/3501970380/
Detailed Product and Support Information

Brocade TurboIron 24X Product Details: http://www.brocade.com/products-solutions/products/ethernet-switches-routers/enterprise-mobility/product-details/turboiron-24x-switch/index.page
Brocade ServerIron ADX Series Product Details: http://www.brocade.com/products-solutions/products/ethernet-switches-routers/application-switching/product-details/serveriron-adx-series/index.page
Brocade FastIron CX Series Product Details: http://www.brocade.com/products-solutions/products/ethernet-switches-routers/enterprise-mobility/product-details/fastiron-cx-series/index.page
Brocade Professional Services Details: http://www.brocade.com/services-support/professional-services/ip-network-infrastructure/index.page

2009-05-05 - InMon Corp. Revolutionizes Network Traffic Shaping and Control:
San Francisco, California — Apr. 1, 2009 — InMon Corp. announced the immediate availability of Traffic Sentinel 4.0, which includes a revolutionary new control module for shaping traffic on large campus networks

"Traffic Sentinel has always provided unparalleled visibility into network traffic; the wide support of the sFlow® standard among switch vendors allows Traffic Sentinel to build up a detailed, real-time picture of traffic from every switch in the network," said Peter Phaal, President, InMon Corp. "We realized that most customers already have traffic control functions built into their switches, but that these features were hardly ever used. The breakthrough was to close the loop and use Traffic Sentinel's detailed knowledge of network traffic and topology to automatically deploy targeted traffic controls."

Traffic Sentinel's traffic controller (pat. pend.) has significant advantages over other solutions currently on the market:

Scalable: controls are distributed among the switches in the network.
Low cost: controller uses capabilities of devices already in the network; no additional hardware is required.
High performance: the monitoring and control mechanisms are implemented in hardware on the switches and run at wire speed.
The visibility and control that Traffic Sentinel provides is a vital tool for containing network costs. Traffic analysis identifies wasteful traffic that can be eliminated from the network and the control functionality ensures quality of service during peak periods. Combined, these two capabilities help avoid costly and unneccessary upgrades and provide information to target network spending to areas where it will be most effective.

"We were having problems with the large amount of bandwidth consumed peer-to-peer traffic on our campus network of nearly 20,000 users," said Arthur Clune, The University of York. "Traffic Sentinel's quota controller continuously tracks the small number of users responsible for the bulk of traffic on the network, automatically instructing our switches to mark the traffic as low priority."

Traffic Sentinel fully supports the sFlow® standard for monitoring layer 2/3 switches; available in equipment from most leading network equipment vendors, including: 3Com (Nasdaq: COMS), Alcatel (CGEP: PA, NYSE: ALA), Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD), Extreme Networks (Nasdaq: EXTR), Force10 Networks, Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Hitachi (NYSE: HIT) and Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR).

About The University of York
The University of York was founded in 1963 with 200 students. It now has 11,500 students and has over 30 academic departments and research centres. It is regularly ranked in the top ten of UK universities and is also in the world's top 100 universities.

About InMon Corp.
InMon Corp. is the leading supplier of traffic monitoring solutions for high-speed switched and routed networks. These solutions provide the tools and information needed to take control of today's mission-critical, value-added applications and services. Customers throughout the world in a variety of sectors including: Enterprise, Service Provider, Healthcare, Education, Government, and Media are using solutions from InMon Corp.

InMon Corp. is the pioneer in the application of statistical sampling for scalable and cost effective solutions for network-wide traffic monitoring, analysis, and reporting and has multiple patents pending in this field. As the inventor of sFlow, InMon Corp. works closely with leading switch vendors to enhance their networking solutions with comprehensive traffic management. For more information visit www.inmon.com.

2009-05-05 - InMon Corp. Brings sFlow Monitoring to Virtual Networking:
San Francisco, California — Mar. 10, 2009 — InMon Corp. announced the immediate availability of Virtual Probe, a free software product that uses sFlow® technology to provide traffic visibility in virtualized environments.

Popular virtual server systems such as VMWare® and Xen® make use of "virtual switches" to connect virtual machines together and to the network. Providing sFlow monitoring of these virtual switches ensures that the benefits of virtualization can be realized without losing the visibility into network traffic that is essential for network troubleshooting, traffic accounting and security.

"sFlow is the leading, multi-vendor traffic monitoring technology built into network switches," said Peter Phaal, President, InMon Corp. "Adding sFlow monitoring to virtual switches allows our customers to monitor virtual switch traffic using the same tools that they use to monitor the physical switches, reducing costs and eliminating the need for yet another management console in the data center."

InMon's Virtual Probe is a software solution that connects to a virtual switch using a virtual SPAN/mirror port. The probe uses patented technology to trace packet paths through the virtual switch and export sFlow data; providing the same information that would be available from a physical switch.

About InMon Corp.
InMon Corp. is the leading supplier of traffic monitoring solutions for high-speed switched and routed networks. These solutions provide the tools and information needed to take control of today's mission-critical, value-added applications and services. Customers throughout the world in a variety of sectors including: Enterprise, Service Provider, Healthcare, Education, Government, and Media are using solutions from InMon Corp.

InMon Corp. is the pioneer in the application of statistical sampling for scalable and cost effective solutions for network-wide traffic monitoring, analysis, and reporting and has multiple patents pending in this field. As the inventor of sFlow, InMon Corp. works closely with leading switch vendors to enhance their networking solutions with comprehensive traffic management. For more information visit www.inmon.com.

2009-04-28 - F5 Delivers Enhanced Application Visibility and Management Capabilities for Microsoft's Dynamic Data Center Initiative:
New management pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 provides unparalleled automation, provisioning, and reporting capabilities to maximize IT resource efficiency

MICROSOFT MANAGEMENT SUMMIT, LAS VEGAS, April 28, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), a global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced new F5 Management Pack™ software for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. Available as a software plug-in, the F5 Management Pack enables Microsoft and F5 customers to conveniently monitor and automate responses to changing infrastructure conditions to efficiently allocate dynamic network, application, and server resources.

