Celestix XLB 4000 Traffic Manager Series

Overview:

Celestix XLB Traffic Manager manages your application traffic, inspecting, transforming and routing requests as it load-balances them across the application infrastructure. The powerful TrafficScript™ engine lets you implement whatever traffic management policies are most appropriate for your enterprise, drawing on the whole range of capabilities of the Celestix XLB Traffic Manager. Where necessary, Java™ Extensions can be used to implement additional, complex traffic transformations and other policies.

Celestix XLB Application Delivery Platform

Enterprise class load balancing and application traffic management optimized with Celestix Network Platform

Celestix XLB enables you to create, manage and deliver your key services more quickly, more flexibly and at a lower cost. It manages your application traffic by inspecting, transforming and routing requests as it load-balances them across the application infrastructure. The powerful TrafficScript engine lets you implement the traffic management policies that are most appropriate for your enterprise, drawing on the whole range of capabilities of Celestix XLB Traffic Manager.

• Accelerate your application delivery, maximize performance and capacity, increase end user satisfaction and boost return on infrastructure investment
• Improve the reliability and availability of your applications and scale your services easily and cost effectively
• Control and secure network traffic, filtering and scrubbing application requests and responses
• Manage your application infrastructure, simplifying application maintenance, upgrades and migration and delivering adaptable and agile services faster and reliably.

Application Acceleration

XLB offloads compute-intensive tasks, and the integrated HTTP Content Caching reduces the load on your infrastructure. TCP offload, Traffic Buffering and HTTP Optimizations create the environment for your applications to run at peak performance and capacity. All these add up to dramatic improvements in service throughput and responsiveness, significantly better ROI and an improved customer experience.

Service Reliability

Active and Passive Health Monitors and continual performance monitoring ensure that client requests are load-balanced across the fastest servers in your infrastructure. XLB’s TrafficCluster™ scalability protects against compound failures at all levels.

Application Security

Total server isolation, request and response scrubbing, request validation and request rate shaping all protect your application infrastructure from direct attacks, invalid or malformed requests and malicious or incidental flash floods that would otherwise impair the level of service you provide.

Native XML Capabilities

XLB can parse complex XML data using XPath and take informed routing decisions based on its content. XLB supports the offload and acceleration of the translation of one dialect of XML to another via XSLT.

Application Integration and Control

XLB offers you all the functionality that you need to implement the traffic management policies appropriate for your business. Apply custom business logic with RuleBuilder™ and TrafficScript™, XLB’s powerful and intuitive traffic management language, or create Java™ Extensions for sophisticated traffic processing needs. The SOAP-based Control API can tightly integrate XLB within your application management infrastructure, and XLB’s powerful Event Handling lets you specify precisely the actions XLB should perform when key events occur.

Traffic Valuation and Prioritization

Full Application Traffic inspection and Service Level Monitoring provide the intelligence for XLB to make accurate decisions on how to route and handle traffic. Request Rate Shaping, Bandwidth Shaping, routing, compression and caching can all be used to give your most valuable users the best possible levels of service.

Flexible High-Availability Configurations

XLB has TrafficCluster™ scalability allowing deployment in any number and combination of active and standby units, Performance scales linearly with the number of XLBs for easy capacity planning.

Ultra-Fast SSL

XLB’s high performance SSL technology assures end-to-end security of your services., meaning that you no longer have to compromise between security and performance.

Activity Monitoring and Diagnostics

XLB provides you with real-time reporting and historical graphs of your applications’ activity via a web-based interface and SNMP. Combined with one-click self-diagnostics, you can plan for future capacity requirements and isolate faults rapidly, reducing the time to fix.

Features & Benefits:

Celestix XLB secures & accelerates Microsoft Servers

• Using XLB to load-balance and manage traffic across two or more clustered SharePoint servers to achieve dramatic improvements in capacity and reliability.
• XLB can be used to improve the availability of Microsoft Outlook Web Access.
• Using XLB to load-balance and improve performance of Windows Media Services.
• Using XLB to scale a Terminal Services deployment and perform health monitoring to alert and avoid failed nodes.
• Allow XLB to handle the SSL decryption; reducing the CPU stress to Exchange back-end(s).

Celestix XLB Traffic Manager

Celestix XLB Traffic Manager manages your application traffic, inspecting, transforming and routing requests as it load-balances them across the application infrastructure. The powerful TrafficScript™ engine lets you implement whatever traffic management policies are most appropriate for your enterprise, drawing on the whole range of capabilities of the Celestix XLB Traffic Manager. Where necessary, Java™ Extensions can be used to implement additional, complex traffic transformations and other policies.

Capabilities and Benefits

Application Acceleration
By placing the Celestix XLB Traffic Manager in front of your networked and web-enabled applications, you can boost the number of transactions your infrastructure can handle, and dramatically increase the speed and responsiveness that your users experience.

