Transcript F5 Whiteboard Customer Session

Conversation Framework
Application and Network Architects
V4 August 15,2006
1. Opening the Conversation
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Open with the purpose of the meeting tailored to the needs of the application/network
architect
Overview the topics
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The way things work today
Inefficiencies today
The future challenges
The F5 approach
Next steps
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2a. The Way it Works Today
MAIN IDEA: Application delivery architecture is designed to optimize the connection between
business information and users in order to create the best user experience – Fast, Available,
Secure.
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
As we talk to application and network architects
we hear some common objectives
How does that match with your objectives?
• They want to design a reliable and scalable
architecture to ensure fast, available and secure app
delivery to end users
• They want to better anticipate and resolve app
delivery problems before they occur
• They want to improve operational efficiency across
applications
[Draw stick figures and write the words “fast,
available, secure. Then write “Business
information”]
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2b. The Way it Works Today
MAIN IDEA: Let’s use the metaphor of a pipe, which transports information from raw data
through applications to users. [Draw pipe with Servers, Apps, Portals, ISP’s, Client across the top]
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
An application delivery continuum exists from business
information to apps through servers, portals, ISP’s & various
clients to the user.
Each element is critical to app performance.
[Write elements across top of pipe]
Other key elements?
Note: As you go through the presentation, make check marks
next to the areas that the customer has indicated are causing
particular pain.
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2c. The Way it Works Today
MAIN IDEA: Pressure is being applied to this pipe by a number of elements
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
Key Elements affecting application delivery today are:
Other factors affecting the continuum
in your company?
*** Web-ification of apps *** (This is the Key Driver)
Rising user expectation and device complexity
Consolidation
Rising security demands
Distributed constituencies
Which of these are most impacting
your business?
[Add arrows and text pressuring pipe]
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3. Inefficiencies in the way it works today
MAIN IDEA: Each component of the network forms a potential bottleneck adversely affecting
app performance [Draw lines representing bottlenecks]
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
The entire network is not well tuned for the
demands of the new web apps
[SELECT 3-4 customer relevant “Limitations” or
Impacts” from 3 Why’s content to illustrate and or
create dialogue]
(Engage them on issues re: new package apps
and their performance & security issues and ways
the network is not well tuned for them)
App performance can be at risk causing
(Get them to talk about the delivery problems they
are experiencing and the impact on user
experience & utilization)
Under utilization of expensive apps
User abandonment
Server and network cost overruns
Inability to establish & enforce rules
Unanticipated downtime
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4. Future challenges
MAIN IDEA: As we look to the future the problem of application delivery will get worse
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
Multiple approaches to app delivery brings complexity
adding expense and slowing time to market for new apps
What issues of complexity are limiting agility?
[Draw COMPLEXITY]
Standards of security will only increase
[Circle SECURITY and add up arrow]
Where are new security standards affecting your app
design?
SOA will bring a new traffic issues
How will this impact your business
[Draw SOA]
Access challenges will multiply with the proliferation of
devices, geographic & constituent expansion
What kind of access issues will you address in the near
future?
[Draw a new person and put a PDA in the new
person’s hand]
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5a. How F5 Can Address The Problems
MAIN IDEA: F5 enables the network to address each of these potential bottlenecks with a new level of
intelligence
For Servers: The addition of BIG-IP can address traffic flow to achieve 99.999% server uptime and
free up the servers to serve.
[If they currently use BIG IP for their app servers, start with their current experience and describe F5 capability]
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
Address intelligence needed to manage server traffic
• Virtualize Server Resources
• Check Server Health
• Minimize server cost by utilizing maximizing utilization of
smaller number of servers
• Automate database and application maintenance by
leveraging iControl
[Erase constriction points near “SERVERS” and draw a
solid line near the wall of the pipe at the top and bottom]
Dialogue about the issues with their servers that have
come up earlier in the conversation. What other solution
approaches have they tried?
Are you maxing out server and/or power capacity?
What taxes your servers the most? (SSL, Caching,
Clustering Logic)
How do you perform application and/or database
updates? Is it largely manual?