With F5 and Microsoft solutions working in concert, organizations gain actionable visibility across the entire Application Delivery Networking infrastructure. By giving joint customers essential insight into the performance of network devices, application traffic, and other infrastructure variables, the F5 Management Pack also enables customers to set policies ensuring rapid, automated response to dynamic network conditions.

Additional ResourcesMultimedia & Downloads
Download the F5 Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007
F5 Management Pack Video Tutorials
F5 and Microsoft Virtualization Technology - Tech Demo
More Information
F5 Management Pack Main Page
F5 Management Pack Discussion Page
F5's Microsoft Virtualization Solutions
Microsoft Virtualization Meets F5 - Article
To support the many organizations currently using Microsoft System Center, the F5 Management Pack will be delivered as a free download via the DevCentralsm website, F5's global online technical community. Leveraging the expertise of over 40,000 application developers, IT architects, and networking professionals, DevCentral will provide video tutorials, forums, documents, samples, and solution guidance aimed at helping F5 Management Pack users collaborate and get more from their combined deployments of F5 and Microsoft technologies.

Highlights of the F5 Management Pack
As a plug-in to Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager 2007, the F5 Management Pack enables organizations to:

Simplify IT Management through Enhanced Visibility
By monitoring the performance of F5 and Microsoft devices, as well as the surrounding infrastructure, F5 Management Pack helps administrators see a clearer picture of present network and application traffic conditions. F5 Management Pack leverages System Center Operations Manager's advanced health modeling capabilities and sophisticated reporting structure, allowing administrators to conveniently analyze performance data for trending and forecasting, and enabling them to better plan and budget for IT initiatives.

Adapt to Changing Application and Network Conditions to Improve IT Efficiency
F5 Management Pack works with Systems Center Operations Manager to ensure that content and applications are continually optimized and securely delivered. F5's PowerShell-enabled iControl® API and the customizable iRules™ scripting language enable System Center to proactively modify network resources to ensure the best end-user experience. By adapting to performance conditions, available application resources, and user demand, the F5 Management Pack helps Microsoft customers realize OpEx savings by reducing the time and personnel necessary to manage application delivery environments.

Support Microsoft's Vision for a Dynamic, Virtualized Infrastructure
F5 Management Pack supports dynamic provisioning capabilities to bring additional server and application resources online as user demand increases, as well as taking these extended resources offline when demand returns to normal levels. The F5 Management Pack includes capabilities that support an automated, virtualized, and highly efficient data center through interoperability with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Hyper-V, and other Microsoft solutions.

Quotes

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"Customers want to have insight into all aspects of their IT operations and Microsoft System Center delivers this across both their physical and virtual enterprise environments."

"F5's System Center Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack will help extend the visibility customers have into their network conditions, optimize application performance for users, and help reduce overall operational costs."

Ryan O'Hara, Director, System Center Product Management, Microsoft


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"With more than 40,000 members and counting, DevCentral provides a global, collaborative environment that is an ideal delivery mechanism for the F5 Management Pack."

"Microsoft System Center Operations Manager customers will gain access to a wide range of tutorials, samples, and other resources designed to improve the ways F5 helps optimize their infrastructure. With established projects featuring PowerShell and Visual Studio integration and samples, the Management Pack on DevCentral will dramatically expand how we provide the community with a powerful platform to further customize and automate their joint Microsoft-F5 environments."

Jeff Browning, Director of Product Management at F5


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"The ability of Application Delivery Networking devices to make intelligent decisions in how users, applications, and data interact gives administrators the power to sensibly consolidate, virtualize, and provision IT resources."

"At a time where administrators are looking to leverage emerging technologies to reduce OpEx and CapEx costs, F5's management solution portfolio provides crucial network visibility and automated response capabilities to help organizations efficiently address variable Application Delivery Networking demands and best support their organization's business priorities."

Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5


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Availability
The F5 Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 and supporting resources are currently available at http://devcentral.f5.com/mpack. Complimentary DevCentral registration is required to download the F5 Management Pack.

2009-04-28 - F5 Delivers Unified Web Application Security Solutions:
Powerful new release of BIG-IP Application Security Manager offers the industry's first and only integrated protection from both layer 7 DoS and brute force attacks

SEATTLE, April 28, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), announced availability of its v10 release of the BIG-IP® Application Security Manager™ (ASM™) web application firewall. BIG-IP ASM is aimed at enterprises and service providers that need to consolidate their infrastructure and more confidently secure, deploy, and optimize applications.

The new version of BIG-IP ASM provides enhanced attack protection, threat mitigation, and application visibility. It is available as a standalone device or as a software module on BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™, F5's market-leading Application Delivery Controller. In addition, BIG-IP ASM is now available on F5's high-performance VIPRION® hardware platform, further improving scalability and performance for large organizations as well as content and service providers.

Operating on F5's TMOS® architecture, BIG-IP solutions unify application security, traffic management, and acceleration capabilities onto a single device to realize up to a 50 percent bandwidth reduction and up to a 10x user performance increase. By providing application services on a unified platform, BIG-IP solutions eliminate the need for multiple appliances, lowering capital and operating expenses while increasing the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of critical web applications and processes. As a key component of F5's vision of unified application and data delivery services, BIG-IP ASM provides an integrated web application security solution.

"Workforce efficiency greatly depends on how quickly and securely data and resources are delivered to users," said Jon Oltsik, Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. "By understanding the context of network, application, and user interactions, dynamic infrastructure components like F5's BIG-IP solutions can better optimize the services users require. Specifically, the recent enhancements to BIG-IP Application Security Manager provide 'baked-in' intelligence and flexibility to help enterprise organizations customize their IT environments and do more with less."

New and enhanced BIG-IP v10 capabilities enable organizations to:
Improve Protection Against New and Emerging Threats
BIG-IP ASM now offers enhanced protection against layer 7 denial of service (DoS), cross-site scripting, brute force, and SQL injection attacks, among many others. By providing advanced and integrated security on a flexible, scalable platform, organizations can more easily address application security requirements as new threats emerge or as their infrastructure evolves.

