Intelligent load balancing solution provides scalability and security to cloud-based applications
To help manage data centre performance in the face of growing resource consumption, Fortinet® – a world leader in high-performance network security – announced the availability of three new high performance application delivery controllers (ADCs) for enterprise data centres and managed service providers in Australia and New Zealand. They are designed to provide scalability and availability for Internet-based applications that reside in one or more data centres.
As more businesses turn to the cloud to deliver mission critical functionality to employees and customers, data centres require higher performance solutions combined with strong security. FortiADC provides web servers with a layer of intelligent load balancing to improve application response times and reduce bandwidth needs.
Application delivery controllers (ADCs) optimise enterprise application environments. The market evolved from the load-balancing systems that were specifically developed to ensure the availability and scalability of websites. Enterprises now use ADCs to optimise reliability, end-user performance, data centre resource use and security for a variety of enterprise applications.
ADCs provide basic application scalability, availability and reliability of the earlier model DNS-based round robin or hardware-based server load balancers and include advanced features for today’s dynamic, content-rich applications like hardware-based secure traffic acceleration, HTTP compression and virtual environment integration.
“This solution complements the existing Fortinet product range, including our FortiGate®, FortiDDoS and FortiWeb platforms”, said Gary Gardiner, ANZ director of engineering for Fortinet.
The FortiADC-1500D, FortiADC-2000D and FortiADC-4000D represent an expansion of Fortinet’s Application Delivery Controller line-up that provides high performance, rich features and strong security for high-volume application environments while reducing overall total cost of ownership (TCO). Unlike competing ADC manufacturers that require additional options for advanced port connectivity, these new units include up to 16 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports and up to eight high-performance 10-Gigabit SFP+ Ethernet ports at no extra cost.
“Today’s announcement of the addition to Fortinet’s hardware ADC appliance family in Australia and NZ serves the application delivery needs of mid-tier enterprises and web server providers and highlights Fortinet’s leadership and vision related to the convergence of networking and security functionalities. No other ADC manufacturer offers our ratio of price to performance while including many options like global server load balancing and 10 Gigabit SFP+ connectivity,” said Gary Gardiner. “We deliver the performance and security that today’s businesses require with application delivery appliances that range from 2.7 Gbps of layer-4 throughput all the way up to 50 Gbps on our new top-of-the-line FortiADC-4000D.”
FortiADC-4000D Key Features
• 50 Gbps of L4 throughput and up to 1,600,000 L7 transactions per second for handling enterprise and data centre application traffic volumes
• 16x GE ports and 8x 10 GB SFP+ Ethernet ports provide high-throughput connectivity to eliminate network bottlenecks
• Dedicated SSL offload hardware provides increased performance for up to 31,000 SSL connections per second
• Dual hot-swappable power supplies provide additional redundancy by supporting separate power connections and allow power supplies to be swapped without interrupting device operations
• A dedicated management port allows remote device control even when it’s powered down
FortiADC-2000D Key Features
• 30 Gbps L4 throughput and up to 1,200,000 L7 transactions per second for mid-range traffic volume data centres
• 16x GE ports and 4x 10 GB SFP+ Ethernet ports
• Dedicated SSL offload hardware with up to 31,000 SSL connections per second
• Dual power supplies
FortiADC-1500D Key Features
• 20 Gbps L4 throughput and up to 800,000 L7 transactions per second for smaller traffic volume or secondary data centres
• 8x GE ports and 4x 10 GB SFP+ Ethernet ports
• Dedicated SSL offload hardware with up to 14,500 SSL connections per second
• Dual power supplies
These FortiADC products, new to ANZ, are leaders in price to L4 performance, include GSLB (Global Server Load Balancing) and LLB (Link Load Balancing) at no extra cost and use hardware SSL acceleration to support continuing growth in secure application traffic.
FortiADC 4.0 Now Features IP Reputation and Virtual Domains
The FortiADC OS update includes two new features; IP Reputation and Virtual Domains (VDOMs) along with other enhancements, such as GUI improvements and detailed event logging. IP Reputation is a subscription-based service offered by FortiGuard Labs that allows a FortiADC to detect and block incoming traffic from known malicious sources. The extension of IP Reputation services to FortiADC products continues Fortinet’s strategy of creating high-performance and secure application delivery products. Combined with high-capacity SSL offloading and built-in firewalls, FortiADC offers additional security features not found in other ADC appliances at these price points.
VDOMs allow managed service providers and large enterprises to provision and manage separate virtual ADCs using a single FortiADC appliance; a differentiating feature that is also found on the company’s FortiGate platform.
Availability
The FortiADC-1500D, FortiADC-2000D, FortiADC-4000D and FortiADC OS 4.0 are available now.
The whitepaper, “The ABCs of ADCs”, is available for download from www.fortinet.com/resource_center/whitepapers/abcs-adcs.html