Service Reliability
Detect and work around application and hardware failures, ensuring your services have the best possible availability, whatever the circumstances.

Application Security
Mitigate flash floods, filter invalid or malicious requests, apply access controls - all to be confident that your applications are hardened and your user data is safe.

Manage your traffic and infrastructure with the Celestix XLB Traffic Manager
The Celestix XLB Traffic Manager keeps you informed with detailed logs and status reports. Manage, transform and route traffic across multiple applications, and manage clusters of application servers to reduce your operational costs.

Protocol and Application Support

• Application servers: WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, Oracle, JBoss, SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Apache TomCat, Caucho Resin, Sun Java System Application Server, GlassFish application server, etc.
• Web Servers: Apache, Zeus Web Server, IIS, SunONE, iPlanet, etc.
• Web Applications: Exchange, Sharepoint, Outlook Web Access, etc.
• Media Delivery: full RTSP (TCP and UDP) support for Windows Media Services, Darwin Streaming Server, Helix Server, QuickTime Streaming Server
• VoIP Applications: support for SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)
• Next-generation protocols, including on-the-fly acceleration, inspection and modification of SOA/XML and Web2.0/AJAX traffic
• Detailed inspection and modification of long-lived protocols such as SMTP, POP3, IMAP and database sessions FTP, DNS, almost any TCP or UDP-based protocol
• Fully supports both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic, in mixed deployments where necessary

The Celestix XLB Traffic Manager's TrafficScript™ Rules Language and Java™ Extensions can inspect, modify and route any TCP or UDP protocol.

Enterprise Web Application Firewalling for Celestix XLB Traffic Manager

Celestix XLB Application Firewall Module adds a sophisticated, application-aware web application firewall to Celestix XLB Traffic Manager. It allows an organization to apply application firewalling techniques to any web application, to the standards required by the PCI DSS specification, section 6.6.

Celestix XLB Load Balancer

The Celestix XLB Load Balancer adds load balancing and resilience to your services, with high-performance SSL and content compression, content-aware traffic management rules and flexible health monitoring. It offers a low-cost starting point, with a smooth and cost-effective upgrade path to scale as your service grows.

Features

Improves Performance
With integrated SSL, WAN offload, and content compression, The Celestix XLB Load Balancer dramatically accelerates many networked applications.

Creates Resilience
Celestix XLB Load Balancer can be deployed in active / active high-availability pairs for load balancer resilience, and creates fault-tolerance for your back-end servers.

Adds Intelligence
Content inspection rules allow you to send requests for certain web pages to specific groups of servers.

Improves Reliability
By continually monitoring the health of your back-end servers, failed servers are automatically detected and removed from the cluster until they recover.

Ease of Use
Celestix XLB Load Balancer takes minutes to install and configure, and includes a secure, web-based graphical user interface which provides you with visual alerting, health monitoring and cluster diagnostics.

Advanced Load Balancing Algorithms
When deciding which is the most suitable server to send a request to, Celestix XLB Load Balancer makes use of several advanced algorithms, bringing extreme efficiency to content delivery.

One-Click Session Persistence
If sticky sessions are required for your web application, just turn on session affinity with one click.

Connection Draining
Allows you to remove back-end servers from your cluster safely without disrupting any users' sessions.

Security
Provides protection against intrusion and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, and is designed from the outset with security in mind.

Specifications:

Technical Specifications
Platform	XLB 4000 Series		XLB 5000 Series		XLB 6000 Series		XLB 8000 Series
Model	Traffic Manager	Load Balancer	Traffic Manager	Load Balancer	Traffic Manager	Load Balancer	Traffic Manager	Load Balancer
Base Unit - Hardware
Max. Throughput	2,500 TPS 0.5 Gpbs	5,000 TPS 1.0 Gpbs (4 IP only	5,000 TPS 1.0 Gpbs	5,000 TPS 1.0 Gpbs	50,000 TPS 2.0 Gpbs	50,000 TPS 2.0 Gpbs	Unlimited	Unlimited
Chassis Height	1U	1U	1U	1U	2U	2U	2U	2U
Redundant AC Power
Hot Swappable Hard Dirve
Number of Processors	4	4	4	4	4	4	8	8
Memory	4 GB	4 GB	4 GB	4 GB	4 GB	4 GB	6 GB	6 GB
Hard Drive	320 GB	320 GB	320 GB	320 GB	320 GB x 2	320 GB x 2	160 GB x 4	160 GB x 4
RAID	-	-	-	-	0 / 1	0 / 1	0 / 5	0 / 5
Gigabit Ethernet	6	6	6	6	6	6	8	8
10 Gigabit Ethernet	-	-	-	-	-	-	2	2
Scalability - Software
Active/Active & Active/Passive
TrafficCluster Size	64 Active Units	2 Active Units	64 Active Units	2 Active Units	64 Active Units	2 Active Units	64 Active Units	2 Active Units
Application Cluster Size	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Loading Balancing
Supported Protocols	All TCP and UDP protocols; IPv6; HTTP, HTTPS, SOAP, FTP, SMTP, SIP, RTSP, DNS, custom, etc.
Layer-7 Loading Balancing
Session Persistance
SSL Decryption & Encryption
Application Acceleration
Service Protection
Application Health Monitoring
Traffic Management
Traffic Management Rules	RuleBuilder & TrafficScript rules; Java Extensions	Rule- Builder	RuleBuilder & TrafficScript rules; Java Extensions	Rule- Builder	RuleBuilder & TrafficScript rules; Java Extensions	Rule- Builder	RuleBuilder & TrafficScript rules; Java Extensions	Rule- Builder
Entire Request & Response control
Rate Shaping
XML Processing
SOAP Control API
Content Caching	Available as an option		Available as an option		Available as an option		Available as an option
Bandwidth Management	Available as an option		Available as an option		Available as an option		Available as an option
Service Level Monitoring	Available as an option		Available as an option		Available as an option		Available as an option
Application Firewall Module	Available as an option		Available as an option		Available as an option		Available as an option