Minimize Capital Outlay and Operating Expenses through Consolidation and Automated Safeguards
As a single, centralized point of policy enforcement, BIG-IP ASM provides comprehensive monitoring and visualization capability. System-wide security and performance metrics enable informed decision-making, and ensure efficient IT resource utilization. BIG-IP ASM includes built-in, automated security policies that can easily be activated to comply with industry security standards and organizations' individual security requirements. And F5's customizable iRules™ capability empowers organizations to tailor and automate additional security policies for their application delivery environments. The new version of BIG-IP ASM also monitors URL server latency, providing an additional tool for ensuring an optimal end-user experience.

Seamlessly Integrate with Third-Party Solutions for Rapid Deployment and Lower TCO
F5 works closely with leading security and application vendors to ensure rapid, low-impact deployment. Integration with Splunk provides additional visibility into attack and traffic trends for threat analysis and forecasting purposes. Integration with Secerno's DataWall offers customers a comprehensive solution for application and database security. In addition, F5's Application Ready Templates provide pre-configured policies that enable BIG-IP solutions to optimize and secure popular applications from Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and more.

"With BIG-IP solutions, we've been able to reduce server overhead by 60 percent while integrating security and optimization capabilities across a unified Application Delivery Networking system," said Ian Jennings, Technical Director at Fortify Security, a leading UK center of excellence on Secure Application Delivery. "BIG-IP ASM helped us identify existing website vulnerabilities and detect numerous brute force attacks. In addition to blocking these and other threats, the sophisticated reporting tools of the BIG-IP solution provide us with the insight to refine our security policies and recode parts of our website to mitigate further risks."

"As organizations increase their reliance on web-accessible applications and data, their security risks increase exponentially, ranging from denial of service to inadvertently exposing sensitive data," said Mark Vondemkamp, Director of Product Management, Security at F5. "With our unified security and acceleration solutions in place, F5 customers can confidently introduce and enhance application security without sacrificing IT agility or the user experience."

Availability
BIG-IP version 10 software and the new version of BIG-IP ASM are available today. Application Ready Templates are available for no additional fee. For more information on the new BIG-IP release, please visit www.f5.com/products/big-ip/v10.html.

For additional content and guidance on how to get the most out of BIG-IP v10, please visit the v10 page of DevCentral, F5's global online community comprised of more than 40,000 application developers, IT architects, and networking professionals, at http://devcentral.f5.com/v10.

For additional information on Fortify Security's use of F5 solutions, view the case study and listen to the customer podcast on F5's website. For more information on Fortify Security, please visit www.fortifysecurity.com

2009-04-27 - F5's BIG-IP Application Security Manager Wins 2009 SC Magazine Reader Trust Award:
Voted Best Web Application Security solution by security professionals

SEATTLE, April 27, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced that it has received SC Magazine's 2009 Reader Trust Award, recognizing its BIG-IP Application Security Manager as the Best Web Application Security solution. The award was presented at the exclusive SC Awards Gala, held in conjunction with the annual RSA Conference in San Francisco.

With almost 700 entries submitted in 30 categories, the 2009 SC Awards became the most competitive yet in the program's 12-year history. SC Magazine readers, representing some of IT's most knowledgeable security professionals, selected the F5® BIG-IP® Application Security Manager™ (ASM™) web application firewall (WAF) from among the industry's leading solutions.

"F5's BIG-IP Application Security Manager represents the best in web application security technology that the industry has to offer today," said Illena Armstrong, Editor in Chief, SC Magazine. "With their vote, our readers are attesting to the high regard they hold for F5 and the BIG-IP ASM solution."

"It's a great honor to have BIG-IP ASM chosen as the industry's Best Web Application Security solution by SC Magazine's readers," said Mark Vondemkamp, Director of Product Management, Security at F5. "These experts deal with serious security matters every day, and they appreciate the components required to secure their organizations. As the fastest and most comprehensive WAF solution on the market, BIG-IP ASM helps IT professionals achieve their critical application security mandates and meet variable business needs."

BIG-IP Application Security Manager is a sophisticated solution that provides comprehensive application security with an integrated XML firewall to protect an organization's sensitive applications, data, and brand integrity. As an advanced, scalable application security solution, BIG-IP ASM enables customers to block attacks, mitigate threats, and comply with evolving security regulations, including PCI standards.

Vondemkamp added, "By leveraging both positive and negative security models, as well as offering the ability to automatically build policies, BIG-IP ASM helps customers improve the security, availability, and integrity of business data and applications."

The annual SC Awards highlight the information security industry's best solutions, services, and professionals while recognizing achievement and technical excellence.

For more information on BIG-IP ASM, visit customer success stories for FNZ, InCharge Institute, and Crédit Coopératif, listen to the podcast "Application Security: Fast and Easy," and check out the product page at www.f5.com/products/big-ip/product-modules/application-security-manager.html.

For a detailed list of categories and winners for the 2009 SC Awards, please visit www.scmagazineus.com/2009-Awards-Winners/section/945/.

2009-04-08 - F5's BIG-IP 8900 System Extends Market-Leading Application Delivery Controller Family:
New hardware platform enables enterprises and service providers to consolidate IT infrastructure, reducing costs and carbon footprint while increasing IT agility

SEATTLE, April 8, 2009 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today introduced the F5® BIG-IP® 8900 hardware platform, enabling organizations to integrate advanced ADN functionality and consolidate their IT infrastructures to reduce power, space, and cooling requirements, and the associated costs. With this new platform, large enterprises and service providers can support extremely high levels of application traffic and integrate advanced optimization and security capabilities. In addition, the 8900 hardware supports the new BIG-IP version 10 software, also announced today, providing an ideal platform to unify application and data delivery services.

