A10 Networks deployed its own AX Series equipment and features to rapidly enable the corporate IPv6 website at no additional cost
A key advantage for A10 is the AX Series' ability to handle multiple, diverse, deployment scenarios, from native IPv6 traffic to Server Load Balancing Protocol Translation (SLB-PT), ensuring maximum flexibility.
The AX offers a standard ADC/SLB feature set; choice of ADC, however, was not the only deployment consideration. Importantly, IPv6 connectivity, which in effect refers to the ability to obtain an IPv6 address and enter the corresponding IPv6 DNS AAAA (“Quad A”) record, versus a traditional DNS A record, needed to be addressed.
To obtain IPv6 connectivity and a dedicated IPv6 address, A10 checked with two Service Providers to see whether either one could offer IPv6 connectivity. It turned out that the first provider did not offer IPv6 connectivity, and was unable to provide an estimate for availability. The second Service Provider initially stated it was possible to provide IPv6 connectivity, but it then transpired that the IPv6 connectivity would not become available until Q2/Q3 of the following year...
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Bentley University makes Oracle Web Portal more responsive with application acceleration
Bentley University, located in Waltham, MA, is one of the nation's leading business schools, with a focus on preparing business leaders with deep technical skills, a broad global perspective and high ethical standards. Students interested in business professions choose from a wide range of programs that address all functional areas including accountancy, finance,
marketing, management and liberal arts - all anchored in technology.
Leading by example, Bentley University relies on state-of-the-art
technology to assist its students and faculty with research, communication
and other learning management systems. Bentley deployed an Oracle
Web Portal so that students and faculty have access to all applications at
anytime, and anywhere.
To load balance its data center servers that power its enterprise-wide
applications, Bentley previously utilized F5's BIG-IP appliances in its data
center. However, when the IT department established an initiative to make
the Oracle Web Portal more responsive, the project became expensive.
Bentley wanted to add Web Caching and SSL Off-load features to the BIG-IPs
to alleviate the load on the servers, but F5 required expensive licenses
for these features. So the University evaluated alternative solutions from
A10, Citrix (NetScaler) and Zeus, finally selecting A10's AX Series
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)...
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Box.net makes Cloud Computing service faster by increasing performance for LAMP stack
Box.net provides lightweight, secure and scalable online collaboration services with over two million users. To keep its LAMP stack running, a cost-effective, high performance server load balancer platform was required. Box.net chose two AX 2100 server load balancers in a High Availability (HA) pair...
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Brainshark sought a replacement server load balancing solution when its previous solution had reached end of life
Brainshark, launched in 1999, is a software as a service (SaaS) provider that allows customers to access its unique business communications platform. Brainshark's customers can upload previously created presentations, such as Microsoft PowerPoint® files, to the company's Website. At
that point, Brainshark converts the files into an online video presentation format (that's also mobile-ready), and the customer can then choose to add audio narration to the presentation. Once the presentation is finished, the customer can share the video with an audience, and those viewers can then watch the presentation anytime and anywhere - on their computer, iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, or other smartphones...
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Buienradar needed a load balancer replacement to meet its unique network demands
In considering their distributed network with geographically separate data centers, Buienradar needed a new generation server load balancer capable of providing Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB). The new appliance would also need to offer higher throughput than the legacy load balancers. Another criterion that would affect the company's purchasing decision was the impending depletion of IPv4 addresses. As more and more end users migrate to the IPv6 protocol, Buienradar's goal was to be ready to meet the needs of this small but growing number of IPv6 clients....
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Certified General Accountants of Ontario Load Balances SharePoint, Exchange and Blackboard applications
CGA Ontario represents more than 19,000 CGAs and 9,000 students. With internal and external users accessing enterprise applications such as SharePoint, Exchange and Blackboard, CGA required a high-performance server load balancer platform, at an affordable price.
Through a Web search for high-performance server load balancers, CGA Ontario
discovered several news articles on A10's AX Series, highlighting twice the performance at half the price of comparable solutions. The extreme value proposition removed other solutions from consideration. CGA Ontario contacted A10, set up the install, noticed the performance improvements immediately and purchased the AX Series...
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Club One boosts performance for streaming video to fitness centers and partners
Club One is an award-winning fitness and wellness provider, with fitness centers across California and wellness programs throughout the United States and Canada. With streaming video and other critical applications to fitness center and partner locations, Club One required a flexible load balancer for Web Application Delivery.
After evaluating and researching solutions, and upon the recommendation of Silicon Valley based reseller VARiable Path, Club One chose three AX 2000 next-generation server load balancers. Two AXs are deployed in the data center in a High Availability (HA) pair configuration. One AX is deployed at the corporate office for Disaster Recovery (DR)...
