AX Series: VirtualN

Web Application Delivery Demands

Networks are constantly changing in response to evolving application delivery needs. Bandwidth-greedy applications such as video on-demand and other multi-media application services need very high throughputs. Portals and online transactions need very high Layer 4/Layer 7 connections per second/transactions per second and very large session capacities. eCommerce sites require very high SSL performance. Application Delivery services require very high uptimes and fault tolerance.

Customers must fulfill all of these needs while at the same time reducing total cost of ownership and meeting tight power and space budgets. As the focal point for meeting all of these diverse demands, server load balancers are one of the most critical elements of application networking.

To fulfill these Application Delivery demands, customers up to now have had two choices:

With redundant chassis-based systems, customers incur the cost of electricity, space and equipment today for tomorrow's bandwidth expansion. With multiple pairs of redundant stackable load balancers, there are significant management costs and challenges for increasing numbers of devices.

A10 Networks developed VirtualN – an innovative Web Application Delivery on demand solution – to address these issues.

VirtualN – Web Application Delivery Scaling on Demand

VirtualN is the industry's first solution to satisfy the demands of Web Application Delivery customers, by meeting growing performance and throughput requirements without requiring chassis-based systems or stackable load balancers.

With VirtualN, multiple AX Series devices act as a single Virtual Load Balancer. Customers can start with as few as two AX Series devices in a VirtualN (Virtual Load Balancer) configuration and add more devices as their application demands grow. A total of up to 8 AX's can be used in the VirtualN solution. With VirtualN, customers can provision a single Virtual IP across multiple devices, or provision multiple virtual IPs across multiple devices. The VirtualN devices automatically distribute the load among themselves to provide extremely high performance and resiliency.

VirtualN leverages the Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS) architecture inherent in all A10 AX Series devices. ACOS makes AX Series the industry's first server load balancer platform that is tuned for modern multi-core CPU systems to realize the performance benefits of modern hardware architectures. With AX's new VirtualN capability combined with ACOS, customers no longer need to purchase large, expensive chassis-based systems or multiple pairs of high-end load balancers to meet increasing Web application scalability and availability needs.

Benefits

Total Performance Scalability:
All aspects of performance scale near-linearly with the addition of more AX devices. VirtualN scales throughput and performance for all applications.

High Availability:
Extremely high availability is achieved by using two or more devices. If any VirtualN device fails or is offline for maintenance, the traffic will transfer seamlessly to the remaining devices.

Flexibility:
Customers have a great deal of flexibility in choosing topologies, networking modes and features.

Manageability:
With VirtualN, the AX devices can be managed as a single Virtual Load Balancer for all application management needs.

Reduced Total Cost of Ownership:
VirtualN provides the most cost effective “green” solution on the market. Each AX device is a 2U (2 rack-unit) device. This configuration provides:


VirtualN Performance Chart

AX Series Devices with VirtualN 1 * 2 * 4 * 8
L4 CPS 540K 1 Million 2 Million 4 Million
L4 Throughput 8.6 Gbps 17 Gbps 34 Gbps 68 Gbps
L7 TPS 1.5 Million 2 Million 4 Million 8 Million
L7 Throughput 8.7 Gbps 17 Gbps 34 Gbps 68 Gbps
SSL TPS 50K 100K 200K 400K
SSL Throughput 2 Gbps 4 Gbps 8 Gbps 16 Gbps
Compression Throughput 3 Gbps 6 Gbps 12 Gbps 24 Gbps
Ram Caching TPS 850K 1.6 Million 3.2 Million 6.4 Million
Ram Caching Throughput 10 Gbps 20 Gbps 40 Gbps 80 Gbps
Syn-cookie PPS 9.2 Million 12 Million 24 Million 24 Million
Session Capacity 8 Million 16 Million 32 Million 64 Million

Sample Application Diagram - Video Delivery with Network Address Translation (NAT)


  • 4 AX 3200s
  • Single Virtual IP (VIP)
  • Multiple Video Servers
  • Source Network Address Translation (NAT)
  • Asymmetric Traffic Characteristics
  • Incoming - up to 2G
  • Outgoing - up to 32G


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