"Today's IT departments are being asked to scale back their budgets and, at the same time, deploy new applications that will drive revenue and increase workforce efficiency," said Zeus Kerravala, SVP of Enterprise Research at Yankee Group. "IT is under tremendous pressure to lower operating costs while demonstrating immediate value for capital expenses. To succeed, IT organizations require flexible solutions that can consolidate legacy equipment and establish a forward-looking application delivery environment that can be aligned to business goals. Advanced Application Delivery Controllers like F5's BIG-IP solutions help support the changing demands of the business by optimizing the IT infrastructure."

With an extensive portfolio of advanced Application Delivery Controller hardware offerings, the award-winning BIG-IP product family helps organizations implement a dynamic application delivery infrastructure to minimize management and operations costs. Combined with F5's unified TMOS® architecture-which gives BIG-IP platforms total visibility, scalability, and control across all services-the new 8900 system provides customers with more options in incorporating ADN functionality (acceleration, high availability, application security, etc.) to customize their application delivery environments to meet the changing needs of their organizations.

"We originally chose F5 solutions for load balancing, but we found that by standardizing on the BIG-IP system, we could add security and optimization capabilities to our infrastructure as well," said Neil Manning, Head of IT Security & Infrastructure at FNZ, a financial services provider with operations in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. "From a budget and management perspective, by integrating advanced Application Delivery Controller functionality into a single device, we're able to consolidate our physical infrastructure while optimizing the network and applications our multinational clients depend on. F5's new 8900 is an ideal platform to unify application delivery services. With BIG-IP solutions, we can confidently and efficiently scale IT resources as we grow or as business priorities shift."

The new 8900 platform gives customers the power to:

Consolidate Infrastructure to Realize Cost Savings - With 12 Gb/s of L7 throughput, 58,000 SSL transactions per second, and 8 Gb/s of hardware compression, the 8900 enables the functional and physical consolidation of application delivery infrastructures, reducing management expenses and TCO. In addition, the new platform comes standard with Fast Cache®, IPv6 Gateway®, Rate Shaping, SSL Offload, and Intelligent Compression® features to help organizations maximize the value of their Application Delivery Controller investments without adding more appliances.

Optimize Web Applications to Boost Workforce Efficiency - Today's web applications require high-performance hardware to ensure availability and unified communication for users. With the performance capabilities of the BIG-IP 8900 system, organizations can optimize revenue-generating and collaborative applications to drive the business forward. The 8900 takes advantage of F5's unique Clustered Multiprocessing (CMP) technology to achieve more than 6x the performance of competitive offerings, helping organizations optimize their infrastructure without availability issues.

Scale to Support Evolving Business Drivers - Building on F5's unified TMOS architecture, the BIG-IP 8900 device gives organizations the ability to cost-effectively implement a viable ADN strategy and plan for future growth. In addition, the new platform supports simultaneous deployments of F5's BIG-IP WebAccelerator® and BIG-IP Application Security Manager® software modules, integrating security and optimization capabilities into organizations' application delivery infrastructure as required.

"In the current economic climate, enterprises, service providers, and other organizations are searching for ways to streamline their IT infrastructures through consolidation, virtualization, and cloud computing initiatives," said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. "F5's ADN solutions provide a flexible foundation capable of supporting a broad range of business initiatives, from infrastructure improvements and consolidation efforts to efficiently deploying and optimizing the applications users depend on. In combining industry-leading traffic processing capabilities with optimization, security, and acceleration services on a single device, F5's BIG-IP solutions enable customers to align IT with their business needs and integrate additional capabilities as budgets allow."

Availability
The BIG-IP 8900 hardware platform is available now. For more information on F5's BIG-IP solutions, please visit www.f5.com/products/hardware/big-ip.html.

2008-12-01 - F5 Positioned as Leader in File Virtualization Solutions:
Respected industry research firm report points to increased spending on file virtualization technology in 2008

SEATTLE, December 1, 2008 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that the company is positioned as the number one in-use file virtualization vendor for Fortune 1000 companies in a report recently released by technology research firm, TheInfoPro, Inc (TIP). The report indicated that file virtualization technology, such as F5's ARX family of file virtualization switches, is currently the top technology on TIP's In Use Expansion Index, which gauges changes in spending on already adopted technologies. According to the report, 55 percent of firms interviewed increased their file virtualization spending throughout 2008. 1

"File virtualization is a proven, cost-efficient way for large enterprise organizations to solve their most pressing data management problems," said Robert Stevenson, managing director of storage research for TheInfoPro. "The technology helps organizations solve critical problems such as managing storage growth and data mobility while controlling costs."

"Organizations are using F5's ARX file virtualization solutions to more efficiently manage their data, which is especially important during economically unstable times," said Nigel Burmeister, director of product marketing, F5 Data Solutions. "This technology enables companies to quickly implement critically important storage initiatives, like deduplication, backup optimization, and information lifecycle management, that cut storage-related costs and make more efficient use of existing assets. Companies around the world are reporting tremendous ROI savings."

F5 also received the highest promise and fulfillment scores in the Virtualization Market Window of Customer Ratings. The promise score measures the strength of a vendor's marketing "promises" based on customer ratings in the areas of Competitive Positioning, Technical Innovation, Management's Strategic Vision, and Brand/Reputation. The fulfillment score measures the degree to which the promises were met. This number is based on customer ratings in the areas of Value for the Money, Product Quality, Delivery as Promised, and Technical Support.

"As our organization grows, our storage and data management needs become more challenging," said James Sample, Director IT-Infrastructure, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. "F5 has allowed us to manage our massive data growth while dramatically cutting our storage costs, all without impacting our end users."

1TheInfoPro Storage Study, Wave 11, Fall 2008.

