ServerIron

The ServerIron line of appliances from Foundry Networks provide application-centric load balancing features via Layer 4-7 switching and additionally feature built-in Layer 2/3 switching functionalities.

Key features and applications of the ServerIron switches include (note that not all features may be available in all appliances; visit the vendor's Web site for complete details):

- Support for load balancing based on Layer 7 network traffic. Content can be examined with traffic routed based on such metrics as URL, HTTP request, XML tags, Cookies and SSL IDs

- Transparent Cache Switching (TCS), allowing for the redirection of traffic to one or more caching servers

- Firewall load balancing of up to 32 Layer 2 or Layer 3 firewall/VPN devices, including support for static and dynamic routing environments and stateful and stateless load balancing

- Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) for the balancing and redirecting of traffic to servers in multiple, geographically dispersed data centers

- Link Balancing, for the automated balancing of network traffic across multiple ISP links using such metrics as health, response time, utilization, and bandwidth cost

- Includes the vendor's IronShield security for protection against multiple forms of DoS, virus and worm attacks

Multiple ServerIron appliance families are available:

- XL: Stackable switches with 16 or 24 10/100 ports

- GT C-Series: 2U modular switches (one slot available) offered with multiple port combinations (including 10/100, GbE, and 10 GbE choices) and support for up to 5,000,000 concurrent L4 sessions and 50,000 L4 session connections per second. Versions of the C-Series switches are also offered with integrated SSL acceleration (support for up to 2,000 new SSL connections per second) and optional Web compression. The new 10 GbE C-Series switch supports over 200,000 L4 connections per second and can also be expanded via the addition of a port, 2nd active management, or SSL acceleration module.

- GT E-Series: Modular systems with multiple port combination offerings, including 10/100, GbE, and 10 GbE offerings. Performance ranges from 5 to 15 million concurrent sessions, and support for up to 50,000 to 150,000 L4 connections per second. The new E-Series 10 GbE switch supports over 200,000 L4 connections per second (like the new 10 GbE C-Series switch) in a 4 slot design (2 available). The vendor notes that the management modules, line modules and SSL service modules are interchangeable between the 10 GbE C-Series and E-Series switches.

- 50/450/850: 3, 4 and 8 slot modular systems with support for up to 15 million concurrent sessions (scalable to 30,000,000) and 150,000 L4 connections per second. Again, 10/100, GbE, and 10 GbE port combinations are facilitated, and service modules allow for the optional integration of SSL acceleration (up to 4,000 SSL connections per second).

In addition to the above load balancing switches, Foundry Networks also offers their ServerIronSA Web accelerator appliances. The ServerIronSA series features SSL termination and acceleration (by offloading SSL processing from the server) including content switching on SSL connections; and bandwidth optimization via automatically applied compression to content provided from the servers. The ServerIronSA appliances support from 200 new SSL connections per second with 100 Mbps compression (10,000 concurrent SSL connection) on the 100 model; to 11,000 new SSL connections per second with 700 Mbps throughput (100,000 concurrent SSL connections) on the 800 model.

The new 10 GbE C-Series and E-Series switches are expected to be available in February of 2006, with base pricing of $39,995.

Visit the Foundry Networks Web site for further details.