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Code Ready gains essential flexibility with aFleX Layer 7 scripting
Code Ready Solutions is a team of technology professionals comprised of consultants, researchers, programmers, graphic designers, animators, system engineers, quality assurance teams, project managers and business analysts who in collaboration engineer technology solutions for companies and organizations across the globe.
Code Ready maintains a server farm to conduct business and often runs multiple Websites on the same server with the same IP address. To ensure its servers are always performing and available, Code Ready required a high-performance server load balancing solution. Upon the recommendation of Value Added Reseller (VAR) DataLink Associates Corp., Code Ready selected A10's AX Series server
load balancers due to essential fl exibility gained by aFleX technology and the industry leading price/performance...
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CRC Health Group ensures Outlook Web Access is always available
CRC Health Group is the largest provider of specialized behavioral health care services in the U.S., treating more than 30,000 patients each day. CRC has 145 facilities with staff located across the U.S.
CRC provides its staff with Microsoft Outlook Web Access so that its users can access email anywhere and anytime when they are off-site, or on site but not at their own terminal. To ensure that Outlook Web Access is always available and responsive, CRC deployed A10's AX Series server load balancers to balance the load...
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Earth Class Mail deploys SSL encryption/re-encryption for AJAX-powered Web mail applications
Earth Class Mail required a new server load balancer solution to load-balance the Web servers that run the business-critical AJAX-powered Web mail applications. The AJAX Web applications are high-volume with millions of XML formatted messages passed daily.
Given the requirement for privacy and protection of personal information in its online postal-mail service, Earth Class Mail needed a load balancer that can encrypt and re-encrypt SSL on the backend. Because its previous load balancer could not perform the SSL encryption/re-encryption, Earth Class Mail compared competitors' products and selected A10's AX Series server load balancers. The SSL functionality combined with the industry-leading price/performance and support were key competitive differentiators for the AX Series...
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FFF Enterprises increases performance and flexibility for online vaccine purchasing application
FFF Enterprises delivers the nation's first online vaccine portal, MyFluVaccine. A10's AX Series provides FFF Enterprises with a highperformance server load balancing platform to ensure MyFluVaccine is always performing and available.
FFF Enterprises selected A10's AX 2100 Advanced Traffic Manager as it delivers all the required features to ensure the MyFluVaccine(TM) portal performs as desired, especially during peak usage conditions. The key AX Series features that FFF Enterprises leverages include Layer 4-7 server load balancing, SSL acceleration/offload, application persistence and aFleX for advanced scripting...
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Florence County accelerated clustered VMware environment and SQL server cluster
Florence County provides information and applications to 3 million viewers a month. To optimize and accelerate its virtualized server clusters, a cost-effective, fast and very feature rich server load balancer platform was essential. Florence County chose two AX 2100s in a High Availability (HA) pair. The compelling reasons for choosing A10's AX Series resulted from Application Delivery requirements and core server load balancing functionality...
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Gamania deploys Global Server Load Balancing and application acceleration for first-class online gaming services
Gamania Digital Equipment, headquartered in Taiwan with 650 employees, is a leading online game provider, which develops, publishes and co-publishes on-line games. Founded in 1995, Gamania has grown from a handful of gaming enthusiasts to a multinational organization that continuously delivers a first-class online gaming experience to many thousand users daily.
For the past five years, Gamania has leveraged application delivery controllers (ADCs) to enhance its online Web gaming application services. This includes load balancing and application acceleration for value-added services, such as downloading patch files and access to online games. In 2008, Gamania expanded its operations to deliver increased services to its users, which required more ADCs to be added to its continuously growing network.
For its datacenter and operation expansion project, Gamania had several options for the new ADCs. The first was to purchase additional BIG-IP load balancers from F5, its incumbent provider. The second was to evaluate alternatives to see if there are better solutions in the industry. For this option, Gamania evaluated Citrix's NetScaler and A10's AX Series. During the proof of concept (PoC) period, A10's AX Series new-generation ADCs demonstrated superb performance, flexibility and scalability, which outshined competitors. As a result, Gamania selected AX Series for its expansion project...
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Game Flier leverages Layer 7 scripting and DDoS protection to boost performance
Game Flier is a leading online gaming provider in Taiwan. A10's AX Series provides Game Flier with a high-performance server load balancing platform to ensure its Web portal applications are always performing, available and scalable for increased user growth.
Game Flier selected A10's AX 2100 because it provides the highest performance on the market at the most competitive price. The AX Series is the first family of server load balancers that is tuned for multi-core CPU systems and capable of handling today's bandwidth intensive and high volume applications such as Game Flier's Web portal system...
