ServerIron

Key Benefits of the ServerIron Link Balancer

Always-On Internet Connectivity

ServerIron Link Balancer ensures uninterrupted Internet connectivity by providing intelligent load balancing with continuous link health monitoring. In the event of a link outage or degradation, the Link Balancer provides detection and rapid fail-over for traffic to the other available ISP links. The Link Balancer detects failures and performance degradations on ISP links before the Enterprise hosts, and takes corrective action by switching over to links best able to serve the traffic. Two ServerIrons deployed in high-availability configuration provide 24x7 Internet connectivity to Enterprise clients even during catastrophic failures. In the event that one device fails, the standby device transparently takes over without disrupting traffic flows. The ServerIron’s extensive link health check  capability monitors end-to-end Layer 2, Layer 3, Layer 4, and Layer 7 connectivity, and determines the links’ ability to quickly respond to client requests. Health checks also ensure fast detection of link problems and eliminate lengthy manual troubleshooting during outages.

Maximum Scalability

The Link Balancer combines the feature rich link load balancing with the high-performance ServerIron architecture to meet the Internet connectivity needs of most Enterprise customers. It can support line-rate link balancing for up to six T3 or two OC3 links.

Easy to Set Up and Manage

ServerIron Link Balancer is simple to configure and manage using the Command Line Interface (CLI) or the built-in Web interface. The CLI uses well-known Cisco-like commands allowing network administration staff to easily configure all Foundry products. In addition, ServerIron’s support for Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) allows device management using applications such as HP OpenView, available on major server platforms including Sun Solaris, HP-UX,and Windows NT.

Key Features

Out-Bound Link Balancing- ServerIron provides out-bound load balancing for any type of IP application traffic, and handles link balancing on up to six T3 or two OC3 links.Traffic belonging to a connection is routed to the same link based on session information to achieve reliable and persistent service. IntelliNAT (Intelligent Network Address Translation) is used to secure internal network while ensuring the return packets are routed back through the same ISP link for consistent connection performance.

In-Bound Link Balancing - Incoming traffic into an Enterprise network is load balanced to multiple ISP links. Using passive DNS intercept in combination with intelligent load balancing algorithms, the ServerIron re-directs in-coming traffic over all available links to achieve optimal utilization.

Link Balancing Methods - To meet the diverse demands of  Foundry’s Enterprise customers, the ServerIron Link Balancer supports a comprehensive set of user-configurable static and dynamic link metrics for intelligent load balancing. By fine-tuning the metrics, network administrators can optimize performance and cost of Internet service to meet the needs of specific deployment.

Pro-Active Measurement of Link Performance - The ServerIron Link Balancer uses a pro-active approach to measuring link performance for effective load balancing of traffic. In-band measurement of end-to-end service response time during connection setup is combined with pro-active out-of-band measures to pick the links that deliver the best overall performance.

High Availability - Foundry’s ServerIron devices are designed to support mission-critical business applications. To provide a high-level of redundancy and fault tolerance to the Link Balancer, two ServerIron devices can be deployed in high-availability configuration with session synchronization and transparent failover for total Internet access reliability.

Real-Time Synchronization - Session information and link performance measures are synchronized in real-time between the two ServerIron devices configured for high availability to maintain consistently high load balancing performance in the event of failover to the standby device. Stateful connection failover and instantaneous availability of link performance information allows Enterprise users to be fully transparent to network failures.

For More details on the Foundry Network ServerIron Link Balancer Click Here for the Specifications sheet