Standard with base unit
Not Available

Options & Upgrades:

Web Content Caching

In most cases, the large majority of web requests are for simple objects that rarely change - images, stylesheets, HTML documents and other 'static' resources. Forwarding these duplicate requests to back-end web servers impacts site performance and capacity.

Celestix XLB Traffic Manager's Content Caching stores common responses to web requests (HTTP and HTTPS) in an internal 'cache'. If several clients request the same data, requests can be served directly from the cache, avoiding excessive requests to the back-end server. Celestix XLB Traffic Manager can cache in excess of 4Gb of content on Celestix security platforms.

The content caching behavior conforms to the stipulations of the specification in RFC 2616, but can be fully customized and optimized using TrafficScript™ logic. Celestix XLB Traffic Manager can store multiple variants of the same web resource, such as authenticated and un-authenticated views of a website page, and will cache compressed and uncompressed content separately for maximum performance. Detailed cache reports and activity charts help you understand and fine-tune how content is cached.

Benefits:

• Reduces transaction load on back-end servers, increasing site capacity.
• Reduces latency by avoiding round-trips to back-end servers, increasing site performance.
• Fully customizable, supporting multiple content variants, so compatible with any web-based application.

Service Level Monitoring

Service response times are key metrics for service performance, and many organizations wish to impose and measure Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that define acceptable performance.

Celestix XLB Traffic Manager's Service Level Monitoring allows you to measure these metrics and helps you to monitor and meet SLAs on your services:

• Service Level Monitoring records response times from individual nodes and service-wide, raising alerts if the response time of a service begins to fall outside of the desired limit.
• Real-time response times can be charted, or monitored using SNMP.
• Using TrafficScript™, Celestix XLB Traffic Manager can modify the traffic management policies if a key service is running slowly, for example, by imposing a rate limit or bandwidth limit on non-critical traffic.

Service Level Monitoring can be controlled in very fine detail using TrafficScript. For example, Celestix XLB Traffic Manager could monitor just the performance of shopping cart actions (insert, delete, lookup and checkout), and then limit the activities of casual visitors to the web site if the shopping cart subsystem is running too slowly.

Benefits:

• Raises alerts when key services begin to underperform.
• Allows for traffic prioritization when services become overloaded (read more...).
• Helps in capacity planning.
• Diagnoses performance of individual nodes, detecting abnormal performance (for example, due to isolated software faults or runaway processes).

Bandwidth Management

Bandwidth is a key shared resource, and its misuse by one client or service can adversely affect the level of service that all other users experience.

Celestix XLB Traffic Manager's Bandwidth Management is used to limit the amount of bandwidth that different services, types of transaction or groups of users can consume. For example, a low-priority service that hosts large file downloads could be limited so that it does not consume excessive bandwidth, even during a flash-flood ept>vent. Bandwidth Management can be fully controlled by TrafficScript™, allowing sophisticated policies such as 'limit visitors who are not logged in'.

Bandwidth limits are shared across a cluster of Celestix XLB Traffic Managers so that the total amount of traffic sent by the entire cluster does not exceed the configured limit. When multiple Celestix XLB Traffic Managers are active, they dynamically apportion and share the bandwidth limit between them based on client usage.

Benefits:

• Limits bandwidth usage for services and types of transaction, controlling the effect of flash floods.
• Allows for traffic prioritization based on transaction or user type.
• Ensures that bandwidth usage does not exceed paid-for limits from the bandwidth supplier.

Documentation:

Celestix XLB Series Data Sheet (.PDF)