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GenieKnows.com replaced previous load balancer with AX Series for higher performance and scalability to handle increased traffic and peak load
GenieKnows.com is a local search engine that connects search technology, community and content by developing niche-specific portals tailored for distinct searching communities, delivering a focused, useful and rewarding search experience. One of its key portals, GenieKnowsMedia.com, is a business-to-business (B2B) portal that empowers a broad distribution network for its advertisers, helping businesses connect with consumers and grow their bottom line by conveying meaningful, revenue-generating search results. Both are divisions of IT Interactive Services, Inc., a private Canadian media incorporation headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
GenieKnows.com has 20 million business listing records with 170,000 unique visitors a month, and growing at 34-40% per month. In addition, GenieKnows.com has partnerships with companies such as Yahoo! and City Search to pull in sponsored search links with these partners. GenieKnowsMedia.com has 2 billion search requests on a monthly basis. Two datacenters run both web sites for redundancy...
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Hawkins load balances JD Edwards ERP software, Java application servers and Windows Terminal Services
Hawkins is a chemical manufacturing provider with 300 employees and 10 servers running enterprise software. After evaluating and researching solutions, Hawkins chose a pair of A10's AX 2000 nextgeneration server load balancers and replaced the incumbent F5 BIG-IP...
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Jaguar Network uses AX Series to increase concurrent sessions and ensure the highest application availability
Jaguar Network is a leading business ISP and web-hosting provider that was founded in 2001. The company, which has been growing by leaps and bounds, has more than 28 data centers, 450 equipment bays, and 8,000 servers delivering advanced telecommunications services to more than 500 customers all across Europe.
As the company's offerings have expanded, its network has become more sophisticated, and its Cisco CSM load balancers are no longer adequate, as demonstrated by intolerable latency and support for just 1 million concurrent connections. For the Content Delivery Network that the Cisco devices front-ended, this was an unacceptable solution.
To address these shortcomings, Jaguar evaluated the latest Cisco ACE product line, along with competing solutions from Brocade and A10 Networks – running in Direct Server Return (DSR) mode. The evaluations showed that the AX Series' DSR results were far superior to the competition. The AX Series appliances were the only 64-bit system evaluated, offering scalability starting at 32 million concurrent sessions in the entry level platform, versus the 1 million sessions provided by the existing Cisco CSM equipment...
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McMaster University scales application delivery for Blackboard eLearning system
In 2008, McMaster began a selection process to replace the incumbent WebCT 4.1 Learning Management System (LMS), choosing the Blackboard Academic Suite 8 and Blackboard Vista 8. The new system allows comprehensive e-Learning, course and student management, while also adding Web 2.0 collaborative features for community and content.
To ensure the Blackboard platform is highly available and to power the new features, McMaster also required an upgrade of the underlying system architecture, including both physical and virtual servers. The applications are web-based, so an Application Delivery Controller was also needed, principally to provide application acceleration, load balancing and Layer 7 scripting with rewrite functionality.
The AX Series was chosen by McMaster in a high availability configuration for maximum redundancy. In addition to delivering twice the performance at half the price of the competitors, AX Series satisfied the functional requirements as well as solving some key implementation issues...
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Meebo offers users a way to consolidate their various Instant Messaging (IM) accounts into a single browser-based program
Meebo's recently announced "Meebo MiniBar" service is a downloadable browser extension that consolidates a user's online activity into a single browser session. The MiniBar enables visitors to check in to their favorite sites and share their discoveries with friends or with those who have similar interests. In using the MiniBar browser extension, users find they no longer need to log in and out of websites as frequently as they normally would. With the check-in feature, Meebo users essentially subscribe to online "channels" and the Meebo servers push out new content when it becomes available.
This design requires "server push" technologies that use "long polling". For this reason, the web sessions of Meebo users need to be "sticky" or "persistent". Simon Yeo, Senior Director of Operations at Meebo, says user sessions with his company's servers have an average duration of approximately 90 minutes and can sometimes last for several days.
The persistent "long polling" sessions (along with the rapid growth in traffic) created problems for the Brocade/Foundry ServerIron load balancers that Meebo had recently installed. Although the ServerIrons were only a year old, their CPU utilization rates quickly went from 10-20 percent (when first deployed) to being maxed out at 100 percent just a year later.
It was around this time that Meebo started researching alternatives within the load balancing space. Yeo said they needed a solution that would scale better than the ServerIron appliances, "Ultimately, it was the combination of performance, reliability, and cost that led us to the A10 AX Series Application Delivery Controllers."