2008-10-08 - Foundry Networks' Stackable Solutions Scale The Intelligent Edge :
Enhanced 10GbE Access Switches with IronStack Stacking Technology Deliver Cost-Effective Solution for Network Growth with Ease of Single Switch Operation


SANTA CLARA, Calif. – (Oct. 8, 2008) – Foundry Networks®, Inc. (NASDAQ: FDRY), a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced the availability of the FastIron® GS-STK and FastIron LS-STK stackable Layer 2/3 switches using IronStackTM technology. In addition to these pre-configured models, a field-upgradeable IronStack upgrade kit with stacking ports is also available for existing FastIron GS and LS users who want the benefits of stacking. As part of the award-winning FastIron GS and FastIron LS Series 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) access switch families, the FastIron GS-STK and FastIron LS-STK models offer the benefits of "pay-as-you grow" scalability, ease of single switch operations, and low initial cost of a compact access switch. These new switches are designed for organizations that require a scalable and secure intelligent edge solution that offers the cost, size and ease of deployment advantages of fixed-configuration access switches.

Highlights of the new FastIron GS-STK and LS-STK switches featuring Foundry's® IronStack intelligent stacking technology include:

True "pay-as-you-grow" scalability
Increase or decrease port counts by simply adding or re-deploying switches in an IronStack stack
Flexibility to mix-and-match Power over Ethernet (PoE)-ready, PoE upgradeable and non-PoE switches in a single stack
Ready migration from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps, gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 10GbE
Upgradeable with IEEE 802.3af PoE for scalable IP phone and wireless AP deployments (limited to FastIron GS-STK models)
Flexible and resilient stacking operation
Cross-unit IEEE 802.3ad and static trunking for increased resilience
Hot insertion and removal of stacking units
Support for up to eight units in an IronStack configuration
Stack control automatically fails over to slave unit in event of master unit failure
Ease of management
A single IP address for the entire stack simplifying manageability
View and manage an IronStack configuration as a single entity via Foundry's IronView® Network Manager (INM)
Chassis-like operations and the benefits of Foundry's feature rich operating software
Scalable PoE with Full Class 3
Up to 384 PoE ports in FastIron GS-STK IronStack configuration
Full Class 3 PoE on all ports within a FastIron GS-STK IronStack using integral, redundant, serviceable, load sharing power supplies – this design helps reduce cost and rack space requirements by eliminating the need for external power supplies units
The FastIron GS-STK and FastIron LS-STK switches support a rich set of advanced Layer 2 Ethernet services, static routing and IGMP and MLD multicast snooping. To protect against network abuse and to control network access, Foundry leverages a robust suite of IronShield™ security capabilities including policy-based network access control, MAC-based VLANs, extended ACLs, MAC filters, denial of service protection, spanning tree protocol protection, embedded sFlow® traffic monitoring, IronShield 360 closed-loop threat mitigation and enhanced Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) compliance capabilities.

Additionally, the FastIron GS-STK and FastIron LS-STK switches support Base Layer 3 features for increased networking and configuration flexibility. Base Layer 3 features include static routing with RIP v1/v2 announcements, virtual and routed interfaces, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) relay and Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP). The switches will feature a de facto industry standard CLI for familiarity and ease of operations and will be manageable using Foundry's unified network management platform, INM.

"With the availability of the FastIron stackable edge switches, Foundry allows enterprise customers to deploy high-performance networking infrastructures with the initial cost advantage of fixed configuration access switch solutions," said Bob Schiff, vice president and general manager for Foundry's Enterprise Business Unit. "Foundry's IronStack stacking technology provides an advanced solution for building a secure and converged network for the intelligent edge that meets business needs today and is scalable for future growth and requirements."


About the FastIron LS-STK
The FastIron LS-STK switches are stackable Layer 2 switches that deliver enterprise-class security, wire-speed performance in a compact, one rack unit (1U) high and 12.92" deep form factor. The FastIron LS-STK switches are ideal for environments that require secure, high-performance 10/100/1000 Mbps endpoint connectivity, and the expandability and cost advantages of a stackable solution.


FastIron LS-STK Hardware Highlights
Compact 1U design for wiring closet, desktop and cabinet installations - 1.7" (height) x 17.3" (width) x 12.92" (depth)
Low power consumption: approximately 100 watts per stack unit
Low fan noise: less than 43 dBA per stack unit
Optional external redundant AC power supply unit powers up to four units
Modular and serviceable stacking modules
Optional 1-port 10GbE XFP module for high-bandwidth network connectivity
FastIron LS-STK Models
FastIron LS 624-STK (FLS624-STK) – 24-port 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ-45 with four 100/1000 Mbps SFP ports that support 100Mbps and 1000Mbps optics. Configured with two 10Gbps CX4 stacking ports. One slot available for 1-port 10GbE upgrade.
FastIron LS 648-STK (FLS648-STK) – 48-port 10/100/1000 Mbps with four 100/1000 Mbps SFP ports that support 100Mbps and 1000Mbps optics. Configured with two 10Gbps CX4 stacking ports.
About the FastIron GS-STK
The FastIron GS-STK switches are stackable Layer 2 switches that can be upgraded to support PoE for powering IP endpoints including IP phones, wireless LAN access points and IP surveillance cameras. These products are ideal for organizations looking for a scalable solution that offers the edge convergence features of a chassis, but in a stackable form.

FastIron GS-STK Hardware Highlights
Compact 1.5 U design for wiring closet and cabinet installations
All models are field upgradeable to PoE
Integral, hot-swappable load-sharing AC and DC power supplies
Low power consumption: 100 to 200 watts per stack unit depending on model and system configuration
Modular and serviceable 2-port stacking module
FastIron GS-STK Models
FastIron GS 624P-STK (FGS624P-STK) – 24-port 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ-45 with four 100/1000 Mbps SFP ports configurable with 100Mbps and 1000Mbps optics. Unit comes configured with two 10Gbps CX4 stacking ports and one AC power supply.
FastIron GS 624XGP-STK (FGS624XGP-STK) – 24-port 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ-45 with four 100/1000 Mbps SFP ports configurable with 100Mbps and 1000Mbps optics. Unit includes one integral 10GbE XFP port, two 10Gbps CX4 stacking ports and one AC power supply.
FastIron GS 648P-STK (FGS648P-STK) – 48-port 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ-45 with four 100/1000 Mbps SFP ports configurable with 100Mbps and 1000Mbps optics. Unit comes configured with two 10Gbps CX4 stacking ports and one AC power supply.
Each model includes one AC power supply. An optional second power supply may be ordered for redundancy and higher powered PoE requirements. AC and DC power supplies are available. Units are field upgradeable to support PoE using pluggable PoE DIMM modules.

