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Cloud ADC Solutions for Cloud Infrastructure ProvidersExpand Your Cloud Offering with Radware Cloud ADC Solutions - Whitepaper

Radware Cloud ADC Solutions for Cloud Infrastructure Providers Whitepaper

Smart Network. Smart Business. 2

Table of Contents

The Cloud Computing Field .......................................................................................................................... 3

The Motivation for Offering Cloud ADC Services ............................................................................................ 3

Cloud ADC Basics ................................................................................................................................ 4

Cloud ADC Offering Mapping ................................................................................................................. 4

Radware Cloud ADC Solutions ..................................................................................................................... 5

Virtual ADC Instances ........................................................................................................................... 5

VADI ADC Computing Resources ............................................................................................................ 5

Integration into Cloud Management Systems .......................................................................................... 6

Virtual Application Delivery Services ....................................................................................................... 6

Radware ADC Fabric™ .......................................................................................................................... 7

On-Demand Cloud ADC Services ............................................................................................................ 8

Conclusion................................................................................................................................................. 9



The Cloud Computing FieldCloud computing is not a new concept, but in recent years it has become a hot topic which many enterprise IT administrators are starting to take notice. According to a survey conducted by IDC1, the estimated market for cloud services in 2011 is $34 billion, and by 2014 the market will reach $55 billion. Furthermore, IDC predicts that in 2011, Cloud and traditional service providers will account for 12% of IT infrastructure spending, growing to 20% by 2014.2

This paper will focus specifically on the IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) market segment of the cloud services market. Today IaaS accounts for roughly 50% of the cloud services market making it a very large market with huge potential for revenues from selling services, which acts as a very strong incentive for startups, hosting providers, and service providers (SP) to rush and become Cloud Service Providers (CSP).

According to TMF Insights, roughly 65% of SPs are offering cloud services, while 100% of the SPs are evaluating the possibility of offering cloud based services.

This “rush to the cloud” creates a new competitive pressure between the various new CSPs, resulting in:1. Reduced price in the standard / commodity cloud based offerings, such as computing, storage, etc.2. Increased need for: service differentiation, innovation, and the offering of premium services (e.g. ADC-as-a-Service/Cloud ADC Services, DR-as-a-Service, etc), in order to attract new customers.

This will also dive deeper into the concept of ADC-as-a-Service to demonstrate how CSPs can benefit from offering it as premium service.

The Motivation for Offering Cloud ADC ServicesBefore exploring the different varieties of Cloud ADC services, it is important to understand the CSP’s motivation or offering such services as well as the environment in which they can be offered.

As mentioned above, one of the main drivers for offering Cloud based ADC services, is creating CSP service differentiation compared to competing CSPs. A second reason is to address the customers’ concerns of ensuring Cloud hosted applications’ availability, performance, and service levels.

From the CSPs’ point of view, by offering Cloud ADCs, they can now differentiate themselves from other CSPs, generate more revenues, and position themselves as innovators, all while also improving the end user’s application QoE. With Cloud based ADC services, CSPs can ensure customers that their hosted applications get the same application delivery benefits within the Cloud data center as within the customer’s data center.

One point to take into account is that from a business perspective, the Cloud ADC solution should require as low as possible upfront investment in infrastructure, in order to accommodate the cloud provider’s pay-as-you-go business model.

1 http://blogs.idc.com/ie/?p=922 , July 1, 20102 http://idc-insights-community.com/posts/8869606722, December 17, 2010

http://blogs.idc.com/ie/?p=922

http://idc-insights-community.com/posts/8869606722



As can be seen in figure 1 below, using the Cloud Provider for DR or testing purposes, are just two of the different ADC based services requested by Cloud Provider customers. Additional ADC based services include basic or advanced Application Delivery-as-a-Service, Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) services, etc.

Figure 1 - Decision Criteria for Choosing a Cloud Provider

It is important to note that deploying Cloud based ADC for Application Delivery-as-a-Service is the basis for offering the aforementioned services, such as DR-as-a-Service.