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MEVIO increases performance for entertainment site run by PHP, MySQL and Linux backend servers
MEVIO is one of the fastest growing entertainment sites on the Web, with an audience of over six million monthly viewers. To keep its Web environment running, a cost-effective, highperformance server load balancer platform was required.
MEVIO chose two AX 2200 server load balancers in a High Availability (HA) pair for the production network, and one AX 2000 for staging...
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Oad Group required a high-performance Application Delivery Controller (ADC)/server load balancing solution to meet the daily increasing demands of online traffic
The Oad Groep (also known as the Oad Group), is headquartered in Holten, Netherlands and is one of the leading travel operators in the country.
The company offers tour packages across all types of transportation, including air, train, car and boat, with cruises to more than 60 countries worldwide.
The Oad Group is a privately-held company consisting of three divisions that
cover both consumer and corporate travel: Oad Reizen (Oad Travel), the Globe
Travel Agency Group, and Oad Coach Company. The Oad Group has 2,000
employees worldwide and books more than 750,000 passengers every year. Its
2010 revenue amounted to nearly 1 billion Euros.
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Peak Hosting learned that only A10 offered the required multi-tenancy features and functionality
Peak Hosting, founded in 2001, provides comprehensive IT-as-a-service managed hosting and private hybrid cloud services to enterprise-level clients. Over the last decade, Peak Hosting's consultants have built fifteen of the twenty largest web properties in the world.
Peak Hosting's network is comprised of core routing from Cisco, 10 Gb distribution and top of rack switching from Brocade and firewalling from Juniper. For load balancing hundreds of servers, Peak Hosting was using Citrix NetScaler appliances. However, with Peak Hosting's constantly increasing traffic load and customer management requirements, the NetScaler solution was running out of capacity and couldn't provide the individual secure access customers demanded. While researching higher performance solutions, Peak also was on the lookout for any recent innovation that load balancers and Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) could offer to improve the customer experience and stream-line internal operations, reducing their overall total cost of ownership.
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Schibsted IT needed a new generation server load balancer to support high-volume traffic, with a scalable platform and advanced software features
Oslo-based Schibsted IT, formerly known as Media Norge IT, has approximately 60 employees dedicated to providing IT services to a number of Schibsted Media subsidiaries. Schibsted Media Group is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (SCH) and has operations in 25 countries, with services in the fields of newspaper, television, film, publishing, multimedia and mobile solutions. Schibsted owns many major newspapers and dailies in Norway and Sweden, such as VG, Aftenposten, Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet.
Schibsted is ranked third in online classified business worldwide, just behind eBay and Craigslist. Revenues from its classified business increased to $245 million during the first six months of 2010.
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Shanda Interactive Entertainment deploys application acceleration and aFleX scripting for MySQL and Linux servers
Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited (NasdaqGS: SNDA) is a leading interactive media entertainment company in China, offering a diverse portfolio of entertainment content including some of the most popular massively multi-player online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), casual online games and a variety of cartoons, literature and music.
Jinjiang (jjwxc.net), a subsidiary of Shanda, is the largest and most popular female creative writing web site in China. The users who regularly visit the site to research the original essays generate more than 50 million page views daily from 500,000 independent viewers that typically average up to 49 minutes per session on the site. This volume is increasing rapidly with traffic having increased over 300% since the end of 2007, so scaling growth is paramount to success.
Jinjiang's network includes a 100% BSD/Linux server infrastructure running eCommerce web applications with MySQL databases on the backend to handle the current load of over 100,000 creative writing purchase transactions daily. Previously, an open source load balancing product called HAProxy was in place, but this was not enough to meet the performance requirements. To handle the rapidly growing Internet traffic and eCommerce transactions, Shanda required a high-performance platform for its web servers to better manage the load. The company considered solutions from F5 and Citrix NetScaler, but after rigorous technical testing made the decision to purchase A10's AX Series.
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ShareCompany selects AX Series for redundancy, high availability (HA) and price/performance.
ShareCompany (www.sharecompany.nl), based in the Netherlands, is a leading provider of managed solutions for banks, brokers and media. Servicing large companies such as ABN, AMRO, Rabobank, RTL, SNS Bank and more,
ShareCompany's products include websites, streaming market data terminals and
web services for various applications. ShareCompany has over one million online users a day, viewing content from its managed solutions.
Due to increased demand by high-profile customers, ShareCompany needed to set up a second data center, and hired consulting firm and reseller partner Quanza Engineering to design the new network with requirements for high availability, performance and reliability. ShareCompany previously deployed F5 Networks' Big-IP load balancers in its old network; however, to meet the increased requirements for the second data center, Quanza recommended A10's AX Series new generation server load balancers for the company's application delivery needs.