2008-10-08 - F5 Expands Data Solutions Portfolio with Powerful New Hardware and Software Products:
New offerings add 10 gigabit Ethernet capability, new high performance platform, and enhanced data management

SEATTLE, October 6, 2008 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced it has expanded its Data Solutions portfolio with the new F5® ARX®4000 and Data Manager solutions. ARX4000 is the latest addition to F5's award-winning intelligent file virtualization platforms, and the industry's first solution to support 10 gigabit Ethernet. F5 Data Manager gives customers granular visibility into their file storage environments, including usage patterns and trends, which can be used to identify areas of potential optimization and cost savings through the use of intelligent file virtualization technology as well as storage planning.
F5's intelligent file virtualization systems simplify the management of large unstructured storage environments-enabling automated tiering or information lifecycle management, reducing backup complexity, and significantly reducing both operating and capital expenses. Customers who have implemented intelligent file virtualization report reductions in cost of 80 percent in many cases. With F5, organizations can apply powerful automated policies that simplify data access and movement, optimize the use of existing storage resources, and share files across heterogeneous storage devices.
"The creation and archiving of unstructured information is having a dramatic impact on organizations' storage environments, with many IT executives coming to the realization that managing such file-based, unstructured data will become the primary task for many storage administrators in their data centers," said Richard Villars, Vice President of Storage Systems Research at IDC. "File virtualization solutions like F5's ARX4000 provide an effective way to tackle the issues of managing large heterogeneous file storage environments while minimizing disruptions in existing environments."
The ARX4000 enhances the existing ARX portfolio of file virtualization products, which includes the entry level ARX500, the mid-range ARX1000, and the high-end ARX6000. The ARX4000 provides global namespace and data management policies through an operating system common across all ARX models.
Data Manager is a software product that interfaces directly with all file storage devices, including ARX file virtualization platforms. Data Manager gathers valuable file storage statistics and provides graphical reporting and trending functions to give users clear visibility into their constantly changing data storage environments, helping them respond to business needs and better plan for future growth.
Deployment benefits of the new ARX4000 and Data Manager solutions include:
Scalability and flexibility
ARX solutions give customers the ability to implement data management policies, enabling them to tailor and scale storage virtualization environments to meet business needs. The ARX4000 supports 10 gigabit Ethernet and offers best-in-class scale and performance, supporting up to two billion files per device, and enabling enterprise data centers to roll out next-generation infrastructures.
File infrastructure visibility
Data Manager provides a holistic view of virtualized file storage environments to help organizations more efficiently and transparently manage virtualized and non-virtualized file storage environments.
Enhanced reporting and trending capabilities
With the Data Manager product, organizations gain granular insight into how their data storage requirements are changing over time-including what types of files are being created, who's creating them, and what storage resources they're consuming-enabling organizations to proactively address new challenges and plan for future needs rather than slowing down the business to gather trending information.
"This launch underscores F5's commitment to provide customers with the market's most advanced network and data management capabilities that give enterprises the necessary tools to maintain a flexible, adaptable, yet highly cost-efficient IT infrastructure," said Nigel Burmeister, Director of Product Marketing at F5. "With the addition of the ARX4000, F5 offers the broadest portfolio of file virtualization solutions on the market to address the data management needs of a wide range of IT organizations, including the largest global enterprises. The insight provided by the new Data Manager product enables customers to quickly recognize infrastructure or operational problem areas and take a forward-looking approach to managing their evolving data storage environments."
For more information on F5 file virtualization solutions, please visit www.f5.com/solutions/virtualization/file/.
Availability
Both the ARX4000 and Data Manager are available today.

2008-10-06 - F5's FirePass Solution Simplifies Secure Access Management for Enterprises and Enhances User Experience:
New product release reinforces F5's vision and commitment to provide optimized access to corporate resources; enhances support for the Apple iPhone, Windows Mobile, and other popular mobile devices

SEATTLE, October 6, 2008 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced a new version of its award-winning FirePass® SSL VPN (Secure Sockets Layer Virtual Private Network) solution. With FirePass, enterprises can manage employee and external access to business applications, keep mobile users connected, and enforce compliance with strict HIPAA, PCI, and GLBA requirements.
"Making access to corporate information flexible and simple is key for enterprises struggling to manage and secure mobile workforces," said Jeff Wilson, Principal Analyst at Infonetics Research. "There isn't a single access policy that fits every situation, so vendors need to provide customers with a choice of templates to suit their particular policy and access requirements, and the flexibility to modify templates as needed. This is particularly critical for evolving corporate governance and compliance mandates."
To ensure compliance and ease of management, the FirePass solution now offers an industry-first combination of Windows Group Policy enforcement with pre-defined templates that enable customers to extend Active Directory (AD) Group Policy to non-domain endpoints. For mobile users, FirePass features improved support for popular mobile devices such as the iPhone and Windows Mobile handsets. iPhone users can sync their email, calendar, and contacts directly to the corporate MS Exchange server via FirePass and the ActiveSync protocol.
"Traditionally, performance can take a hit whenever new security solutions are introduced," said Sebastian K. Sullivan, Manager, Information Security & Computer Operations at Southern Illinois Healthcare, a not-for-profit healthcare system. "FirePass enabled us to offer secure access to our users without limiting application performance or tying access to specific client devices."
As an SSL VPN secure access solution, FirePass provides browser-based access to corporate applications, networks, and information. FirePass enforces policies to ensure all devices that access corporate information adhere to a company's individual security standards.
Highlights of the new FirePass solution include:
Extended and enhanced policy enforcement and security to non-trusted devices - With Windows Group Policy enforcement, FirePass' Visual Policy Editor enables network administrators to conveniently provide authenticated, encrypted, and policy-based access to all authorized users accessing corporate resources. Group policies can be pushed to devices not part of an enterprise's AD domain, a unique capability of FirePass. This provides a consistent method of applying policies from the enterprise to remote devices not part of AD, including roaming laptop users, branch office machines, and kiosks, and affords customers convenient interoperability with existing infrastructure. FirePass now offers optional Group Policy executable templates, including those for PCI, HIPAA, and GLBA.
Broadest support for application and client access - To maximize customer value, FirePass has broadened its support for applications and clients, including enhanced support for Mac and Linux environments. FirePass has support for accessing any IP-based application in the enterprise network and offers the broadest multi-platform support for secure SSL VPN network access when compared to IPsec (Internet Protocol security) products.
Convenient, secure access for mobile users - FirePass supports an increased number of end-user devices including iPhone and Windows Mobile clients, granting users secure access to business information from anywhere. By enhancing access to corporate materials for mobile and remote users, organizations can extend application access beyond the traditional corporate domain.
"The challenge of providing secure access as business, security, and compliance requirements change has prompted a number of enterprises to deploy SSL VPN solutions over IPsec alternatives," said Jason Needham, Sr. Director of Product Management at F5. "Today, enterprises require a secure access solution that not only addresses remote users and those on the LAN, but supports all types of wired and wireless connections. With FirePass, F5 enables customers to simplify management for all types of users. F5's policy-based approach delivers the flexibility that enterprises need to securely make corporate data and applications available to employees-without sacrificing performance or convenience."
Availability
The new version of the FirePass SSL VPN solution is available now. Existing F5 customers with current FirePass maintenance agreements and hardware platforms can take advantage of all the capabilities included in the new release. The Group Policy feature is available as an add-on license, with templates included.
For more information on FirePass, please visit www.f5.com/products/firepass/.