Cloud ADC BasicsCloud ADCs are essentially the adaptation of a standard ADC to the Cloud computing world. Cloud ADCs must adhere to all the requirements of Cloud computing, while providing all the capabilities of a standard ADC. This means the ADC must:

• OfferallthecapabilitiesofanADCincludingserverloadbalancing,andadvancedcapabilitiessuchas application acceleration, SSL offloading, HTTP compression, GSLB etc.• SeamlesslyintegrateintoClouddatacenternetworkandvirtualinfrastructure(VI)• IntegratewithCloudportals,managementandorchestrationsystems,suchasVMwarevCOandVMware vCloud Director (vCD), or home grown management systems• Befastandsimpletoprovisionaspartofcompleteservicecreation• Beabletoflexiblygrowit’sthenumberofADCinstancesasthebusinessgrowsandtheCSPaddsmore customers. And grow its capacity with the CSP and end user’s throughput needs increases• Catertodifferenttypesofhostedapplicationsandcustomers,bysupportingtieredservicelevelsinterms of ADC capabilities and cost models

Cloud ADC Offering MappingToday within the IaaS Cloud space, we can map two types of Cloud offerings which are relevant to Cloud ADCs:

• Best effort services – The CSP offers best effort computing and bandwidth performance, meaning they allow customers to purchase as many computing resources (VMs) as they need, but the performance of the VMs is not guaranteed and may fluctuate. This type of service is mainly targeted at SMBs.• SLA based services – The CSP guarantees computing and bandwidth resources to meet performance service levels. In this type of service, the CSP commits to the predictability of the performance provided by the purchased computing resources. This type of service is mainly targeted at enterprise customers.



Some CSPs offer one type of service, while others may choose to cater to both SMBs and enterprises by offering both types of services. The type of service has a direct affect on all of the offered components within the service, including the ADC. For example, an ADC offered as part of a best effort service, is automatically regarded as a “best effort ADC” and is usually priced lower than an ADC offered as part of a SLA based service.

Radware Cloud ADC SolutionsRadware offers a wide range of Cloud ADCs supporting the various levels of service offered by the CSP, providing the CSP full control and flexibility in choosing which Cloud ADC offering to provide its customers and how much resources to allocate for it.

Radware’s Cloud ADC offering is based on Radware’s Virtual Application Delivery Infrastructure (VADI™). Radware VADI creates an application delivery infrastructure which is tailored for cloud ADC requirements, and which CSPs can utilize in order to offer customers with their own dedicated virtual Cloud ADC service.

Radware VADI consists of four building blocks:1. Virtual ADC instances2. VADI ADC computing resources3. Integration cloud management systems4. Virtual application delivery services

Virtual ADC InstancesAt the core of Radware’s VADI exists the virtual ADC instance (vADC), which runs on top of specialized and general purpose computing resources and supports all the capabilities of a standard ADC device (OS, configuration file, capacity resources, application delivery features, global SLB, application acceleration, etc), regardless of the computing resources it utilizes - thus transforming the ADCs into Application Delivery Controller (ADC) services. VADI ADC Computing ResourcesVADI ADC computing resources for the virtual ADC instances are delivered in 3 form factors:

• Radware ADC-VX™ ADC-VX is specifically tailored for cloud environments, allowing it to host up to 480 customers on a single solution, providing each customer with a dedicated fully private and segregated Cloud ADC instance. ADC-VX is the industry’s first ADC hypervisor that runs multiple virtual ADC instances on a dedicated ADC hardware, Radware’s OnDemand Switch platform.

ADC-VX can be deployed on the widest range of platform throughput and capacity starting from 1Gbps to 80Gbps, and vADC density options (up to 24, 28 or 480, depending on the platform) in the market – allowing it to fit any CSP environment, SLA requirements, and business model.

The high vADC density options, ensures ADC-VX is fully aligned with the CSP economy requirements and business models.