ShareCompany's new data center infrastructure includes servers running on Windows 2003 and 2008 platforms, with applications that handle, process and distribute financial market information with rates of up to 400,000 records per second, including XML feeds and many other sources. The information is stored in SQL and memory databases and streamed via web servers which host its customers' websites.
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Shasta County load balances VMware and Outlook Web Access
Shasta County's charter is to distribute information as quickly, efficiently and cost effectively as possible to the public. Shasta County selected A10's AX Series for an infrastructure upgrade, fulfilling its charter through the ability to handle increased load for the next five years....
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Shopzilla achieves initiatives for data center consolidation and low latency
Shopzilla.com and BizRate.com, typically serve 50,000 to 70,000 concurrent users at any given time.
Predicted traffic growth signaled a need for additional load balancer capacity, so Shopzilla required an alternative to the installed Juniper DXs, which had reached end of life. A10 Networks' AX 3200 server load balancers were selected as they addressed both the low latency and high simultaneous connection requirements...
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SK Life eliminates network latency for web applications
In the early stages of SK Life's business, the focus was on customer acquisition and retention and return on investment. In addition, today's business challenges include a government open insurance policy and various insurance package options, delivering multipe layers of complexity and creating a need for simulataneous data exchanges so that employees can quickly and effectively service clients.
To meet the requirements for simultaneous information sharing within the organization, SK Life deployed six Web application servers for its internal applications and storage. Initially, the applications ran at 5 Mbps, but after the integrated investment insurance policies took place, the need increased to 30 Mbps. Increased internal application traffic caused network latency whereby employees had to wait to get online and collect client and program information, and as a result business opportunities were lost.
Upon research, SK Life learned that network congestion could be resolved with an advanced Application Delivery Controller (ADC), and contacted A10 Networks to evaluate its award-winning AX Series ADCs. Upon deploying the AX Series, SK Life immediately realized the benefits and made the purchase.
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Subaru Canada appreciates the bandwidth provided by the AX 2500, which costs less than one-third of competing solutions (based on throughput-$-per-Gbps metric)
Subaru Canada had been using the Foundry ServerIron 4G-SSL to provide
server load balancing for its website (www.subaru.ca). However, when it
came time to renew the support contract with Brocade Communications
Systems, Inc., which had acquired Foundry Networks in 2008, Subaru
Canada decided to evaluate some of the newer technologies available.
While Subaru was impressed with the performance of the AX 1000, due to the rapid growth rate of sales at Subaru Canada, they decided they might later appreciate having the additional overhead provided by the AX 2500, with its 10 Gbps throughput capacity, as opposed to the 4 Gbps capacity of the
AX 1000. Subaru Canada's Director of eBusiness & Information Systems, George
Hamin said it was an easy choice, since the AX appliance cost "just a little more than the cost of renewing support on our 4G-SSL."
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Taobao.com achieves Layer 4-7 load balancer consolidation across data centers and content delivery networks
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.
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University of the Arts London deploys Global Server Load Balancing and URL Switching for Apache servers running on VMware
University of the Arts London is a vibrant world center for innovation, comprising six internationally renowned colleges. It is Europe's largest university for art, design, fashion, communication and the performing arts.
University of the Arts London leverages Web technologies to provide a multitude of applications and services to its students and faculty. It has over 25 Websites with interactive content, including bandwidth-intensive graphic applications. Its infrastructure spans two datacenters and consists of Apache servers running on VMware that communicate with and retrieve information from the MySQL and Oracle databases on the
backend.
In 2009, University of the Arts London began a new Web service project to create a new architecture capable of providing optimized content delivery to site visitors. The project consisted of an initial phase: Redesign and build a new hardware/software platform, which included replacing the existing Radware server load balancers whose capacity was maxed out. Read More
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USA 800 scales application delivery for call center eCRM platform
USA 800 has three sites, each of which are contact centers for multiple partners, whereby applications are served from two data centers. Predicting record traffic for the 2008 holiday shopping season, USA 800 required a new high-performance server load balancer platform.
After researching multiple load balancing solutions such as F5's BIG-IP, USA 800 chose A10's AX 2100s and deployed them near the end of October 2008, less than 30 days before the 2008 holiday shopping season. For USA 800, online customer traffic generated between the third week in November and the Christmas holiday every year contributes to a critically significant portion of annual revenue, so stability, redundancy and failover features were essential. Upon deployment, the AX 2100s managed capacity flawlessly, and aided USA 800 in experiencing the most successful holiday season in its history...
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