Stingray Traffic Manager 9.0

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1 WHITE PAPER Stingray Traffic Manager 9.0 Network Deployment Options

2 CONTENTS Introduction... 2 Stingray Aptimizer products... 2 Stingray Aptimizer for SharePoint and Windows IIS deployments... 2 Stingray Aptimizer for Traffic Manager deployments... 2 Stingray Aptimizer deployments... 2 Deploying Stingray Aptimizer in a load-balanced environment... 3 Deployment alongside the ADC or Load Balancer... 3 One-armed deployment... 3 Two-armed deployment... 4 Stingray Aptimizer scalability... 5 Deploying Stingray Aptimizer without a local ADC or load balancer... 5 Deploying Stingray Aptimizer with a single web server... 5 Deploying Stingray Aptimizer with a group of web servers... 5 Stingray Aptimizer scalability... 6 Conclusion... 6 About Riverbed Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. 1

3 Introduction With the ever-increasing importance of websites and web applications, performance has become a major concern for driving revenue, productivity, and user satisfaction. Stingray Aptimizer software takes a new approach that compliments traditional application delivery controller (ADC) capabilities as well as WAN optimization capabilities. Traditional ADCs have focused on delivering scalability and reliability for enterprise and web applications within the data center. Stingray Traffic Manager 9.0 builds on this traditional ADC functionality and extends it by delivering performance that end users care about. It does this by dynamically grouping activities for fewer long distance round trips, compressing images to reduce bandwidth required, improving caching for faster repeat visits, and prioritizing actions to give the best possible response time for loading a web page on any browser. Stingray Aptimizer products The following Stingray Aptimizer products are available to suit any kind of IT environment: a. Stingray Aptimizer for SharePoint and Stingray Aptimizer for Windows IIS. These products are deployed as server extensions to a Windows IIS and SharePoint web server, and they optimize content served by that web server. b. Stingray Aptimizer for Traffic Manager. This module may be licensed for Stingray Traffic Manager (software or virtual appliance), and allows the traffic manager to apply Aptimizer optimizations to HTTP traffic served by a cluster of web servers. c. Stingray Aptimizer This software and virtual appliance product is deployed as a proxy, typically alongside an existing ADC or load balancer device. The ADC routes traffic through the proxy so that the Aptimizer optimizations can be applied. Stingray Aptimizer for SharePoint and Windows IIS deployments Stingray Aptimizer for SharePoint and Windows IIS is installed as a server extension on IIS server and is therefore very simple to deploy from the network perspective. Please refer to for more details on installation and deployment. Stingray Aptimizer for Traffic Manager deployments Stingray Aptimizer for Traffic Manager is enabled via license key as a capability of the Stingray Traffic Manager. The network deployment options are same as Stingray Traffic Manager Network configurations as described in chapter 2 of the user guide located at Stingray Aptimizer deployments Stingray Aptimizer is deployed as stand-alone proxy device either sandwiched within an existing ADC deployment (much like a firewall or other proxy device) or in front of a single web server. The remainder of this document discusses deployment scenarios for Stingray Aptimizer Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. 2

4 Deploying Stingray Aptimizer in a load-balanced environment Stingray Aptimizer can be deployed in an existing load-balanced scenario without having to change or rewire the existing network topology. Logically, Stingray Aptimizer devices are sandwiched between two layers of ADCs so that they can be scaled, and the ADCs perform the health-checks and load balancing against the back end servers. Deployment alongside the ADC or load balancer Although the logical design of the software calls for a network sandwich between two ADC layers, in practice the deployment is generally performed with a single layer of ADCs. This ADC layer runs two load-balancing services; one to forward traffic out to the Stingray Aptimizer devices, and one to load-balance traffic from the devices across the backend servers. This configuration, which loops traffic out to the Stingray Aptimizer devices, is sometimes referred to as a network trombone : Logical sandwich view of deployment (top) and typical trombone deployment (bottom) that eliminates the need for two layers of ADCs. Stingray Aptimizer can be deployed in one of the following ways: 1. One-armed deployment (single network segment) 2. Two-armed deployment (public and private network segments) One-armed deployment In a one-armed deployment, Stingray Aptimizer is deployed in the same VLAN/network as web/application servers, and the single interface on the device connects to the internal network: 2012 Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. 3

