Zeus today announced the forthcoming release of version 7 of the product suite.

This includes:

Zeus Traffic Manager 7.0 and the new Zeus Multi-Site Manager

Click here to access a zipped file that contains briefing documents, presentations and new brochures for you to brief your staff and update your website.

Click here to watch a recorded webinar on the new release

Click here to view the press release

For me the key product is the Multi-Site Manager. One of the difficulties of managing a dev, stage, production, DR and regression platform is maintain consistent configuration and code across deployments. Multi-Site manager is the tool you need to manage this.   

Its been a long time since I posted mainly because all of the work I have been doing is covered by NDA (no disclosure agreements). One of the secret squirrel pieces of work involved Zeus ZXTM r5.2 beta testing. Well the good people of Zeus must have been having more moments of genius that usual and have decided that the great features due for release in r5.2 beta were not enough! So they have pulled out all the stops and are releasing v6.0 now known simply as ZTM (Zeus Traffic Manager).

This is a huge improvement over v5.1 with true load balancing of single IP, via a nifty loopback interface which can move between ZTM’s (That’s going to take some getting used to). Other changes include SSD backed cache, UI enhancements, enhanced support for cloud deployment (such as Amazon EC2) and extending TrafficScript functionality to name but a few.

Zeus are delivering a presentation where I work next week, I’ll be sure to post following this with more in depth information.

In the meantime here’s further reading

http://knowledgehub.zeus.com/news/2009/10/20/zeus_traffic_manager_6_0_released

I was recently in a meeting with Sun Microsystems and Zeus, ioko hosted the meeting to discuss the innovative solutions ioko are building for their customers using their products specifically relating to the use of public & private cloud platforms.

ioko is vendor agnostic picking the appropriate technology based on technical and business requirements of the client. ioko is filled with highly motivated passionate IT people who love nothing more that to argue the toss about the esoteric differences between competing technologies such as Sun Ray v Terminal Server OR VMware VDI v Citrix XenApp – The cold winter evening just fly by  

anyway…..

I love ZXTMs they have provided the answer to some very difficult and complex problem time after time and I never cease to be amazed. ZXTM 51r1 was recently release and I am currently deploying ZXTMs into a local government environment and am reminded of the qualities of the ZXTMs hence this review. Hope you enjoy it.

Why are they so cool …

Flexibility

Hands up if your layer 7 device can run as a VM?

Is available as a physical appliance?

As a virtual appliance that you can download from VMware?

Doesn’t cost you anymore money when you migrate from the shonkey 100Mb old beige server to you shiny new 10G dynamic IT blade infrastructure?

Is free for your dev* purposes?

I thought not

Software solution

I was reading an article recently from a hardware load balance appliance manufactory about how “virtual environments need physical load balancers” to manage the traffic. I could not disagree more. The whole concept of virtualisation is to abstract the hosts from the physical hardware to facilitate dynamic IT solutions that are not constrained by any one physical device within the solution.

Virtual Switches (Cisco Nexus), Virtual Firewalls (Checkpoint VSX), Virtual IPS (StoneGate Virtual IPS), Virtual OS (Pick you’re favourite hypervisor )  and physical load balancers? No thanks.

VM environments are frequently adopted due to there ability to migrate between physical hardware and in the case of several of the environments that ioko have deployed, be able to migrate between data centres (across regional and geographic boundaries). If you rely on physical appliances to provided load balancing then you are either constrained by the fact that they are located in one DC only or you are forced to buy multiple units and more than likely have them wasted at the location that is not currently live. This is contrary to the objective of virtualisation and dynamic IT, namely improving utilisation and lowering TOC.

ZXTM is software, it works in harmony with your virtual environment and just like other virtual machines (ESX VMotion) can be migrated between physical hardware as required. Gartner highlights that Zeus “Early relationship with VMware gave Zeus a good understanding of dynamic data centres’ challenges and opportunities.” and that Zeus / ZXTM …

• Highly scalable clustering via software and off-the-shelf hardware.
• Broadening technology base and vision, including programmability via Java extensions.
• A strong management team of industry veterans, added during the past 12 months, lends credibility.

Full report here

Configurability

OK so if you can think it, you can configure ZXTMs to do it.

While working on a innovative TV Broadcast / online show tie-in, we needed to deliver metadata to a flash application 30 or 40 times a minutes for each user/viewer.