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5b. How F5 Can Address The Problems
Distributed Users
MAIN IDEA: F5 enables the network to address each of these potential bottlenecks with a new level of
intelligence.
Applications: F5 can bring consistent, reliable delivery of applications by offloading security,
availability and acceleration functions.
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
Address intelligence in the app
• Application High Availability (HA)
• Scalability and Virtualization of Resources
• Offload processor intensive functions
Dialogue about the issues with their applications that have
come up earlier in the conversation. What other solution
approaches have they tried?
How do manage SSL currently?
Are you doing compression? If so, please describe how
that works.
Are you having any issues scaling your applications? If
so, which ones? Do you anticipate growth for these
applications?
Do you have any problems with end client and application
compatibility?
– LTM Performance Packs
– SSL Acceleration
– Caching
• Application awareness and control on both inbound and
outbound traffic.
– TMOS full proxy architecture
– iRules
[Erase constriction points near “APPS” and draw a solid
line near the wall of the pipe at the top and bottom]
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5c. How F5 Can Address The Problems
MAIN IDEA: F5 enables the network to address each of these potential bottlenecks with a new level of
intelligence.
Portals: F5 can speed web app delivery 3X-7X.
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
Address intelligence in the portal
• Better bandwidth utilization
Dialogue about the issues with their portals that have
come up earlier in the conversation. What other
solution approaches have they tried?
Is portal performance unacceptable? Are you
expanding these applications? How are these
applications accessed?
Do you find incompatibilities between your clients and
apps or between applications.
– Web Accelerator (Speed web application delivery 3-7x)
• Improve server performance and offload
• Web Application Security
• Network tuning for different implementations of TCP or UDP
• Servers can get bogged down due to slow clients. BIG-IP
brokers the connection to allow the server to unload its
connection.
– TCP Express leveraging Server Buffering
• Intelligent Compression – Compressing everything can
introduce latency, compress only when necessary.
• Caching
[Erase constriction points near “PORTALS” and draw a solid line
near the wall of the pipe at the top and bottom]
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5d. How F5 Can Address The Problems
MAIN IDEA: F5 enables the network to address each of these potential bottlenecks with a new level of
intelligence.
For D.C.’s: F5 can optimize and dramatically improve traffic flow between data centers and users
while addressing the challenge of DC synchronization/replication.
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
Address intelligence between DC’s to enable seamless
operation
• Accelerate all applications
• Data reduction, bandwidth savings (WANJet)
• Global load balancing (GTM)
• Disaster recovery, intelligent DNS (GTM)
• Business policies drive DC utilization (GTM)
• Address impending service oriented architectures (SOA)
Dialogue about the issues with DC-to-DC traffic that have
come up earlier in the conversation. What other solution
approaches have they tried?
Do you have branch offices?
Do you have multiple data centers? How are you
managing it? Automated?
– Virtualize distributed application components, group and
serve them up as one application (HA and Performance)
[Erase constriction points near “DCs” and draw a solid line
near the inside wall of the pipe at the top and bottom]
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5e. How F5 Can Address The Problems
MAIN IDEA: F5 enables the network to address each of these potential bottlenecks with a new level of
intelligence.
For ISP’s: We can ensure optimal traffic flow and cost efficiency through best performing ISP
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
Address intelligence in utilizing ISP’s — making multiple
ISPs look like one
• ISP Link Virtualization (Link Controller)
– Link optimization
– Integrated Rate Shaping
– Link cost load balancing
• No Custom Router Tables Required (No BGP)
• Puts control over your ISPs in your hands.
[Erase constriction points near “ISPs” and draw a solid
line near the wall of the pipe at the top and bottom]
Dialogue about the issues with their ISP’s that have come
up earlier in the conversation. What other solution
approaches have they tried?
Do you have multiple ISPs? If not, you should.
If so, do you have trouble managing those links?
Is it costly? Are you managing both in and outbound traffic?
Do you have challenges troubleshooting? Do you find
that your ISPs don’t cooperate?
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5f. How F5 Can Address The Problems
MAIN IDEA: F5 enables the network to address each of these potential bottlenecks with a new level of
intelligence.
