F5 Solution Streamlines Long-Distance, Live Migration and Desktop Virtualization
F5’s BIG-IP products efficiently migrate virtual machines; deliver high availability and optimized performance for VMware View deployments.
Note: ESJ’s editors carefully choose vendor-issued press releases about new or upgraded products and services. We have edited and/or condensed this release to highlight key features but make no claims as to the accuracy of the vendor's statements.
F5 Networks, Inc., an application delivery networking specialist, has enabled capabilities for long distance live migration and desktop virtualization deployments. Through F5’s integration efforts with VMware, EMC, and other organizations, customers can maximize the value of technology investments and enable costs savings for virtualization and cloud deployments.
Following its original demonstration at VMworld 2009, F5 has collaborated with VMware and EMC to offer a new solution that simplifies the migration of virtual applications between geographically dispersed data centers. Since the technology’s introduction, customers have been able to use F5’s BIG-IP products in conjunction with VMware vSphere, VMware vMotion, and VMware Storage vMotion to distribute application deployments across multiple data centers to increase infrastructure resilience, enhance availability, and improve end-user performance.
One of the primary obstacles to broader adoption has been the requirement to also migrate the storage data associated with applications across the WAN. EMC VPLEX Metro provides a globally coherent, active-active storage virtualization platform --meaning long-distance, live migrations of virtual applications can now be performed without this requirement. Now organizations can perform reliable, secure, and accelerated live migrations over greater distances. Additionally, by making virtual machine migration more efficient, business benefits of a distributed mobile computing platform are within reach for organizations with large amounts of storage data associated with their applications.
Streamlined, Optimized Virtual Desktop Deployments with VMware and F5
Building on its previously announced support for VMware View, F5 is also introducing capabilities to help customers further accelerate virtual desktop environments. A new iApp template provides preferred configurations to optimize performance and enable swift deployments. With the built-in intelligence of F5’s detailed deployment guidance for VMware View, the customizable iApp template dramatically reduces the chance of manual or configuration errors during deployment to help organizations quickly implement virtual desktop solutions.
In addition, F5 provides single namespace capabilities to help customers manage user access to a globally distributed virtual desktop infrastructure supported by multiple data centers. With BIG-IP solutions, customers can access View desktops from a single shared namespace -- that is, without requiring a separate namespace for respective geographic locations, separate business units, or other access variables.
The F5 solution also provides streamlined access to clients such as Apple iPad, Microsoft Windows 7, and even zero-client platforms. The integration between F5 and VMware greatly simplifies access models, and lessens the management burden on IT staff by reducing the administrative tasks typically associated with supporting desktop virtualization capabilities for users on the road.
For more information, visit www.f5.com.