2008-09-17 - Foundry's New Series Of Intelligent Edge Switches Offers Broadest Solution For Secure And Unified Convergence:
FastIron WS Series Delivers Secure Convergence in Power-Efficient Family of 10/100 Mbps and 10/100/1000 Mbps Edge Switches

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and NEW YORK – (Sept. 17, 2008) – Foundry Networks®, Inc. (NASDAQ: FDRY), a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced the FastIron™ WS Series of one rack unit (1RU) fixed form factor Layer 2/3 switches. Available in eight models, including Power over Ethernet (PoE) models, and field upgradeable to Layer 3 routing, the FastIron WS (FWS) Series is one of the most complete family of compact convergence-ready Layer 2/3 switches in the industry. The FastIron WS Series expands Foundry's® intelligent edge portfolio with a product family designed for small and medium businesses (SMB), branch offices and large distributed enterprises. The FastIron WS switches are available as 24- and 48-port 10/100 or 10/100/1000 Mbps models. Each switch model is orderable with or without Power over Ethernet (PoE). FastIron WS series PoE switches support the IEEE 802.3af standard for delivering up to 12.95 watts of power to an Ethernet endpoint. The standards-based PoE is a popular method for powering network endpoints such as Voice over IP (VoIP) equipment, video surveillance cameras and wireless LAN access points.

The FastIron WS Series switches are built for environments in which space, power and and fan noise are important deployment considerations. Designed for reduced power consumption, the FastIron WS series is one of the industry's most power efficient family of Layer 2/3 edge switches enabling operators to save on energy costs without compromising performance or functionality. The FastIron WS compact design (4.3 cm x 44 cm x 35 cm, HxWxD) is well-suited for sites in which installation space is limited. Additionally, the switches' low fan noise will be attractive in environments that require low ambient noise.

The FastIron FWS series switches are built on a wire-speed hardware architecture and support Foundry's extensive suite of embedded security and advanced Layer 2 networking services. For added network flexibility, the FastIron WS switches support an upgrade option for edge Layer 3 routing (RIP and OSPF). This combination of performance and intelligence makes the FastIron WS Series a compelling network access solution for both enterprise and service provider customers.

For the enterprise, the FastIron WS Series provides cost-effective network access for desktops, servers, workstations, wireless LAN networks and other Ethernet connected endpoints. To simplify operations in VoIP environments, the FastIron WS supports IEEE 802.1ab LLDP and ANSI TIA 1057 LLDP-MED, enabling organizations to build standards-based and interoperable best-of-breed networks. Additionally, the FastIron WS is available with IEEE 802.3af Power over Ethernet for powering next-generation IP devices such as VoIP handsets, wireless LAN access points, and IP video cameras.

Extending beyond the enterprise, the FastIron WS series can be used in metro area environments with features that include Foundry's Metro Ring Protocol (MRP) for building resilient ring-based topologies, VLAN stacking and advanced multicast capabilities including Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and MLD v1/v2 snooping for controlling multicast traffic in content distribution applications.

The FastIron WS Series features embedded hardware-based sFlow traffic monitoring providing a powerful tool for an array of security, accounting and network engineering purposes. FastIron WS Series switches support a suite of security features including DHCP snooping and dynamic ARP inspection to prevent address spoofing and man-in-the-middle attacks, rate limiting, protection against TCP and ICMP denial of service (DoS) attacks, and standards-based network access control (NAC) with multi-endpoint authentication. Additionally, spanning tree Root Guard and BPDU guard protect the network topology from protocol-level attacks.

"Foundry continues to expand its networking solutions with the introduction of the FastIron WS Series," said Steven J. Schuchart Jr., principal analyst, Current Analysis. "This product allows Foundry to extend its enterprise switching portfolio to cover additional segments of the market and allows customers greater flexibility."

