Response to load-balancing RFP: Coyote Point

Coyote Point Systems is pleased to respond to Acme WebSystems' request for vendor proposals to load balance its server farm. Our Equalizer products are designed specifically for applications such as Acme's, providing highly available, scalable cluster management.

Acme's Current Performance Problems:

Often times, the web servers respond very slowly due to heavy usage. The e-commerce servers use SSL when processing purchases and customers often complain that they were unable to complete their transaction due to slow performance. It is also very time consuming for the MIS personnel to keep all of the servers updated with the latest HTML code and this results in error when a server misses an update.

Coyote Point's proposed solution:

Coyote Point's Equalizer model E350 is targeted specifically for environments such as Acme's. The E350 is designed for load balancing an unlimited number of "virtual clusters" (i.e. virtual sites) at T3 speeds. Two E350's deployed in a fully-redundant configuration will insure quality of service at Acme's web and FTP sites while eliminating single point of failure concerns.

Using the metrics described below, the E350 will direct user connections to the server best prepared to handle the request, in real-time. Equalizers proprietary Adaptive Load Balancing technology has been shown to provide near-optimal distribution of server load, which will permit Acme's current server investment to provide improved levels of service now and as traffic levels grow.

Acme's Solution Requirements:

1. It should be possible to send traffic to the servers based upon the following measurements:
   • Server with the least connections
   • Best server response time (lowest response time)
   • Servers below x% CPU utilization

   Equalizer's adaptive load balancing algorithms support all of the above metrics. The load balancing options may be configured and fine-tuned on a per-cluster basis using Equalizer's intuitive web-based load administration tools. Server CPU utilization may be measured directly at the servers by means of lightweight server agents that are available free of charge from Coyote Point.

2. Traffic should be directed to a server based on Traffic type (HTTP traffic, FTPs and SSL to the E-Commerce servers)
   Equalizer supports this requirement as part of the standard configuration. Equalizer's Virtual Clusters are configured for specific TCP services and servers may be added, removed or moved between clusters at any time.

3. The solution should also help manage the multiple servers through some type of content verification to ensure that a server isn't using older HTML code. If the server is using older code, there should be some automatic mechanism to update the older server with the newer code. Acme WebSystems is also looking at implementing some type of network address translation (NAT) in the future and would like to see if NAT could a part of the load balancing solution.

Coyote Point has partnered with several leading vendors of site management and content replecation tools. When customer requests help with these issues, Coyote Point is pleased to provide references to these products, which have been certified compatible with our technology. Attached to this proposal is a response by Webspective, Inc to provide content management tools directly to Acme.

Additional Product Benefits:

All E350 and E450 models are ready to run Coyote Point's Envoy Geographic Load Balancing software. Envoy permits multiple server clusters to be deployed anywhere in the world and insures quality of service and availability even in the face of site-wide disaster.

Pricing:

A fully redundant dual E350 configuration is quoted below:

1 Equalizer E350 High-Availability 
primary unit with Server Manager v3.1    $9995.00
1 Equalizer E350 Redundant backup unit   $9995.00
7x24 support with onsite hardware repair  $995.00
                                 Total: $20985.00
 

We look forward to Providing Acme with the highest quality load balancing and fault tolerance solution available.

Thank you for your consideration of Equalizer.

Your friends at Coyote Point

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