For the Client: F5 Brings significant performance improvement at the client level through intelligent
optimization of all interactions between the client, the network and the application.
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
• Virus & Firewall Checking and End-Point Validation
(FirePass)
• Speed WAN traffic through Transparent Data Reduction
(TDR) and synchronous traffic optimization (WANJet)
• Increase performance through browser optimization
(WebAccelerator)
• Minimize latency induced by “chatty” applications
• Servers can get bogged down due to slow clients. BIG-IP
brokers the connection to allow the server to unload its
connection.
Do you have remote employees? Contractors?
Partners?
– TCP Express leveraging Server Buffering
[Erase constriction points near the “CLIENT”.
Where are they coming from? (Invite the customer to
draw/map this out) Are they public or private users?
Can you classify (e.g. from 1-5) which users and
applications are the most critical?
Do they access your applications wirelessly?
Are there any applications that are performing poorly
over the WAN?
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5g. How F5 Can Address The Problems
MAIN IDEA:F5 enables the network to address each of these potential bottlenecks with a new level of
intelligence.
For Security: F5 brings a new level of security functionality to the network enabling unified policy
enforcement in application delivery
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
Address intelligence in providing security in the network
• Enable SSL everywhere (not just on external facing
sites). Performance no long inhibits full SSL on internal
networks.
• Flexible architecture to unify application security services
• End point security, enforcement & auto-remediation
• Integration with all major directory service solutions
[Draw a screen between the users and the pipe]
Dialogue about the application level security issues that
have come up earlier in the conversation. What other
solution approaches have they tried?
What is your disaster recovery (“Bird Flu”) plan?
How will your users access applications if they cannot
physically come to work?
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5h. How F5 Can Address The Problems
MAIN IDEA: F5 enables the network to address each of these potential bottlenecks with a new level of
intelligence.
All Together: Each product you add creates a new level of overall intelligence to the network enabling
fast, available and secure flow of information to your constituent users
Points to Make
Not only does each F5 product solve the individual traffic bottlenecks, they
collaborate with one another and can be leveraged together.
Each F5 product adds collectively to the intelligence between the network and
the application, further enhancing fast, available and secure application
delivery.
In doing this F5 can help you
• Design a reliable and scalable architecture to ensure fast, available and
secure app delivery to end users
• Better anticipate and resolve app delivery problems before they occur
• Improve operational efficiency across applications
[Draw solid lines inside the pipe and add a big arrow with F5 at the origin
pushing through the pipe]
Alternatives for Customer
The alternative is many different
products from many different vendors
or a lot of code. Either option is very
expensive to deploy and own, not to
mention the delays that can get
introduced.
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5i. Summary of How F5 Can Address the Problem
MAIN IDEA: The F5 solution set brings a new level of application intelligence to the network
Points to Make
F5 addresses most network bottlenecks with products on an integrated application delivery
framework
F5 enables new levels of security policy enforcement necessary for distributed workforces
F5 brings the network both simplicity and functionality to ensure effective delivery across all apps
F5 brings highly cost efficient programmability to the network
F5 brings high availability enabling the network to respond immediately to component failures
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6. Advantages of the F5 platform
MAIN IDEA: F5 provides the best user experience possible from all access modes with an end to
end approach
Points to Make about the Value of the F5 Solution
1. Better Predictability
• Reduces the high cost of application development for security, performance & availability
• Lowers network operational costs
• Reduces risk (downtime, cost overruns, user abandonment)
2. More Flexibility
• Provides a repeatable framework for future apps
3. Best ROI
• Provides best possible user experience ensuring application ROI is realized
• Enables architects to solve problems faster for less money. With F5, a simple iRule can solve
problems that would otherwise require millions of dollars of software, significant manual
intervention or even an entire application overhaul.
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7. Next Steps-where can we add value?
MAIN IDEA:
Points to Make
Questions to Ask
Summarize: F5 enables networks to
optimize enterprise application
performance-making them fast-availablesecure
Test: Does this make sense?
Which elements are causing them the most
difficulty?
Determine who on the network side should we talk
to and which applications should we assess for
performance improvement, or who should we
address the security issues to?
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