5 As depicted in the diagram above, traffic low for this deployment mode is as follows: 1. The FQDN for the application that needs to be Aptimized resolves to an external IP address on the Traditional ADC. Client makes a TCP connection to this IP address. 2. Traditional ADC is configured to load balance HTTP traffic to Stingray Aptimizer or across pool of Stingray Aptimizer devices. 3. Stingray Aptimizer handles traffic in one of two ways: a. If it can respond to the request from its local cache, it will do so directly. The response would go back to the client via the traditional ADC. Note that in order for traffic to go back through the traditional ADC, either the ADC must function in full-proxy mode, or source-nat needs to be configured on ADC or the Stingray Aptimizer default-gateway should be the ADC. b. If it does not have the content to serve the request, it will connect to a configured IP address. This address should reside on the ADC cluster and correspond to an ADC virtual server that load balances the request to a pool of web/application servers. Connections from the Stingray Aptimizer device to the ADC would have the source IP address of Stingray Aptimizer. 4. Web/application server responds back with the content to Stingray Aptimizer via the ADC. 5. Stingray Aptimizer applies all the optimization techniques based on the configuration to the content received from web/application server. 6. It then responds back with the optimized content to client via the ADC. Two-armed deployment In this mode of deployment, Stingray Aptimizer is connected to external and internal network as depicted in the diagram below: Traffic flow for this deployment mode is as follows: 1. The FQDN for the application that needs to be Aptimized resolves to an external IP address on the Traditional ADC. Client makes a TCP connection to this IP address. 2. The traditional ADC is configured to load balance HTTP traffic to Stingray Aptimizer or across pool of Stingray Aptimizer devices with external IP addresses. 3. Stingray Aptimizer handle traffic in one of two ways: a. If it can respond to the request from its local cache, it will do so directly. The response would go back to client via the traditional ADC. Note that in order for traffic to go back through the traditional ADC, either the ADC must function in full-proxy mode or source-nat needs to be configured on the ADC, or the Stingray Aptimizer default-gateway should be the ADC. b. If it does not have the content to serve the request, it will connect to a configured internal IP address. This address should reside on the ADC cluster and correspond to an ADC virtual server that load balances the request to a pool of web/application servers. Connections from the Stingray Aptimizer device to the ADC would have the source IP address of Stingray Aptimizer. 4. Web/application server responds back with the content to Stingray Aptimizer via the ADC. 5. Stingray Aptimizer applies all the optimization techniques based on the configuration to the content received from the web/application server. 6. It then responds back with the optimized content to client via the ADC. If necessary, an additional management interface can be configured on Stingray Aptimizer and then connected to a separate management VLAN or network Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. 4

6 Stingray Aptimizer scalability The ADC may load-balance traffic across multiple independent Stingray Aptimizer nodes. The ADC should apply session persistence so that all traffic from the same client is directed to the same Stingray Aptimizer instance. Deploying Stingray Aptimizer without a local ADC or load balancer In some scenarios, a local ADC or load balancer may not be present. The web application may be served from a single web server, or a technique like round robin DNS may be used to distribute traffic across the servers. In this situation, Stingray Aptimizer is deployed as a proxy, receives external traffic, and then forwards it on to the web servers. Some configuration changes to the DNS need to be made in order to ensure that the traffic would be directed to Stingray Aptimizer; otherwise an IP address reassignment is necessary. Deploying Stingray Aptimizer with a single web server Stingray Aptimizer is configured as a simple proxy with a single virtual server and pool. Incoming traffic is routed to the Stingray Aptimizer virtual server and the pool forwards it to the back-end server. Either a one-armed or a two-armed deployment may be used: Deploying Stingray Aptimizer with a group of web servers In this scenario, a load balancer or an ADC is needed to forward traffic to a group of web servers. However, in limited cases, a load balancer or DNS round robin solution may be in use. But without administration privileges or if the load balancer is not local, it s impossible to use the configuration described in the previous section. In such cases, the standalone device can be deployed with multiple virtual server and pool pairs, one for each back-end web server: Once again, either a one-armed or two-armed deployment model may be used Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. 5

7 Stingray Aptimizer scalability Stingray Aptimizer may be deployed in a fault-tolerant cluster consisting of two or more devices. Stingray Aptimizer clusters manage a floating set of IP addresses (called Traffic IPs ) and ensure that the cluster manages traffic directed to those IP addresses, even in the event of a Stingray Aptimizer failure. For high scalability needs, the cluster may be run in an Active/Active fashion, allowing for linear scalability of capacity. Conclusion The range of Stingray Aptimizer platforms and deployment options make it possible to apply Aptimizer optimizations to almost any web based application: Stingray Aptimizer for SharePoint and Windows IIS may be deployed on an existing SharePoint or IIS web server Stingray Aptimizer for Traffic Manager may be added to an existing Stingray Traffic Manager ADC Stingray Aptimizer may be deployed as a proxy to augment an existing load-balanced or single-server environment Stingray Aptimizer platforms support multiple network topologies and can be provisioned as both software and a packaged virtual appliance, making it easy to accelerate existing enterprise or online applications and free development teams from the burden of content optimization and testing. About Riverbed Riverbed delivers performance for the globally connected enterprise. With Riverbed, enterprises can successfully and intelligently implement strategic initiatives such as virtualization, consolidation, cloud computing, and disaster recovery without fear of compromising performance. By giving enterprises the platform they need to understand, optimize and consolidate their IT, Riverbed helps enterprises to build a fast, fluid and dynamic IT architecture that aligns with the business needs of the organization. Additional information about Riverbed (NASDAQ: RVBD) is available at Riverbed Technology, Inc. 199 Fremont Street San Francisco, CA Tel: (415) Riverbed Technology Ltd. One Thames Valley Wokingham Road, Level 2 Bracknell. RG42 1NG United Kingdom Tel: Riverbed Technology Pte. Ltd. 391A Orchard Road #22-06/10 Ngee Ann City Tower A Singapore Tel: Riverbed Technology K.K. Shiba-Koen Plaza Building 9F 3-6-9, Shiba, Minato-ku Tokyo, Japan Tel: Riverbed Technology. All rights reserved. 6