This was a very time sensitive application and caused no end of problems trying to deliver the metadata with traditional web servers. The application than generated the metadata created an XML document which needed to be distributed to the web servers to server to the users. This publishing was to slow and also hampered cache configuration in clients browsers. 

Along comes Traffic Script. Simply expose a soap call to write the content into a traffic script rule that actually builds the xml in response to the client request.

I am constantly amazed at the tasks that ZXTMs can be put to here are some more examples

Prevent accidental or deliberate leaking of information

Detect SQL Inject attacks against your web apps

Generate dynamic content on the fly

Stop certain IP ranges accessing your site OR Countries / Geographic Locations

Send SMS messages to notify on any given event

Integrate with VMware ESX to manage dynamic IT provisioning

More clever stuff than you can shake a stick at  …. you get the point

Consider the following scenario…

You have a website that is accessible by the internal users and also publicly accessible. You want to force certain parts of the site to be SSL but its a SharePoint implementation that has a large amount of dynamic content so you cant be sure of the specific URL only parts of the path e.g. ./securethis/* and ./editorsection/*

This kind of task is mere child’s play with  ZXTM Traffic script.

$url = http.getRawURL();
$host = http.getHeader ( "Host");

if( string.regexmatch( $url, "^/securethis/(.*)$" ) ) {
    http.sendResponse( "301 Moved Permanently", "text/html", "", "Location:
https://".$host . $url);
}

Try to do this with ISA Server, take it from me its not happening   OR look at rival hardware based appliances and you need to be a serious developer to do the simplest of tasks.

For more on Traffic Script Zeus have an excellent introduction here:  
http://www.zeus.com/products/zxtm/manage/trafficscript.html

Overview of ZXTM Traffic Inspection Capabilities

© 2009 Zeus Technology Ltd

“

TrafficScript can inspect and control any TCP or UDP traffic. Based on inspection decisions, you can control:

• Which server(s) should process the request?
• How should the request or response be rewritten (if desired)?
• Should the request be retried if it fails?
• What sort of session persistence should be used for this request?
• How much bandwidth should the request and response use?
• Should the HTTP Content Cache be used?
• Should the response be compressed?
• How many of this type of request should be admitted per second (or per minute)?
• How should the performance be monitored (using SLM)?
• What information about the transaction should be logged?

What can I do with it?

The power of TrafficScript comes from the fact that it’s a full programming language, so there’s a huge amount of potential and flexibility.

Scalability

ZXTM is a software product that maintains configuration with other ZXTM’s in a “cluster” via a multicast communications on subnet assigned to the ZXTM console. This has following significant benefits

1) Setting up a clustered ZXTM deployment is simplicity itself.

A four step wizard requiring a tick of a box and the supply of a password. 

2) Shared state table

“IF” a ZXTM fails its partners detect the failure and take ownership of any Traffic IPs (Virtual IPs) and maintain tcp/ip connections established by the failed ZXTM (with the exception of SSL connections).

3) shared config

All configuration is automatically replicated to all cluster nodes

4) Very rapid deployment

A ZXTM can be deployed into a cluster in a little over 15 minutes is you have to do the process manually via SSH with SFTP to upload the binary. That is to say 9am two ZXTMs in you cluster … 9:15am Three ZXTMs in your cluster fully configured and handling traffic.

Performance

I have implemented ZXTM configuration in front of some very large public web solutions and I am constantly amazed by the performance that the ZXTMs achieve

I think I have mentioned in previous post these figures but its worth covering again:

Pair of HP DL360 G5 8GB RAM, 1Gb NICs (in active passive config).

4000 concurrent connections to a video rich site. CPU utilisation 1% memory utilisation 500Mb of the 8GB available.

Another application (same hardware spec):

1.2 Million transactions per minute /

72 million transactions per hour (including in excess of 350 SSL terminations per second) sustained 750Mbps. Through a single HP DL360G5 

The UKs largest broadcasters uses Zeus ZXTMs in front of the home page. I can tell you that is a significant load. Interestingly ZXTMs deliver F1 web content to the internet for the largest public and commercial broadcasters in the UK!

Again you can get your hands on the free *  dev licence here!

Have a look. If you are responsible for delivering innovative highly available web based solutions ZXTMs are the best use of your precious budget in this challenging economic climate. The bang for buck is about as good as it gets!

This is the POC I was working on in December 2008 mentioned here

STOCKHOLM — Edgeware announces that digital media systems specialist, ioko, has recently completed a successful lab trial with the Edgeware Web TV server. This trial was part of ioko’s assessment of caching and serving technologies for a range of new web video distribution services.

