Application Delivery Controllers

Advanced Load Balancers for Developers: ADCs - The Code For me, as a developer, the big differentiator between a Load Balancer and an Application Delivery Controller (ADC) is the ability to use code to help manage how my application and the network interact. Some things you just can’t do from your application because by the time your application knows it should be doing something, it’s too late, some things are just easier done on a network device (yeah, or a VM pretending to be a network device if your name is Izzy ;-)). Note that by far my experience is with F5 products, it’s my job to know... posted @ Friday, July 17, 2009 10:26 AM | Feedback (0)

Advanced Load Balancing for Developers – ADCs, What’s the Difference? So a while back I covered Load Balancing for Developers, trying to help developers  who don’t yet have exposure to load balancing to understand the when/where/how of load balancing.  I took a bit of a break to do some BIG-IP/TMOS V.10 work, and figure it’s about time (since I’ve been gently prodded by readers a couple of times) to move on with the advanced applications. But first, a moment of silence for Borland, who this time surely is breathing its last. I’ll try not to reminisce too much here, but their DOS IDE was the best out... posted @ Tuesday, July 07, 2009 8:32 AM | Feedback (5)

v.10 - New iControl Interfaces. For those who missed it, we’re in the middle of the IT Revolution lead by our v.10 release of TMOS and our new 8900 model. Due to all the great stuff to talk about in the new version of TMOS, I have put off the Load Balancing for Developers and Reasons You Need File Virtualization series on hold for this week, and possibly next. Then I’ll hop back on them and we’ll explore ADCs for Developers and more Reasons You Need File Virtualization. As part of the revolution, you need more control. Or iControl, as the case may... posted @ Thursday, April 09, 2009 12:05 AM | Feedback (2)

Intro to Load Balancing for Developers – The Algorithms   If you’re new to this series, you can find the complete list of articles in the series on my personal page here If you are writing applications to sit behind a Load Balancer, it behooves you to at least have a clue what the algorithm your load balancer uses is about. We’re taking this week’s installment to just chat about the most common algorithms and give a plain- programmer description of how they work. While historically the algorithm chosen is both beyond the developers’ control, you’re the one that has to deal with performance problems, so you should know what is... posted @ Tuesday, March 31, 2009 11:02 PM | Feedback (3)

Intro to Load Balancing for Developers – How they work So last time we were talking about when and why you might implement load balancing – either with a dedicated load balancer, or with a full-blown Application Delivery Controller (ADC). This time we’ll briefly run over what a load balancer does and how it does it. If you’re just now joining us, the first blog in this series can be found here: Intro to Load Balancing for Developers – the Architects View. Note that this is a very high level overview, but the end of the article includes links to other articles that offer you more detail... posted @ Tuesday, March 17, 2009 8:16 PM | Feedback (6)

Intro Load Balancing for Developers – the Architect’s View Okay, there are a zillion bits about load balancing including introductions and articles for developers, but I’m throwing this out in a blog format so we can be more chatty and less “instructional”. To that end, I’ll be a lot more laid back than what you’re used to reading on the topic, but the whole point of this (and any follow-on) blogs is to get you to understand rather than just know load balancing. If you already understand, join me, there’s a comment form below, tell the other readers what I’ve missed or understated. So you’ve built... posted @ Wednesday, March 11, 2009 9:50 PM | Feedback (1)