Key Features Include:

Compact 1RU, high-performance 24-port and 48-port 10/100 and 10/100/1000 Mbps base models and 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) models
Each model supports four combination RJ45/SFP Gigabit Ethernet ports for high-capacity aggregation
Industry-leading power efficiency for Layer 2/3 switches (e.g., 35 watts for FWS 624 model)
Wire-speed Layer 2/3 hardware forwarding
IPv4/IPv6 management access and advanced Layer 2 Ethernet switching and high-availability features including VSRP, VRRP, Voice VLAN, DHCP-based auto-configuration and Metro Ring Protocol (MRP)
Field upgradeable to edge Layer 3 routing supporting RIP, OSPF and equal cost multipath routing (ECMP)
Robust suite of security capabilities including extended ACLs, MAC filters, TCP SYN and ICMP denial of service protection, DHCP snooping and Dynamic ARP Inspection, spanning tree BPDU guard and root guard, unknown unicast, broadcast and multicast rate limiting and enhanced Lawful Intercept compliance features
Advanced hardware-based Quality of Service (QoS) architecture supports multiple traffic queues and combined strict priority and weighted round robin scheduling for dependable and high-quality network convergence
Open and standards-based network access control featuring multi-host 802.1X access control, multi-device MAC authentication and policy-controlled MAC-based VLANs
IronShield 360 intrusion protection delivers complete, dynamic and real-time protection from network and host-based attacks
Concurrent port mirroring and hardware-based sFlow traffic sampling enable network-wide traffic monitoring for traffic accounting, intrusion detection, 802.1X identity monitoring, link utilization and fault isolation
"Foundry continues to extend its leadership in delivering intelligent solutions for convergence and security at the network edge," said Bob Schiff, vice president and general manager for Foundry's Enterprise Business Unit. "The FastIron WS Series provides our customers with compelling solutions for the network edge with an array of compact and power-efficient switch models.


The FastIron WS Series brings a powerful and proven feature set to a market segment that will benefit from Foundry's ability to deliver enhanced networking solutions throughout the organization."

2008-09-08 - F5 Networks Integration with Microsoft Offerings Delivers Optimum IT Foundation for a Dynamic Virtualized Environment:
F5 solutions support Microsoft System Center and new Hyper-V server virtualization solution; Provide "network awareness" for a highly efficient virtualized environment

SEATTLE, September 8, 2008 - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced its support of Microsoft's Get Virtual Now launch event. Through tightly coupled integration efforts, F5 and Microsoft's solutions together enable organizations to unlock the power of a comprehensive virtualized ecosystem--from the data center to the desktop.
"As customers seek to reduce costs while improving the dynamic nature of their IT infrastructures through virtualization, coupling that desire with the availability of Microsoft's broad offerings spanning the desktop, data center, and management will enable them to accelerate the adoption of virtualization technologies," said David Greschler, Director of Integrated Virtualization Strategy, Microsoft Corp. "F5's integration with the System Center management offerings will provide our mutual customers greater visibility into the network and the ability to respond to changing network conditions to help maximize their virtualization investments."
Microsoft's virtualization strategy and F5® solutions work in tandem to provide a comprehensive and dynamic infrastructure framework, giving joint customers the IT agility to adapt to varying network and business conditions. With solutions from Microsoft and F5, organizations can now integrate virtualization technologies into their infrastructures to cut costs and improve performance, while maintaining the manageability and familiarity of their legacy IT environments.
"In a virtualized IT environment, effective resource management becomes the most critical pain point," said Zeus Kerravala, Senior Vice President of Global Enterprise Research at Yankee Group. "With Microsoft providing familiar interfaces and common management consoles for customers to implement virtualization technologies, the network becomes an extremely powerful tool in connecting users to the best-performing resources. F5's strategic position in the network, together with their integration with Microsoft's System Center portfolio, enables them to provide significant performance and optimization benefits for customers seeking to implement an end-to-end virtualization strategy."
Deploying F5 solutions within Microsoft's virtualization framework enables customers to:
Gain essential visibility into the network - F5 provides tested deployment guidance for Microsoft System Center, delivering the "network awareness" necessary to maximize the advantages of virtualized environments without sacrificing network or application performance. Optimize end-user experience through network flexibility - The F5 Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, an add-on software module available in the first half of CY09, enables Operations Manager to monitor and respond to changing network conditions in real time, optimizing the use of network resources and easing the management of Microsoft virtualization environments. And F5's PowerShell-enabled iControl® API allows System Center to proactively and dynamically modify the network to ensure the best end-user experience. Leverage storage virtualization to scale IT environments - As a key component of Microsoft's virtualization ecosystem, storage virtualization enables customers to manage and access their data in virtualized environments. The F5 Acopia® ARX® solution provides unique virtualized storage capabilities that create an intelligent abstraction layer between users and disk, allowing customers to more efficiently leverage storage investments and scale their infrastructures. "Organizations adopt virtualization solutions to dynamically migrate their server, application, storage, and desktop resources into a fluid IT environment that ensures optimal use of IT resources at all times," said Jim Ritchings, VP of Business Development at F5. "To truly take advantage of the performance gains offered by virtualization, it's essential that the network supporting these virtualized resources be dynamic as well. F5 solutions enable the network to perform in lockstep with application services and make sure that users are always seamlessly directed to the most available and best-performing resources."

2008-09-08 - Foundry Enhances Virtualization In The Data Center With Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V:
Foundry's Industry-Leading Edge-to-Core Data Center Networking Solutions Enable Enterprises to Reap the Benefits of Virtualization

SANTA CLARA, Calif.– (Sept. 8, 2008) – Foundry Networks®, Inc. (NASDAQ: FDRY), a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced its data center switching and application delivery solutions expand virtualization with Microsoft Windows Sever 2008 Hyper-V. Foundry's® award-winning Layer 2/3 switches and Layer 4-7 application delivery switches complement Microsoft's virtualization software to create industry-leading data center efficiency and business value across the board.

A key benefit of virtualization is the efficiency and productivity aspect with the ability to reduce data center power, space, and cooling requirements while retaining the high network performance to handle mission-critical applications and traffic. Foundry is a networking leader in developing products from the ground-up with the industry's best-in-class power efficiency without compromising performance by optimizing power consumed for each gigabit of actual performance. Foundry's data center solutions deliver the highest density chassis designs that optimize rack space with a smaller footprint and collapse server connectivity within the data center into fewer devices, drastically reducing power consumption, lowering cooling