We are intrigued by a stealthy little British company called Zeus Technology that recently emerged on the US scene with a software application front end (centralized ADS). Developed by engineers in what those of us who live in Massachusetts call “the other Cambridge”, ZXTM (Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager) runs on standard Intel machines and is easily slipped via VMware into an application’s path to speed it on its way. It is slick to deploy because you can just spin it up as a virtual application, put it into the server path and you’re done – no cables, and no big footprint carbon or otherwise. Because it has many benefits, we predict that others will follow Zeus’ lead on a path away from standalone application front end appliances.
Among the benefits of the software approach is that centralized ADS functions delivered as software can take full and immediate advantage of processor improvements by Intel and AMD. There’s no need to develop specialized ASICs and chips to win the hardware game because this approach leaves that challenge to others.
Also, the operating system and the software can be coupled to take advantage of multi-core processors and the multi-threading this enables. The big win here, is that you can do lots of parallel processing, whereas a single-purpose chip while typically lightening fast, is single threaded.
This adds up to a much more flexible platform that Zeus can leverage to continually add more functions and capabilities.
The net result, Zeus claims, is linear scalability achievable in two ways. Multiple instances of Zeus software can run on many application servers--in effect creating a fleet of individual lightweight software application front ends all over data center. Or Zeus can leverage VMware to create a virtual application front end by linking many processors together to operate as one large application front end.
Zeus has also cleverly added a scripting capability based on Java extensions. For the many people already familiar and comfortable with Java, using Java extensions to build rules provides simpler and easier way of scripting traffic management rules than learning a vendor-unique language.
So here’s where we think this trend will take us. Not long ago data centers contained rack upon rack of single-purpose boxes like routers, switches, firewalls, application front ends, application accelerators, intrusion protection systems, Web servers and so on. There were often even layers of switches between some of these other layers. Then we went through a consolidation phase in which two boxes--the router and the application front end--gobbled up other functions. Now along comes the VMware virtual server revolution, and now we find that the server is the least utilized device in the chain.
The server has the capability of sucking in the functions of the application front end—and dare we say it—even the router. We see a time in the not-too-distant future when many functions, including routing, will run comfortably partitioned on a server.
NetForecast is an internationally recognized engineering consulting company that benchmarks, analyzes, and improves the performance of networked data, voice, and video applications.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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Software beats hardware
Peter, Rebecca, thanks for taking a look at Zeus. You are correct in your prediction that routing and application front ends will become normal parts of the virtual infrastructure instead of the physical infrastructure.
Zeus customers (I'm the VP Marketing...) repeatedly tell us that in addition to the greener, easier to deploy advantages of virtual appliances, they like virtual appliances because they can add CPU or memory to them on the fly without re-purchasing the software.
Old-fashioned legacy hardware appliances are simply expensive software on cheap hardware. When you buy them, you get cool blue blinking lights or pretty glowing red logos, or maybe a bezel shaped like a racecar, but every time you need to grow your capacity, you have to pay for the same expensive software AGAIN, along with some slightly faster hardware. It's a treadmill that's good for the appliance vendors and bad for customers.
Virtual appliances let you move the expensive stuff - the software - from small servers to large ones without having to pay for it over and over.
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