ADC-VX is an integral part of the VADI architecture, allowing it to be fully managed by cloud management systems through Radware Cloud API.

http://www.radware.com/Solutions/Enterprise/Virtualization/default.aspx

http://www.radware.com/Products/ApplicationDelivery/adcvx.aspx



• Radware Soft ADC Radware’s Soft ADC (also referred to as Alteon VA) is a vADC deployed on a general server virtualization infrastructure (VI), running as a virtual appliance. It provides all the functionality of a physical ADC (local and global server load balancing, Layer 7 capabilities and application acceleration, etc). Alteon VA is a very good fit for CSP market places, allowing it to be rapidly deployed through CSP self- service portals. In addition Alteon VA is a suitable for CSP’s who wish to offer only software solutions, or offer both software and hardware solutions depending on the level of service purchased by the user. Alteon-VA runs on industry-leading hypervisors: VMware ESX / ESXi, KVM, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Open XEN.

• Dedicated ADC The traditional ADC is transformed into a dedicated physical ADC device running a single vADC. It is tailored to offer cloud customers with a dedicated physical Cloud ADC which is characterized with a very high SLA. Radware’s dedicated ADC is an integral part of the VADI architecture, allowing it to be fully managed by cloud management systems through Radware Cloud API.

Integration into Cloud Management SystemsAll VADI computing resources are fully integrated with the CSP’s data center eco-system through Radware’s vDirect™ plug-in and SDK, the industry’s first ADC management and orchestration tool designed specifically for Cloud data center needs.

vDirect provides all the building blocks and management interfaces required for any orchestration, provisioning, or Cloud management system (homegrown or off-the-shelf) to provision, decommission, manage and monitor Radware’s VADI vADCs and computing resources within a Cloud data center – ensuring maximum business agility and IT efficiency when managing an application delivery infrastructure.

In addition, the integration of vDirect with Radware vADCs, allows CSPs to provide self service capabilities for its Cloud ADCs, allowing customers to purchase Cloud ADCs via the CSP’s portal and even manage them by themselves.

vDirect supports leading cloud management systems such as VMware vCloud Director and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, as well as home grown systems.

Virtual Application Delivery ServicesTo help manage the potentially large number of hosted Cloud ADCs, Radware VADI offers CSPs a set of services which allow them to fully benefit from a virtualized application delivery solution:

• Cloud ADC Provisioning and Decommissioning Radware VADI allows to instantly provision and decommission vADCs through the Cloud management system, or orchestration systems’ on any of the VADI form factors in the exact same way regardless of the form factor - server VI, ADC-VX or dedicated ADC.

This allows defining a single provisioning process which can be applied to any of the VADI form factors, providing a streamlined provisioning process and eliminates provisioning errors.

The following demo provides detailed explanation on the provisioning process.

http://www.radware.com/Products/ApplicationDelivery/AlteonVA.aspx

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/esxi-and-esx/overview.html

http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/hyper-v-server/default.aspx

http://xen.org/

http://www.radware.com/Solutions/Enterprise/Virtualization/vDirect.aspx

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=4rkV3ebQens&vq=medium



• vADC Migration As mentioned above, each vADC has its own OS, dedicated resources, configuration file, etc, and can run on any VADI computing resource while maintaining these characteristics.

Combining this with the VADI automation tools allows migrating a vADC instance across different ADC computing resources including specialized hardware platforms and general purpose servers.

With vADC migration, vADCs move across the virtualized application delivery infrastructure with all the relevant information including configuration, computing resources capacity reserved and network information.

For example, vADC migration allows CSP to move a Cloud ADC from an ADC computing resource which has maxed out its capacity to a second device which has free resources.

Another example, is upgrading a customer’s Cloud ADC service level, by migrating the Cloud ADC between different form factors.

Radware ADC Fabric™The combination of Radware VADI’s four building blocks essentially creates the first ever application delivery fabric called – Radware ADC Fabric. Radware’s ADC Fabric is a unique virtualized application delivery layer which leverages the concept of a virtualized ADC resource pool that can span a single data center or cross multiple data centers and supports dynamically provisioning, decommissioning or migration of ADC instances. The ADC fabric enables transforming the ADCs from “units” or devices to services, regardless of the underlying computing resources – resulting in increase agility and simplified operations.

