Foundry unveils appliances for server farms

Foundry Networks this week introduced a series of Layer 4-7 application management and Web appliances stretching up to 10 Gigabit Ethernet and aimed primarily at server farms.

The three models of the ServerIronGT E-series balance traffic loads among servers in a server farm and add security measures and content-based switching.

Foundry calls them “appliances” because they are pre-configured to work in a network quickly, but the company also touts the devices’ high availability and port expandability, traits typically found in modular switches.

The switches, or appliances, run Foundry’s TrafficWorks embedded operating system and include the company’s JetCore switching and packet processing technology for hardware-based forwarding and other functions.

The security measures include access control lists, detection of distributed denial-of-service attacks, protection against viruses and worms, and spam mitigation.

The content-based switching allows for user session persistence based on URLs, cookies, HTTP headers, XML tags, SSL session IDs, request type, and other factors, Foundry says.

The ServerIronGT EGx2 has two Gigabit Ethernet ports and an application processor that can handle up to 50,000 Layer 4 connections per second. The EGx4 has four Gigabit Ethernet ports and can handle up to 100,000 Layer 4 connections per second. The E10Gx2 has two 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports and can handle up to 150,000 Layer 4 connections per second. Each device also has two expansion slots, and can be upgraded to handle up to 320,000 Layer 4 connections per second.

For availability, the appliances have options for hot-swappable redundant power supplies, redundant management modules, trunk support for protection against link failures, and stateful session failover for users.

The appliances are set to ship next month. The EGx2 lists for $16,000, the EGx4 for $25,000, and the E10Gx2 for $45,000.