Edgeware’s Web TV Servers cache and deliver up to 32,000 concurrent video streams over the open Internet and can be cost effectively distributed in operator networks or co-location facilities as they require just 1U form factor, max 85W power and virtually no maintenance.

Using hardware acceleration and flash memory for storage enables Edgeware to guarantee predictable video delivery performance that scales far beyond current competition. As part of their evaluation, ioko successfully conducted extensive load testing of the server in their UK labs where performance was found to scale deterministically even across a wide spread of assets.

Liz Frost, VP Professional Services at ioko commented "…our clients view us as trusted advisors in evaluating, recommending, implementing and running platforms that will support them now and in future, and so our hands on evaluation of new technology under load conditions is absolutely key for us. Testing has assured us of the scalability under load, and we look forward to exploring future use of the technology with Edgeware."

Jon Haley, VP Business Development at Edgeware added: "As ioko is such a respected technology specialist in the web video market, having them evaluate our server and verify our performance claims was an obvious choice."

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=174106&site=cdn

AND

“Edgeware announces ioko has recently completed a successful lab trial with the Edgeware Web TV server. This trial was part of ioko’s assessment of caching and serving technologies for a range of new web video distribution services.

Edgeware’s Web TV Servers cache and deliver up to 32,000 concurrent video streams over the open Internet and can be cost effectively distributed in operator networks or co-location facilities as they require just 1U form factor, max 85W power and virtually no maintenance.

Using hardware acceleration and flash memory for storage enables Edgeware to guarantee predictable video delivery performance that scales far beyond current competition. As part of their evaluation, ioko successfully conducted extensive load testing of the server in their UK labs where performance was found to scale deterministically even across a wide spread of assets.

Edgeware´s Web TV Server is nominated to the "Best Internet TV Technology/Solution" at the 2009 IPTV World Series Awards, and will be showcased at IPTV World Forum in London, March 25-27, in Booth 226.”

http://www.tvover.net/2009/03/24/ioko+Verifies+Edgeware+Web+TV+Performance+Claims.aspx

STOP PRESS!

The lovely people at Zeus have just announced today (23rd March) that they are making fully featured * ZXTM licences available for Dev use. This is great news. While the ZXTM was always available in a 30 day trail it was limited in its configuration capability and lacked the fully capabilities that make this such an awesome product.

* The dev licence is limited in terms of number of connections that it will handle.

“The launch of the ZXTM Development License program, is specifically designed to make ZXTM more accessible to the application development community.

ZXTM is unique in being able to provide this community with the platform to develop sophisticated applications, in physical, virtual and cloud environments.

With a ZXTM Development License, any application developer will be able to develop and test their applications using ZXTM, with no upfront costs.

In summary, the ZXTM Developer License:

- can be obtained at no cost

- support is not included

- the duration of the license is for 1 yr which is then renewable

- has restrictions including performance and clustering capabilities.

The ZXTM Development Licenses can only be used for development, testing, education, proof-of-concept and demonstration purposes and will be available to application developers, Zeus partners and customers in non-production environments.”

Check out the full details here

I notice with great interest that power is starting to push its way to the front of the agenda when discussing any projects these days. While at Tech.Ed this year we were told that Microsoft are building a large DC in Ireland "because of ambient air temperature" Its cold most of the time . I didn’t appreciate what this meant until I read the article below which suggests allowing your DC to run at a balmy 32 C (much like any married man’s living room * ) instead of the usual 18C (65F) and use air from outside to provide cooling. I guess this is an option for some and is certainly something I will discuss with our DC manger the next time I see them.        

From: Green Checklist: 10 ways to save energy in the data centre

"Data center energy use can lead to economic catastrophe for many companies (in 2009). For example, energy use at the largest data centers grew at a 7.5 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2000 and 2006 but will hit a 24 percent CAGR from 2006 to 2010, according to Ken Brill, executive director of the Uptime Institute. At that rate, the United States will need 30 new 1,000-megawatt power plants by 2015 just to support data center usage."

CAGR – Compound Annual Growth Rate

http://www.accelerateresults.com/category/8/article/169-green-checklist-ways-to-save-energy-in-the-data-center-

* A genius is any man who can adjust the thermostat to please his wife.

If every there was a killer app for virtualisation this is it. Spend on virtualisation to save a huge amount on power/hosting. 

I have just completed the Certified PlateSpin Analyst (CPSA) exam.

