AX SeriesCase Studies: Taobao
Accelerating the User Experience for China's Largest Online Retail Site
Launched in 2003, Taobao (owned by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.) is the largest Internet retail and trading website in China, servicing nearly 100 million registered users. More than 1.5 million sellers have stores on Taobao.com, offering users comprehensive product offerings as the primary online shopping destination for the largest online population in the world. Annual transaction volume on Taobao reached almost $15 billion in 2008, equaling approximately one percent of China's total retail trade.
Taobao's operations are supported by over 10,000 servers concentrated in a handful of data centers, along with many content delivery network (CDN) sites. The data centers support web browsing and e-commerce transactions for Taobao's users.
Taobao has a highly scalable network architecture. Hundreds of applications (mainly web based) are deployed in the main data centers, while its CDNs serve large images from regional locations, improving load times. Linux, Apache, Squid and other open source products run in the application layer, and mature commercial products run at the network layer. The infrastructure is designed to ensure quick deployment and expansion of the entire business system as required.
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Taobao is the largest Internet retail website in the world with multiple data centers and content delivery network (CDN) sites. When rapid business growth necessitated increased Layer 4-7 performance to meet its first-class service requirements, Taobao upgraded its mission-critical server load balancer infrastructure: We were impressed with the higher Layer 4 and Layer 7 performance that A10's AX Series deliver versus the existing systems. This enables operational efficiency by allowing us to consolidate from two platforms into one. The AX Series met our business requirements not only with performance, but also with stability, scalability and tremendous value. With the AX Series, we not only ensure a fast user experience, but also lower our cost per transaction. Cao Yi Feng, Operation Director for Taobao |
AX Series: Advanced Application Delivery Controller
Server Load Balancing is the key solution in Taobao's data center and CDN sites to achieve network stability, scalability and reliability. With nearly 100 million registered users and growing, data center traffic can be taxing on the network and application servers. To better handle traffic surges and volume growth, and to ensure that the site is always available for users, Taobao began researching new load balancing options. They needed a solution that not only can handle the rapidly increasing load on Layer 4 services in the data center, but also can provide better Layer 7 performance to accommodate the demands on the CDN and its nodes.
In Taobao's previous data center deployment, the old systems could not provide the required high performance at Layer 7 and were aging and unstable. After evaluating A10's AX Series and as well as newer models from incumbent vendors, the Taobao.com IT team concluded the AX's Layer 4-7 performance was much higher than the other vendors', enough to meet Taobao's network needs, and decided to make the transition to AX Series.
Taobao initially purchased and deployed more than 30 units of the most advanced AX Series platform along with 6 mid-range units. Both models include Flexible Traffic ASICs, which move functions into the hardware for the highest performance, freeing the main CPUs for advanced processing. In the data centers, the AX Series perform core Layer 4 server load balancing and reliability services such as session synchronization with High Availability and DDoS protection. In the CDN sites, the AX Series deliver Layer 7 server load balancing and application acceleration services such as connection reuse and URL- hashing to ensure the fastest user experience.
The key deciding factors for Taobao to upgrade to A10's AX Series were higher performance at Layer 4 and Layer 7, better value for money, as all features are included without additional licensing fees, and superior stability. Due to AX's industry-leading performance, Taobao was able to install two systems for every four they had deployed in the past, translating to a 2:1 data center consolidation ratio and equivalent operational efficiency. In addition, A10 delivered outstanding technical support and services that ensured rapid deployment into Taobao's data centers and CDN.
Success: Faster, Better, Greener
The AX Series enables Taobao to meet the different Layer 4 and Layer 7 requirements for its data centers and CDN. Powered by the AX Series' high performance, flexibility and scalability, Taobao is able to quickly deliver new services that accelerate business expansion and reach more and more end users. All features and performance capacity are included in the platform without additional charges, guaranteeing maximum headroom for growth to add features, and lower cost of ownership. By transitioning to the AX Series, Taobao not only ensures a faster and better end user experience, but also lowers the cost of each transaction. Savings are further compounded by a 2:1 server load balancer consolidation ratio in the data centers, saving power and space for a greener solution.
Taobao's Distributed AX Series Deployment
Data Center AX Series Key Solutions:
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Content Delivery Network (CDN) AX Series Key Solutions:
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About AX Series
A10 Networks' AX Series is the industry's best price/performance advanced traffic manager - helping enterprises and ISPs maximize application availability through a high-performance and scalable web Application Delivery platform. The AX's Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS) architecture has garnered the company numerous awards and is revolutionary by market standards due to its scalable symmetrical multiprocessing (SSMP), shared memory architecture. AX includes an optimized multi-CPU architecture built from the ground up that leaps the competition in terms of performance, scalability and reliability. For more information, visit: www.a10networks.com/products/axseries
About A10 Networks
A10 Networks was founded in 2004 with a mission to provide innovative networking and security solutions. A10 Networks makes high-performance products that help organizations accelerate, optimize and secure their applications. A10 Networks is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan. For more information, visit: www.a10networks.com