• Cross Cloud ADC Resiliency Radware’s ADC Fabric breaks the limited model of two identical ADC appliances for redundancy by supporting cross- ADC form factor redundant pairs, for example between a vADC instance running on an ADC-VX and a vADC running on general server VI. Such redundancy capabilities allow creating a highly resilient and scalable ADC fabric, which ensures that a failure of an ADC appliance will not affect any of its hosted customers.

• Cloud ADC Capacity Elasticity Radware ADC Fabric also allows monitoring all Cloud ADCs and elastically adding and removing computing resources when needed and updating the Cloud ADC in the process. By monitoring the performance levels of a hosted application, the ADC Fabric automatically manages the provisioning of computing resources in an elastic manner, while taking into consideration the available capacity within the data center in a way that guarantees the best response time for the end user.



Figure 2 - Radware Virtual Application Delivery Infrastructure

By utilizing Radware VADI, CSPs can now offer a variety of Cloud vADCs ranging from low SLA ADC, to high SLA ADCs, each with its own throughput license and ADC features.

Utilizing the high density solutions provided by Radware, each Cloud vADC is now dedicated per customer while maintaining low infrastructure costs, eliminating the need to share a Cloud ADC for multiple customers in order to save on costs.

On-Demand Cloud ADC ServicesRadware is the only vendor that provides OnDemand scalability in throughput, number of virtual ADC instances, application delivery services and scale out of devices or data centers across all form factors, thus ensuring maximum cost savings and the best investment protection.

Radware’s OnDemand scalability is available in five dimensions:1) On-demand scalability for ADC capacity - Radware offers the most comprehensive on-demand scalability for ADC capacity – 1Gbps to 14Gbps, 8Gbps to 20Gbps, and 20Gbps to 80Gbps. CSPs can increase on- demand the overall ADC device throughput license and increase capacity on demand per virtual ADC instance. Upgrade of the ADC capacity is done without any service interruption.2) On-Demand advanced application delivery services - Radware offers to add on-demand advanced application delivery services such as global SLB, integrated security etc. per virtual ADC instance. All ADC service options are applicable to the virtual ADC instances regardless of the form factors they are deployed on. Upgrade of the advanced application delivery services is done without any service interruption.

Customer / Applications

Customer 3

Customer 2

Customer 1

Cloud Service Provider Data Center

Network& Storage

SAN

Orchestration or Management System

Virtualized Application Delivery Infrastructure



3) Number of virtual ADC instances - Radware offers scaling On-demand the number of virtual ADC instances running on Radware ADC-VX. CSPs can scale from 1 vADC and up to 24, 28 or 480 vADCs (depending on the hardware platform) without any service disruption.4) Scale out of device on-demand – In cases where the capacity of a certain ADC form factor is maxed out, Radware ADC Fabric allows migrating a vADC instance to neighboring devices where capacity is available, this ensures continued service levels and prevents any end-user QoE degradation.5) Scale out of data center on-demand - In addition, Radware ADC Fabric allows for dynamic provisioning on- demand of instances in remote Cloud data centers to support data center elasticity, i.e. when the resources are completely utilized in one data center, the cloud management system can allocate additional resources in a second data center, and on-demand provision virtual ADC instances there.

ConclusionAs more and more service providers rush to become cloud service providers, there is a growing need to create service differentiation. With the introduction of Radware’s Cloud ADC solution, such providers are now well positioned to start offering customer-tailored Cloud ADCs, ranging in SLA, throughput and ADC feature levels, all while meeting the CSP economy and business models, gaining different business benefits such as:

• GenerationofnewrevenuefromCloudADCservices• Supportofpay-per-usebusinessmodels• PercustomerfullycustomizedADCoffering• FullalignmentwithCloudeconomymodels• ImprovedbusinessagilityandgreaterITefficiency• Fullinvestmentprotection,increasedassetROI,andCAPEXsavings• OnDemandscalabilityinthroughput,advancedservicesandvADCs

© 2011 Radware, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Radware and all other Radware product and service names are registered trademarks of Radware in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks and names are the property of their respective owners.

PRD-ADC-Cloud-WP-01-2011/11-US

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