This is a cracking product for migration, DR, consolidation or technical refresh projects. It comes into its own where you need to maintain service with minimal interruption – hence the name

PowerConvert

http://www.platespin.com/products/powerconvert/

Basically you can take an image of a target source which can be an image, physical or virtual server and provision a destination source which can be a physical, virtual or image. Supports live file, block and VSS based imaging + offline PE based imaging of a variety of Windows and Linux OS inc (Windows NT4)

PowerRecon

They have a sister product that is used to analyse/benchmark you environment and then either provided details for consolidation or specification for migration/planning. Its very similar to VMware Capacity Planner

http://www.platespin.com/products/powerrecon/

My colleague has put together some excellent posts on practical examples:

http://vinf.net/2008/11/25/platespin-powerconvert-part-1-overview/
http://vinf.net/2008/11/26/platespin-powerconvert-part-2-p2v/
http://vinf.net/2008/12/01/platespin-powerconvert-part-3-v2p/

Interested but need assistance?

I work for a ioko if you are in-need of consultancy services around these or indeed any technical professional services get in touch with us here. We can help.

I am currently working on a proof of concept project using a very new 1U solid state device. This is a very cool appliance that can delivery many 10s of thousands of simultaneous VOD (video on demand) streams from a 1U form factor device. It has multiple 10Ge interfaces and when running full tilt uses 85w power. 

Very clever stuff but right now none disclosure prevents further details… watch this space.

Five tips if your starting out designing infrastructure solutions

1) Build a library of reference platforms.

It can be the case that requirements are quite vague, this is because you are designing a new platform. Build a library of reference solutions. In a fast moving IT environment have a number of pre-defined building blocks that you can refer to will make presenting options much simpler. You can then "mix and match" to firm up clients requirements for a solution without wasting lots of time on details specification that are discarded.     

e.g. Have solutions for

Networks e.g.  Cisco 2950s, Cisco 3750s, Cisco 4500s & Cisco 6500s
Firewalls   – small (Sub 100Mb through-put), Medium & Large 1Gb +
Platform in my case *NIX Solutions / Microsoft Solutions e.g. Oracle or SQL   
Monitoring & Administrative activity
Storage
Backup
Security
VM platforms – Compatible NICs, HBAs etc
Physical – Blades / Stand Alone (Proliant)

Consider
Power Utilisation  
 

2) Expand your horizons technically

Learn about as much technology as you possibly can. Now is the time to forget all the Microsoft v Linux,  Mac v PC, SQL v Oracle, and objectively choose technology based on its relative merits. these can include CapEx v OpEx, scalability, supportability, suitability e.g. meantime between failure details or product maturity. There is lots to consider and no one solution is perfect.

3)  Be Pragmatic (OR the art of compromise)

This is the real skill if you ask me. You know your tech but do you understand the business drivers, politics, personalities and culture?  The key to delivering a good solution is sometime not simply a technical solution but consideration it in the context of the points I have mentioned.  There is no point defining a platform that is based on Microsoft .Net with SQL 2008 if the company has a large number of applications based on Oracle DB with Solaris ZFS storage and all the Sys Admins are *Nix based. Its just not going to fly.

4) Budgets

Obvious really but this is key to winning the work. No point designing a two million pound infrastructure solution if the budget for the whole project including development and hosting £350K.  This is were the stock solutions come in. It also helps to choose what is fundamental and what is nice to have.  I love using ZXTMs but sometime Windows NLB is all the budget can provide. Cut your cloth accordingly

5) Communications

Chances are you are the technical person in a team made up of project managers, project sponsor, finance, legal, procurement, Ops, Dev, and Test personnel. You have to communicate your ideas in a manor that is clear and concise. Learn Visio (or some other product) and use it to put together a visual representation of your solution. I find this is the best place to start. I have a load of different requirements and I break them down into components. Once I have all the parts I roughly figured out I put a draft document together and the detailed work begins

If I’m honest I wanted to put some of my Visio diagrams online because they are one of the best tools for communicating solutions with all parties concerned. You can’t see any of the actual detail but they give you a flavour of the sort of thing I put together to communicate my ideas or document a current solution to either confirm or highlight an area that needs clarification. This is my most useful tool and it allows me to put down something and quickly pick it up several weeks or months later. Try doing that with a text description or a couple of spreadsheets

http://venturecake.com/

“VentureCake covers emerging trends in technology, including Open Source, mobile computing and startups.”